How to Control Anger: 10 effective ways to fight against your inner rage
When you can’t keep your temper in check, you could say unpleasant things, yell at your kids, threaten coworkers, send careless emails, have health problems, or even engage in physical violence. However, not all rage issues are so extreme. Instead, you could squander time thinking about upsetting events, getting frustrated in traffic, or whining about your job.
Never getting angry is not part of maintaining your composure. Learning healthy and positive methods to recognise, control, and express your anger is what is required. Everyone has the ability to control their rage. Even if you feel like you have your anger under control, there is always room for improvement.
While anger in and of itself is not a mental illness, it can occasionally be linked to mood disorders, substance use disorders, and other types of mental illness.
What exactly is anger?
Anger is defined as “an emotional state that ranges in intensity from mild irritation to great fury and rage,” according to Charles Spielberger, PhD, a psychologist who specialises in the study of anger. When you are upset, your heart rate and blood pressure rise, as do the levels of your energy chemicals, adrenaline, and noradrenaline.
The cause of anger can be both external and internal. You could be furious at a specific person (such as a co-worker or supervisor) or incident (such as a traffic jam or a cancelled flight), or your anger could be induced by fretting or brooding over personal concerns. Anger can be triggered by memories of traumatic or enraging situations.
Anger Management: 10 Tips to Tame Your Temper
The purpose of anger management is to lessen both your emotional feelings and the physiological stimulation that anger causes. You can’t get rid of or avoid the things or people that irritate you, and you can’t alter them, but you can learn to control your reactions.
The Effects of Anger
It can have detrimental effects on your health, relationship and career if your anger is chronic, irregular, or out of control.
Career: It can be beneficial to have heated debate, creative disagreement, and constructive critique. However, being angry simply serves to annoy and lose the respect of your co-workers, superiors, or clients.
Relationships: Anger can cause serious damage to the individuals you care about the most, including the destruction of friendships and business relationships. Explosive anger is especially harmful to children because it makes it difficult for them to trust you, talk openly, or feel comfortable.
Mental health: Being angry all the time drains your brain’s resources and makes it harder to concentrate or enjoy life. Additionally, it may lead to stress, hopelessness, and other mental health problems.
Physical Health: You become more prone to heart disease, diabetes, a weakened immune system, sleeplessness, and high blood pressure when you are constantly under stress and anger.
10 tips to tame your Anger
Strong emotions can have a harmful impact on both your mental and physical health, so it makes sense to learn to control your temper. Anger can cause medical symptoms such as difficulties sleeping, cardiac problems, increased substance usage, migraines, high blood pressure, and stomach upset.
Learning better communication tactics and conflict resolution techniques can help you at work and at home. Fostering healthy relationships with friends and family members can help you feel better and sleep better. Anger control research has been linked to decreased blood pressure and a longer life expectancy.
Learning good responses can also reduce your risk of poor mental health and protect you from symptoms of sadness, anxiety, and substance abuse. Find here some tips to reduce anger.
01. Know your triggers
Stressful circumstances do not justify rage, but understanding how they affect you can help you take control of your surroundings and stop tension from unnecessarily rising. Identify the tasks, times of day, people, places, or situations that give you cause for annoyance or rage by taking a look at your daily calendar.
Perhaps a fight breaks out whenever you go out for drinks with a certain group of friends. The traffic on your daily commute may also bother you. Consider tactics to either avoid them or respond to the situations in a different way so that they don’t make you angry once you’ve identified what sets off your triggers.
02. Recognize Your Warning Signs
If you’re like some people, your fury may come at you in a flash. Perhaps you can go from calm to furious in the blink of an eye. However, there are several warning indications that your anger is on the rise. Recognizing them early on might assist you in taking action to avoid your anger from boiling over.
Consider the physical manifestations of your rage. Perhaps your heart is racing or your face is flushed. Perhaps you start clenching your fists. You may also experience cognitive changes. Maybe your thoughts start racing or you start “seeing red.”
By identifying your warning signs, you will be able to take fast action and avoid doing things that can cause worse difficulties. Pay attention to how you’re feeling and you’ll get better at identifying the warning signs.
03. Humor Can Help You De-Stress
Humour and playfulness can help you diffuse uncomfortable situations, reconcile disagreements, reframe issues, and maintain perspective. Try utilising a little light-hearted humour when you notice yourself getting irritated in a scenario. It can help you make your argument without raising the other person’s guard or causing them to feel uncomfortable.
It’s crucial, though, that you laugh alongside the other person and not at them. Avoid using cruel humour or sarcasm. When in doubt, start by making fun of yourself. Everyone appreciates those who can subtly make light of their own flaws. After all, we are all flawed and fall short occasionally.
As a result, whether you mess up at work or just spill coffee all over yourself, try making a joke about it rather than becoming furious or initiating a fight. The only person you run the danger of insulting, even if the joke doesn’t work or comes across poorly, is yourself.
A potential confrontation can even become a chance for deeper connection and intimacy when humour and play are used to diffuse tension and rage.
04. Concentrate on the Facts
Angry thoughts add fuel to the fire. “I can’t stand it,” you might think. “This traffic gridlock is going to destroy everything,” will aggravate your annoyance. In such a scenario reframing your thoughts helps you.
Also, consider the facts by saying something like, “There are millions of cars on the road every day. There will be traffic congestion on occasion.” Focusing on the facts, without bringing in dire forecasts or exaggerations, will help you maintain your cool.
You might also create a mantra that you can say to distract yourself from the thoughts that are fueling your rage. Saying, “I’m OK. “Remain calm,” or “It’s not helpful, “repeatedly can assist you in minimising or reducing furious thoughts.
05. Recognize Your Underlying Emotion
It can be beneficial to pause and consider what feelings may be lying beneath your anger. Anger is frequently used as a protective mask to keep you from experiencing more painful feelings such as shame, grief, and disappointment.
When someone gives you difficult comments, for example, you may strike out in rage because you are ashamed. Convincing yourself that the other person is wrong for criticising you may help you feel better in the moment by removing your humiliation. However, addressing underlying emotions can assist you in getting to the bottom of the situation. Then you can decide what the next steps are.
For example, if someone cancels plans on you and your underlying emotion is disappointment, instead of striking out in anger, try articulating how the cancellation makes you feel. When you’re open and honest about your feelings, you’re more likely to find a solution. Anger frequently has the opposite effect of driving people away.
06. Determine potential solutions
Instead of focusing on what made you angry, work on resolving the problem at hand. Is your child’s filthy room upsetting you? Close the door. Is your boyfriend consistently late for dinner? Schedule your meals for later in the evening. Or better to eat on your own sometimes. You need to understand that some things will always be beyond your control. Be realistic about what is in your control and what you cannot change. Remind yourself that anger will not solve anything and may even make matters worse.
07. Breathe and Relax
When your temper rises, use your relaxation abilities to calm yourself down. Deep breathing exercises, imagining a tranquil environment, or repeating a soothing word or phrase, such as “Take it easy,” will help you relax. You might also listen to music, write in a diary, or do some yoga positions to help you relax.
Many various types of anger management exercises include relaxation. It’s important to select the one that works best for you. Progressive muscle relaxation and breathing exercises are two popular strategies for reducing stress.
The best aspect about these workouts is that they can be completed quickly and discreetly. So, whether you’re irritated at work or during a dinner date, you may relieve stress quickly and instantly.
But keep in mind that practising relaxation techniques takes time. You might not think of them as effective at first and wonder if they would work for you. However, with enough practice, you will be able to make them your go-to anger control tactics.
08. Changing your environment
Our immediate surroundings can sometimes be the root of our anger and rage. You may feel burdened and resentful of the “trap” you appear to have fallen into, as well as the people and things who make up that trap as a result of your troubles and obligations.
Give yourself a break. Make sure you arrange some “personal time” for times of the day that you are aware are particularly stressful. One example is the working mother who has a standing rule that, for the first 15 minutes after she gets home from work, “nobody talks to Mom unless the house is on fire.” She feels more prepared to handle her children’s needs without losing her anger after this brief moment of aloneness.
09. Talk About Your Emotions
It may be helpful to discuss a situation with someone who makes you feel more at ease or to express your emotions to them. It’s vital to keep in mind, though, because yelling might occasionally backfire.
The flames could be fanned by whining about all the apparent injustices you’ve encountered, complaining about your boss, or identifying all the reasons you don’t like someone. It’s a common misconception that you need to blow off some steam in order to feel better.
You don’t need to “get your anger out,” research indicates. Smashing objects while you’re angry, for instance, could make you angrier. Hence, it’s essential to execute this coping mechanism carefully.
Similar to how you should avoid simply ranting while speaking to a friend, make sure you’re working on finding a solution or controlling your anger. Continually using them as a sounding board is unfair. Instead, you could discover that talking about anything unrelated to the thing that makes you furious is the ideal way to employ this method.
10. Address Issues
Sometimes, very real, unavoidable challenges in our life are the root of our rage and irritation. Many times, anger is a legitimate, natural reaction to these challenges, therefore not all anger is inappropriate. Additionally, we are frustrated when we learn that this isn’t always the case since we have a cultural presumption that every issue has a solution. Therefore, in such a circumstance, it is best to adopt a mindset that focuses less on finding a solution and more on how you approach and deal with the issue at hand.
Plan ahead and monitor your progress as you go. Make a commitment to doing your best, but also to refrain from criticising yourself if you don’t get an answer immediately away. Even if the issue is not resolved right away, if you can approach it with your best intentions and efforts and make a sincere effort to meet it head-on, you will be less likely to lose patience and succumb to all-or-nothing thinking.
FAQs
Q.1- 10 tips to control your anger
- Know your triggers
- Recognize Your Warning Signs
- Humor Can Help You De-Stress.
- Concentrate on the Facts
- Recognize Your Underlying Emotion
- Determine potential solutions.
- Breathe and Relax
- Changing your environment
- Talk About Your Emotions
- Address Issues
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