Do you get angry easily? Do you wonder how to deal with anger?
According to a 2018 Gallup Poll, one in five Americans feels anger every day.
We tend to think about anger as a negative emotion but if we are able to manage it effectively it can lead us to a happier life.
Moreover, knowing what triggers our anger, will guide us toward issues that we need to figure out within ourselves or external problems that require a more effective solution.
However, if we just let all our anger come out it may end up like a dangerous outburst of verbal or physical aggression.
We all experience anger when things don’t go as expected or according to our desires.
Well, we all tend to get angry and frustrated at one point or another. As you might have discovered, small moments of frustration can swiftly mushroom into anger. With that in mind, even the most patient person can get irritated.
However, understanding the root cause of our anger will help us deal with anger outbursts in a healthy manner.
Let’s find out why we tend to feel so angry and how to deal with anger outbursts effectively.
What is Anger?
Anger is an emotion that can range from mild frustration to intense rage.
Anger is an essential part of life. When expressed appropriately, anger is both a healthy emotion and a physical reaction.
On the other hand, when expressed inappropriately, anger can interfere with our judgment and thought patterns. When this happens, we are likely to act irrationally or violently towards other people.
Why do We Feel Anger?
Reasons people get angry include:
- Losing temper
- Sexual and physical abuse
- Lack of control
- Injury
- Loss of a significant other
- Deployment
- Job dispute
- Fear
- Misplaced expectations
- Pain
- Frustration
How to Deal with Anger Appropriately
1 – Create Space Between the Trigger and Your Reaction
When you start to feel irritated, frustrated, or upset with a person or situation, your heart rate and breathing may speed up.
When you notice that you are raising your voice, stop for a moment.
Instead of reacting, create some distance between you and the frustrating situation.
Distract your mind by:
- Removing yourself from the situation
Go to a different room or place.
Take a few steps away from the situation to tell your mind that whatever happened is not really that important.
- Counting to 10
- Focusing on your breathing,
Become aware of your body and concentrate on slowly inhaling and exhaling.
Anger is often associated with panic. Therefore, deep and long breaths will help you relax and calm down. Be sure to breathe deep into your stomach.
- Making a list
You can do a mental list or on a piece of paper write all the possible actions you could take. Maybe talking to someone, changing your attitude, or any other way you could get what you want.
- Focusing on something that you like
Instead of giving your attention to the frustrating situation, lead your mind toward something positive such as spending time on the beach, in nature, or enjoying your loved ones.
2 – Journal
Writing is a powerful tool for dealing with emotions.
Putting on paper your feelings and reasons for your anger helps you to get your negative feelings out on paper and remove it from your mind.
Therefore, it is critical that you keep putting your thoughts down on paper until you feel relieved.
Here you will find more ways on how writing can make you happy.
3 – Deal with Frustration
Dealing with emotional pain is necessary.
Therefore, having a conversation with the person who hurt you, preferably in the midst of a mediator, is critical to solve the issue that triggered your anger.
Even if that person fails to listen to you, sharing your feelings and thoughts will benefit you. Once you let out the pain, it is important that you let it go completely through forgiveness.
4 – Check your Expectations
Frustration is a major cause for anger. Dealing with frustration entails re-assessing your expectations. Are your expectations realistic? In essence, to avoid getting frustrated, your expectations should always be realistic.
Additionally, if those expectations are not fulfilled, it is important that you control how you react.
5 – Practice Gratitude
Even if you feel like your body is about to explode. Look around for everything you can be grateful for.
Here are some tips on how to practice gratitude.
6 – Exercise
Exercise can help you release pent up anger from your head, thus allowing you to think clearly. Therefore, be sure to engage in intense exercises like dancing, swimming, boxing, running, or walking rigorously anytime you feel angry.
However, be sure not to over exercise as you might harm yourself physically.
Here are some tips on how exercise can make you happy.
7 – Become Self-aware
The secret to controlling your anger is self-awareness.
Self-awareness entails developing a daily habit of becoming conscious of your emotions.
With that in mind, you need to look within yourself and take responsibility for your emotions.
Do not allow other people to control how you react to anger.
8 – Practice Meditation
Meditation is an effective way of working on your angry emotions. Guided meditation for anger will teach you to be mindful of your emotions, and mindful of how you react to them.
Learn how meditation can help you feel happy.
9 – Listen to Music
Music can boost your mood and make you feel happier.
So, whenever you feel steamed up, listening to calming and uplifting songs will help you deal with anger appropriately.
Find out how listening to music can make you happy.
10 – Share your Thoughts and Feelings
Instead of bottling up your emotions share them with someone who will understand your feelings. You may also share your thoughts with yourself in the mirror, with a pet, or imaginary person.
It is important to release the tension you are feeling inside through words and trying to make sense out of the frustrating situation.
What do you do when you feel angry or frustrated? Are there situations that regularly frustrate you?
Most people don’t know how to deal with anger when technology doesn’t work.
What do you do when the internet connection is slow or your phone or computer don’t work properly? Let me know in the comments below.
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These are great tips to manage your anger. Going inside my room praying, meditating and listening to a good musics really helps me a lot to manage my anger.
These are some really useful tips for managing anger. Exercise and meditation always work well for me.
I definetly have a temper and can get angry easily. I usually take water in my mouth when I feel like I want to say offensive things.
I don’t usually get angry but I can see where these tips could be very helpful.
Journaling has helped me with so much. It definitely clears up my mind.
These are great tips. Keeping a journal definitely helped me!
Nice post about anger management. It’s really hard to deal with it sometimes but b/vlogs about it really helps. Thanks for making such a great blog.
I think i have a lot of patience and dont easily get angry. But this is definitely useful and great help.
Very helpful tips that can help not just managing anger, but also in other situations of life.
I so understand the deal with the expectations. I often treat my teenagers as someone who easily understand what I would want to say. But then age gap and years of experience are a problem so I really need to consider those.
Writing definitely helps to manage anger. I’ve proven it several times.
This is a responsible post on how to deal with anger. Finding the root and getting peace with triggers would help.
Thanks for sharing this. Pausing to take stock and think about our motivation for doing things is so important. This was a great read, thanks
Sharing the thoughts and emotions is really a wonderful way to handle anger issues.
Thanks for the informative post.
Thank you for sharing your insights into anger management. This post would be helpful to a lot of people dealing with anger issues.
Keeping a journal is definitely great! It helps to get our negative feelings out on paper and remove it from our mind.
These tips are extremely helpful. I think everyone experiences anger, it is how we react, can be a defining moment.
This is such an important blog post! I know a lot of people really struggle with appropriately handling their anger. I always try to focus on my breathing and then express my feelings in a calm way.
I definitely need to work on a few of these. I find some days I’m getting very frustrated about everything and then I take it out on my kids and husband which isn’t fair.
Amazing tips, I think my most reason of getting angry is frustration but I can manage to cool down. Though, will consider these tips because some of it that I don’t do but need to do it. Thank you for sharing it.
These are all really great tips! I know that I get frustrated very easily sometimes, especially when it comes to my toddler. I’ll definitely be practicing some of these tips. Thanks for sharing!
What a great way to deal with emotion and reflect on your actions. Fab tips for sure xx
These are great tips!! Anger management is quite important and necessary. Anger is quite bad for health and people around us. listening to music really helps me.
I think being Italian my anger goes from 1-10 in about a second. Often I need to just not react immediately and take some deep breaths and walk away. I agree that music and exercise are big as well. I start each day with both and it allows me to center myself and clear my head. Great tips on Anger management.
Practice gratitude is a must and I just saw the show the Office when Pam and Jim where having problems after he wanted to movie. So they practiced given, although this seem funny it really works!
I must admit I had never thought about anger as a healthy emotion before – more like that it was always a negative thing. But I do appreciate the way you have explained it here as it does make perfect sense, as it is a natural part of life – and something we need to learn to manage well. Love the way you have stepped readers through this in a logical and easy to understand way.
I often bottle up my emotions, especially anger, which I know is not a healthy thing to do. Thanks for these tips to manage anger better.
These are great tips. The Journal tip works for me very well. It is just the way I express myself.
It was such a great reading. Yesterday and day before I was conducting a program on EI including anger management. And today I get to hear your thoughts. Made me happy.
So many times I bottle up my emotions and then I hit a breaking point. Stay outta my way when that happens!
I usually don’t get angry, but when I do it can get a little scary. These are great ways to keep anger in check
I didn’t know that exercising can help you get rid of the anger inside of yourself. My brother has bee struggling with anger issues ever since he lost his job last month, and I would like to find a way to help him avoid hurting himself when he gets upset. Maybe he should consider behavioral therapy so that he can find ways to manage his anger.
I find myself getting the most angry when I feel utterly helpless. When I can’t see a resolution to my problem or I’ve been dealt a particularly harsh verbal blow from my partner, I get very angry. Yesterday, my partner called me a “dip-shit” (I am 25 and he is 31), told me that the job I had was a joke… and I got so angry I dumped out all his clothes from the hamper to the floor because I really needed to do something physical. So hurt and upset, so frustrated, my anger just explodes out of me. I worry about my anger because it seems to be getting worse, especially when I drink alcohol. I recognize that I feel helpless and hurt, sad and angry at the same time, but I just get so fevered with rage that I let it manifest physically. It really disappoints me that I act like this.
Reena,
It is very frustrating not being able to immediately find a solution to a problem or when we are criticized by others. The first step is to create space between the frustrating event and your reaction. You may remove yourself from the situation, count to 10, or focus on your breathing. Realizing that there is a problem is the first step to find a solution.