Anger Management Techniques

Maintaining our health and wellbeing requires attending to our emotional needs too. One emotion which is often cited as the culprit in many communication problems and relationship breakdowns both at home and within the workplace is anger.

Why is anger a problem ?
Anger is a complex, confusing and powerful emotion. It is normal to feel angry when faced with a wide variety of life situations. Yet when anger leads to aggressive behaviour, mood swings or conflict within relationships it can be a problem for us and those around us.

What is anger management ?
Anger management involves learning to understand our reactions to situations that make us angry and learning to change our behaviour. Anger management is not about suppressing anger, it is learning to become not to angry so often and when we do become angry, keeping it at low levels of intensity and not letting it last too long.

The causes of problematic anger ?

External Events or Situations

Frustrations like when our expectations are not met. Annoyances and irritations like when others get on our nerves. Injustice or unfairness towards us or others like discrimination. Abuse, either physical or verbal like name calling, or indirect abuse like sarcasm and put downs.

Stress.

People who feel wound up often present at angry not anxious. The physical symptoms of stress and anxiety are also present when we are angry.

Behaviour Patterns

Our previously learned patterns of behaviour will dictate how we deal with anger. Aggression, passivity, antagonism, withdrawal or avoidance are common examples of problematic behaviour patterns.

Thoughts and Perceptions of events and situations

Our style of thinking when we are confronted with a situation that makes us angry has been learned over time. Examples of problematic thought patterns are focusing too much on our anger and giving anger too much of our time.

anger

Events, people or things don’t make us angry it is our thoughts and reactions that create our anger. The idea that we are responsible for our own anger is to our advantage because it gives us the chance to regain control of our anger.
Most of the time anger is not helpful. Anger can immobilise us and serve no productive purpose. Ask yourself, does anger make you or others miserable? If so, is there anything that you can do to correct the difficulty ?
The interpretations we make that create anger are usually based on distorted thoughts, assumptions or misinterpretations. By correcting these misinterpretations you can reduce your anger.
If your anger is caused by the belief or assumption that someone is acting unfairly towards you or some event is unjust. Your anger will increase if you feel the injustice is intentional. Ask yourself why have I assumed that this act or event is intentionally unjust? What purpose does it serve?
If you learn to recognise the pattern of your angry reactions you can reduce your anger. Maybe you will realise other’s actions are not unfair from their point of view! If you learn to challenge the notion that your concepts of justice and fairness are not shared by everyone, much of your frustration and resentment may vanish. Remember many of our reactions are habit and can be changed.
Retaliation or getting back at someone will often cause further deterioration in a relationship, even if in the short-term it seems to fulfil you. No-one likes to be the object of someone else’s angry outbursts. Taking time out of a situation often allows our anger to de-escalate which can in turn create a more constructive environment for better communication.
A great deal of anger involves our defence against loss of self-esteem, especially if others criticise, disagree with, or fail to act or behave as you expect them to. Blaming someone else for your feelings of worthlessness, will not improve your self-esteem. Tackle the problem, when required confront the situation constructively.
Unmet and unrealistic expectations produce frustration. So learning to readjust your expectations of yourself and others can reduce unhelpful angry feelings. For example, ‘I or others, should not make mistakes’, is an unhelpful expectation, ‘mistakes happen’ is more realistic.
You have the right to be angry, but the key issue is:- Is it to my advantage to feel angry? Will I or others benefit from this anger? Sometimes we have to let go of anger. If we can’t deal with the problem or confront the issue, try talking it through expressing how you feel, or, try to spend the excess energy by going for a walk or a run. Releasing the tension can help deal with anger.
If we are in the habit of dwelling on angry thoughts this can prolong our anger. Learning to appraise our anger and discriminate between the important and the unimportant issues in our life which create anger can be a useful tool when dealing with anger