How To Control Anger: 8 Strategies
Anger is a helpful emotion because it alerts us to injustices. It alerts us to a wrongdoing and creates a drive in us to correct that. But anger is also one of the most dangerous emotions. When it goes out of control by becoming excessive or revealing itself at the smallest injustices, it is one of the most negative emotions in the human experience. In excess, it can also become physically unhealthy, manifesting its side effects in the form of health ailments like high blood pressure, heart disease, and headaches, among other things.
Tamed anger, at the right times, in certain/limited situations, is okay. But it is of the utmost importance for us to know how to control anger and limit its effects on us. So how do we do that?
Ways to control anger
Here are some strategies to help combat anger and make sure it does not consume you and become unhealthy.
1. Count to 5 or 10
When angry, it is easy to want to react impulsively and without regard for ourselves or those around us. Emotionally charged situations, especially ones that elicit anger, can have our mind racing and our desire to act getting out of control. Our best bet to deal with these situations is to make sure we have the ability to reassess the situation we are in and think through our actions.
We can do this by taking a step back, removing ourselves from the situation (if possible) and counting to 5 or 10. My rule of thumb is usually if the situation angers you a lot, count to 10. If you are only mildly angered by it, count to 5. This puts a timeframe between being agitated and reacting which decreases the chance that our anger will be the main or only decider of how we react. It gives logic a chance to re-establish itself.
2. Close your eyes
When possible (i.e. don’t do this while doing something important that requires attentiveness), close your eyes. This can help us feel disconnected from the stressors around us but not so much so that it becomes maladaptive. Too much disconnection from the world around us can lead to disassociation –which is a problem in itself. The goal of closing our eyes is to use a healthy disconnection technique that helps us chill and get back to our lives in a timely manner.
No, please don’t close your eyes for 15 minutes in the middle of an important meeting or while driving. But you can use this tactic when in a safe setting that is conducive for this. After you’ve closed your eyes, you should start trying to calm yourself down. Repeat phrases that counter your anger. Try statements like “I will calm down,” “I don’t need to be this angry,” “Anger isn’t making this situation better.” Reassuring thoughts can help us move towards calmness even in chaos.
3. Use your imagination
If your eyes are closed, or even if they aren’t, you can put your imagination to use to help yourself out of uncontrolled anger. Try to imagine a place or state that is more favorable to you. Think of yourself on an isolated beach, in the middle of a peaceful forest, or anywhere that you would find happiness. This is a chance for you to escape reality in a healthy way.
Another way you can use imagination is by envisioning not just your ideal place, but your ideal state. What that entails is imagining yourself in a state of calmness, happiness, and indifference. See yourself reacting in a way that is ideal to you and try to match your reality to that as best you can. This should not only calm you down, it also allows you to set a goal for anger management that you can strive towards.
4. Distract yourself in healthy ways
Scrolling away your problems on social media is not a healthy coping mechanism. Using alcohol, drugs, or other short term forms of distraction that could be harmful long term are also not healthy coping mechanisms. Ultimately, you should not want to distract yourself from anger by flooding it with other distractions. We should reconcile with anger while also finding ways to refocus on other things. Go to the park and take a pleasant walk, clean the house with some calming music, or maybe put on a comedy movie to get you laughing. Whatever you do, make sure it is something that gets you enjoying life. Bonus points if you can do it with people or a person so that you can also get in some social time.
5. Ask questions
Emotions (anger included) usually mean your subconscious is trying to tell you something. Anger alerts us to injustices in the world around us. That said, we should be asking questions when we get angry. Getting to the root of anger is useful for countering it.
Ask yourself why you are angry. What is it about the situation you find yourself in that makes you angry? Can you change this in a healthy way that will not harm anyone or yourself? Remember, a lot of times we cannot fully act on a solution to our anger because our morals, the society around us, and the laws that govern us may forbid or limit what we can do. If you cannot change the situation, ask yourself how you can change your reaction to help you get over it.
6. Take action (within limits)
When we ask ourselves questions, we may see that we have really narrowed down a source for our anger that we can take action to resolve. That’s great if you can resolve the problem but we need to make sure that the solution is not going to create a big mess.
We shouldn’t act hastily and foolishly. When you can resolve your anger through action, make sure your action takes your environment into consideration. Acting overly aggressively, for example, may do more bad than good. We need forward thinking skills here because making a mistake can mean you are the ultimate loser in the ordeal. You give yourself more reason to be angry if you ruin your life over something not worth ruining your life over.
If you are faced with a situation where there are limits on the way you can react, you should focus on being able to cope. Sometimes taking action means doing so within. Challenge your thought patterns and fallacies. Learn to find calmness within and you may see that a lot of times taking action isn’t even necessary because few things bother you enough.
7. Look to the future
A good rule of thumb for controlling anger is asking yourself how important something truly is for the future. Do you see this having any sort of major impact on your life in the future? Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Or, a very common one is the rule of 5. Will it matter in 5 minutes? 5 days? 5 months? Or 5 years? If the answer to any of these is ‘no,’ then that should be your instant proof that you should not care.
8. Let it out
Don’t forget emotions often try to tell us something. I know there are limits on how we can appropriately relieve ourselves of anger. We shouldn’t be lashing out at any and everybody who wrongs us. Sometimes we are obligated to let things people do or the things that happen go. Now that I cleared that up, we also don’t want to give the impression that bottling up your anger is the go-to alternative.
There is a way you can release your anger in healthy ways without wronging others, yourself, or your relationships. You can try screaming in a pillow, using a stress ball, writing it out, etc. Basically anything that lets you release your anger in a controlled way –alone. Try to be somewhat tamed when you do this so you don’t over exert yourself. But this is your chance to unleash all that anger so let out as much as you feel physically comfortable releasing.
Conclusion
Anger is such a deep and extreme part of the human emotional experience. It is a good thing when it presents itself in moderation. However, when it exists in excess or goes out of control it loses its value. Not only that, but it can become self-destructive. It is rare to be immune to anger but we can take action and implement life strategies to combat it and reconcile with our feelings. Ultimately, we can try to make anger our friend rather than our burden.
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