We’ve all experienced anger before and we know that it can take on various states, whether it is a passing feeling of annoyance or full-on rage. Anger can be a healthy emotion if it is appropriately identified and managed, so that it does not negatively impact your daily functioning. Here are three tips you can use to better manage your anger:
Practice relaxation techniques
Anger can spike our heart rate, blood pressure, and energy. Using deep breathing and relaxing imagery can help to decrease the emotion, especially in the heat of the moment. For example, one client would experience a full-on rage whenever his father would disappoint him by not showing up to significant events in that client’s life. The client learned to identify when this rage was building and he was able to manage it by closing his eyes and taking ten deep breaths. He learned to breathe in through his nose, filling his lungs, and then breathe out slowly through the mouth, repeating the words “I am calm” to himself. Sometimes this client would also use relaxing imagery and go to what he called “his happy place,” by thinking of a place where he felt calm and in control of his emotions. He would focus on what it looked, felt, and smelled like and he found this was a good way to decrease his anger.
Implement cognitive restructuring
An angry person often responds to a trigger with exaggerated language, such as cursing or over-generalizing. It is important to identify that responding to such anger is not going to fix your problem. For example, if an angry man is having a bad day, he may think to himself “this is the worst thing ever, nothing ever goes my way, everything is ruined, I may as well not even go to work today.” Instead of using these exaggerated thoughts, it would be helpful if he could change them to be more rational. For example, he may instead think, “this is a really annoying thing that happened to me and it’s okay that I feel angry, but I still have the whole day in front of me and it’s not really the end of the world, I can go on to work and my day will be okay.” This takes a lot of practice, but changing our thoughts to be more rational can be a very helpful way to decrease anger.
Improve your communication
Trying to get your point across when your angry often means it doesn’t come out right. A client learned that, when he was arguing with his sister, he often jumped to conclusions and defended himself instead of really listening to what his sister had to say. This client learned to slow down the argument, by stopping himself from responding impulsively and instead thinking through his responses. He found that he was able to express himself more clearly when he allowed himself to think. Again, this takes a lot of practice, but once you learn to slow down the argument and communicate better, your anger may subside and you may have more productive conversations.
There are many coping skills that help manage anger. If these three work for you, that’s great, but there are a lot of other things that work for other people.
What tools do you use to manage your anger? Join the conversation in the comments below!
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4 comments
Great tips! I like that you talked about relaxing, slowing down and practicing as important things to remember. I like to remind myself that it it okay to feel angry, but that I have a responsibility to myself and others to communicate it effectively without hurting myself or others.
Great tips. Especially about slowing down. When all of your senses are heightened it can be difficult to slow down but its well worth it if you want to be able to communicate effectively.
This is a great range of suggestions that I think cover all the bases – the neocortex (the part of our brain that deals with language, reason, decision-making etc.) ceases to function effectively when we are enraged, so removing ourselves from the situation and / or using relaxation techniques to restore calm in the brain and body is a great place to start if the anger feels “out of control”.
Yes! Great tips.! Each of these suggestions reminds us to return to the present moment so we can focus on what is happening now rather than escalating the situation or responding in a way that may do more harm.