Two Tips to Manage Anger

Anger is a normal emotion like any other emotion. Human beings are hard wired to experience anger as a means to preserve ourselves. Instinctively anger inspires one to fight, to defend or to take cover as it alerts one to a perceived threat. In this view, we can see how important anger can be in terms of our physical safety and overall security. Anger outside the realm of its primary purpose, increases the likeliness of one to loose control and jeopardizes the safety and security that it is intended to protect.
What happens when a person becomes upset? For some people the heart begins to beat faster while for others there may be a quickening of speech, pacing or clenched jaws. Recognizing bodily changes helps reduce the intensity of the emotion. To become aware of how your own body reacts to anger is not always easy to do in the heat of the moment. Take a few minutes right now to evaluate your response to anger. Use a pen and pencil to jot down your responses and make notes.

Think back to a recent experience with anger. Try to recall where you were and what was occurring around you. What behaviors did you express? Where in your body did you feel the anger? For example, did you feel your chest tighten, was your breathing shallow or forced, did you lose awareness to the sights and sounds around you? Try to identify at least three physical responses.

I hope that the exercise above allowed you to pinpoint your physical response(s) to anger. By becoming consciously aware of what is happening inside of your body you are one step closer to managing your anger better and not allowing the feeling to become overpowering. The next step to working through anger issues is anxiously awaiting the moment to occur. If you are like many people you may be thinking how strange it sounds to anxiously await to get upset and there are two main reasons which support your feeling. The first reason is the perception that anger is something to avoid at all costs when in fact this could not be further from the truth. The truth is that we each experience anger to some degree and in most cases the feeling when managed properly is good for us. By not managing the feeling appropriately the person may become explosive or may even repress the feeling, which could lead to depression. The second reason also has to do with perception and is similar to the first reason and that is that anger is a negative state. If you can recall from the beginning of this article, Anger is a normal emotion like any other emotion. Anger is to be expected and utilized for either our personal well-being or for the well-being of others. How effective would it be for the substance-addicted person to get so angry with his drug use that he uses the momentum of anger to enter drug rehabilitation. Throughout history many groups of people have used the emotion of anger to bring about social changes through protests, boycotts, fasting and other positive behaviors for the betterment of society. If you have not already done so, please dispel the myth that anger is a bad thing. Here are a few tips to get you started on your own anger management program.

1. Begin to recognize anger symptoms within your own body. By identifying the symptoms you are better able to acknowledge them when presented with a difficult situation.
2. Accept the fact that you will get angry.
3. Keep an anger diary. Jot down times when you have gotten angry and how you handled it. Try and pinpoint symptoms that you could have missed. Recreate the experiences within your mind, and write down better ways your could have managed your anger. For example if you noted sweaty palms as a symptom, what could you have done at the moment the physical symptom was noted to have changed the course of the situation
4. Also in your journal, acknowledge the times that you managed your anger appropriately. Where there certain factors that encouraged you to remain in control. How can you replicate this scenario for future incidents?