Anger Management: Three Rules for Managing Your Anger

Anger is a useful healthy emotions because it alerts us to the fact that something is bothering us. It is what we do with our anger that makes the difference between handling anger well or not.

Anger can be such an overwhelming emotion that people often feel that they are losing control. It is very helpful to remember the 3 rules when you are in a situation when your anger has been provoked and you want to manage your anger successfully.

Rule #1. Your alone have control over your feelings.

When you feel a strong anger response inside remember that it has to do with something that was triggered inside you. It looks like the other person "made you feel that way" but in reality he/she has no control over your feelings. Anger is a useful emotion. It is how we deal with our anger where our choices come in.

Rule #2. Calm yourself enough so you can think

This will take some practice since our initial response when we are angry is to want to defend ourselves and attack back. You have to find a way to calm yourself down enough in order to think. One effective tool is to start quietly counting to yourself since that puts you into your cognitive mind-set. Another is to walk away until you can compose yourself. Still another is to breathe deeply into your diaphragm because strong emotions lead to hyper ventilation.The objective becomes to take care of yourself in order to be able to think again. When we are all emotion we can not think and we react from our emotions.

Rule #3. Speak in "I" messages

Once you can think then you can start figuring out how you want to handle the situation which made you angry. Speak for yourself and what is going on with you. As soon as you start using "you" the other person will be defensive and there is a high likelihood the conflict may escalate. Once you focus on speaking in I messages you will find that you see the other person more objectively. This then will make it easier for you listen and to comment on what you hear.

It takes practice to get successful at managing anger. The reward is that by owning your anger you can find solutions to what is bothering you. For instance if you are in a relationship where what you say is devalued it is healthy to feel anger. It is not healthy to keep defending yourself. When you are no longer just reacting you will see your partner objectively and realize that the put downs are your partner's way of gaining power. You are then in a better position to decide how you want to respond.