How to manage anger effectively
Managing anger is crucial for maintaining healthy relationships and personal wellbeing.
Is anger always bad?
No. Anger can be adaptive.
Adaptive Anger: acts as a signal that something is wrong and fuels you to take effective action.
Maladaptive Anger: is intense, prolonged, or frequent and often involves aggressive behavior or a reaction that is disproportionate to the situation.
Disclaimer.
Before discussing five strategies to managing anger, it is important to know that a number of researchers have advised against seeking catharsis through rage venting. That is to say, yelling in isolation or punching a pillow is a counterproductive method to manage anger. Even if your rage venting is not destructive, you are strengthening a connection between anger and aggressiveness.
Here are five strategies to manage anger:
Understand your motivation: Cultivating change is no easy feat. You must discover your why for learning how to control anger. What’s driving you to do this? How important is it to you (or your loved ones) to manage anger?
Understand what anger looks like in the context of your life: How is anger showing up? Are there certain parts of your life that anger has caused damage to? What relationships in your life are affected by anger? What are the anger episodes made up of (what happens when you feel angry)? How does anger affect your decision making? These are some of the questions to ask yourself to better understand and then manage anger.
Contextualize the experience that is driving anger: Look at the bigger picture of what’s happening; the importance of what’s provoked anger. Is your response appropriate to the gravity of the situation? How meaningful is the situation that’s caused you to feel angry?
Manage lifestyle: Integrate healthier eating and sleeping habits. Restructure how busy you are by setting boundaries for yourself (saying “no”). These are all examples of self-care practices that can reduce stress which reduces the likelihood of an anger episode.
Identify and restructure thoughts: What thoughts run through your mind in a moment of anger? How do these thoughts interact with the intensity of anger? Thoughts can drive up the intensity of anger but can also act as an antidote to an anger episode.
Remember, managing anger is a skill that takes time and practice. Be patient with yourself as you work towards healthier ways of expressing and processing your emotions.
Recommended:
“How to keep anger in from getting the best of you”
Howard Kassinove, PhD & Raymond Tafrat, PhD
