What You Can Do to Manage Your Anger. Anger has gotten a bad reputation, but like any emotion can be quite useful and adaptive at times. Just imagine the life of someone who cannot feel angry. Such a person will likely feel compelled to make their life all about other people’s needs. He or she will have a hard time saying “no” to other people because to do so requires the ability to feel inside of oneself where one’s boundaries are and to assess what is fair and just, and therefore what one will do and not do. Anger is that initial alert that things are out of balance or that a boundary has been crossed. It calls upon us to be assertive: To say what we want or need even when it goes against what somebody else might want or need. A person who is out of touch with themselves and therefore does not experience this “alarm” could therefore easily become stuck in a series of one-sided relationships. They might become a perpetual caretaker but have nobody there to take care of them. Or they may attract a series of people who do not know how to set limits on their desires or might purposely take advantage of the self-sacrificing nature of the unassertive person. Isn’t Anger Destructive?! What is the best way to manage your anger?! The problem is that people confuse the feeling of anger with the expression of anger, and may have images in their mind of anger as an explosive and destructive emotion that is quite dangerous and out of control. They may be thinking of the anger that led to domestic violence at home, or the anger that got them fired from a job because they told their boss off. If they were the recipient of this kind of anger, they may be reminded of fear, or if they were the ones who lost control of their temper, they may be reminded of the sense of shame or remorse they felt after “letting someone have it”. Ironically, these kinds of violent or exaggerated expressions of anger, are often the result of not paying sufficient attention to anger in the first place. Don’t Ignore Your Anger! What are the three main ways to manage or control anger? Anger is one word, but covers a whole spectrum of angry emotions on a continuum from annoyance and irritability on the one end to murderous rage on the other. Oftentimes, a person will have signs of irritability or annoyance long before they simply become irate. But if they are ashamed of past outbursts or afraid of the experience of anger in themselves or others, they will try their best to ignore these early signs. This means that they will not have the opportunity to assess what their anger is really about, and will not have the opportunity to address whatever feels boundary-violating with an appropriately assertive response. The anger therefore has nowhere to go and may become bottled up until it erupts in a moment of out-of-control behavior. Why Am I Angry?! What are the 5 steps to managing anger? At other times, a person may experience intense anger very quickly and may bypass the feeling of frustration, annoyance, and irritation altogether. In these cases, it often pays to step back to examine what the anger is really about… If a person is curious about why they feel so angry all of a sudden, they will often discover that their anger is a response to a more vulnerable emotion, and this more vulnerable emotion was triggered, causing anger to arise as a natural defense. Ways to overcome anger|How to control your anger|Anger management therapy techniques|How to release anger|What to do when you’re angry at someone| Then we can realize, for example, that the anger we feel at our friend for calling out a flaw in us, is really about embarrassment or shame, of finding it humiliating to agree, of not being able to maintain a positive view of self while valuable, likable, and acceptable to our friend or others at large. It may protect us from feeling sad or down, or shameful or worthless. If we can decipher the full message of our experience of anger, then we are free to respond in a more accurate and balanced manner to the perceived threat or violation of our boundaries. We will not have to erupt in rage, but can better express what is going on within us. Sometimes this may mean deciding against expressing our anger because we know the anger is more about us than the perceived threat. At other times this may mean expressing our anger at what we have assessed to be a legitimate concern. At yet other times, it may mean expressing the actual feelings underneath the anger and letting people in on the vulnerabilities or sore spots that the anger is simply there to protect us from.
