This post is all about ways to help with anger.
We need to feel our anger the same way we need to feel all of our emotions. But, that doesn’t save us from the damage that anger can sometimes do. Sometimes, we need to keep our anger in check because feeling it doesn’t mean wounding everyone around us.
Keeping our anger in check helps us as much as it helps the people around us. By taking care of ourselves and tending to the sources of our anger, we can make sure our anger is serving a purpose.
This post is all about strategies to help with anger.
STRATEGIES TO HELP WITH ANGER:
1. Exit the situation
While distracting yourself will never fix the underlying problem, leaving the situation is your best and easiest option to stop yourself from acting out in ways you’ll regret.
You’re more than welcome to get angry and need to feel that anger because suppressing it will damage you far more than the pain of the anger will. However, the goal is to avoid letting your anger make you do things you’ll regret.
So, get out of the situation if possible and try out some of these other strategies to de-escalate your mind and body.
2. Roll out your neck and shoulders
When you’re angry, start with a physical release of anger. Get your body involved in your mental desire to get help with anger to keep it from controlling—or hurting—the situation.
You’re activated, which means your heart is beating quickly, your breath is shallow, and you want to scream. The last thing you want to do is slow down and crack your back or roll out your neck.
And that’s why this is exactly what you need to do. Go through the mental checklist: relax your facial muscles, unclench your jaw, drop your shoulders, and circle your head on top of your shoulders.
3. Find your happy place
Your happy place is sometimes useless in the face of what you’re working with in the moment. But, it’s still a good idea to know “where” your happy place is.
This will be one you’ll have to prepare for, and yet it’s still quite worth it. When you’re inactivated, choose a relaxing activity in which you can play soothing music. You can take a bath or sit on the bed or couch.
Then, while you’re playing the soothing music (tons of great options you can sift through online), notice where your mind takes you. What do see? Where are you? This is your happy place and this will be the place you transport yourself to when you’re activated.
4. Exercise the energy out
Anger gets you going; it gets you activated and pumps neurotransmitters called catecholamines into your brain to hype you up. That energy needs to go somewhere, especially if you don’t want it getting you into trouble.
So, go for a sprint or strength-train or do your normal exercise routine to the extent you can. If you’re in a time crunch, you already exercised, or it’s late at night, choose an exercise that will exhaust your influx of energy. That way you can harness your extra energy.
5. Journal your feelings out
Journaling is often central to mental health because your head is tired of keeping all of your thoughts. So, putting them down on paper can transform them unexpectedly.
You will likely want to do this when you’re no longer “buzzing” from your body reacting to anger. When that happens—using one of the other strategies, you can start by taking out your Notes app, a journal, or some other concrete way to put words down.
Then, let it flow. Whatever that looks like, and keep yourself from judging it. You deserve to feel better and get help with anger while also feeling it, so process it on the page to make that happen.
6. Acknowledge there’s something happening underneath
When we get angry, we’re upset because we got unwanted actions from someone. These actions aren’t always mean—while, of course, sometimes they’re very mean, but we need to feel however we feel and process that feeling.
Anger is telling us that we’re unhappy with how we were treated, unfounded or not. Sometimes, the key to anger is that it’s a silly cause. Maybe we’re angry because our plans didn’t go the way we want or maybe somebody has actually caused us harm.
No matter the cause of our anger, we need to validate that feeling (we’re allowed to get angry) and figure out what the cause is. We can do this by talking it out with a safe person or journaling.
7. Practice some meditation
If you’re never tried it, set aside one minute (just one) and find a quiet place where you can be alone. You can try guided meditation if you’d prefer a voice to help you stay in your meditative state.
But, you can also sit by yourself, in a place where you will not be disturbed for at least five minutes. Then, close your eyes and focus on your breathing until you can guide your thoughts out of your mind until your mind is quiet.
Always approach meditation with grace because it’s like skill: you have to practice. It’ll be difficult to dive in, especially if you’ve never practiced it before, and keep your mind quiet without getting bored or straying.
So, take a minute everyday and slowly build up until you can rely on this as a tool to sooth an angry mind.
8. Put your energy into solutions (once you clear your head)
If the thought of figuring out a solution to what’s making you angry, go ahead and skip this because you want to approach problem-solving with good intentions and clear mind.
On the other hand, if you’re in the right space for this, problem-solving is the best place to start when you want to get as much help with anger and future conflict as possible. To be clear, conflict is necessary. And that’s a full sentence because conflict acts as thermometer for relationships.
However, find solutions to small problems to keep those problems causing bigger, more damaging and hurtful arguments.
9. Turn off the catastrophic thinking
You’ve had a catastrophic thought if you’ve ever said something like: “Why are they always like this?” or “I never can figure this out.” Both of these statements use superlative words that are pretty much never accurate (see what I did there?).
These thoughts focus on the work-case scenario and typically use all-or-nothing thinking. So, when you’re angry, a lot of times, you’ll revert to this type of thinking because a hyped-up brain is going to struggle with nuance. This is fine! You can’t force clear thinking on an unclear brain.
If you’re struggling with getting those superlatives out of your head, go exercise or meditate or shake out your body and come back to re-think your approach.
Remember: catastrophizing is your brain torturing you because it’s inaccurate and feeds into your uncomfortable feeling.
10. State the facts of the situation for yourself
Once we’ve gotten comfortable with the idea that catastrophizing is inaccurate, we can now introduce the objective facts to ourselves. Yes, we experienced the conflict and source of anger, so we technically know the facts.
However, research tells us that saying the facts of the situation out loud helps us process differently and we remember better. So, do yourself a favor and talk through these out loud. Externalize them by journaling or speaking them to start from a strong foundation.
11. Identify one person to be your safe space
Think of one person in your life who makes you feel completely accepted and loved. The person who you choose to be your safe space can be anyone in your life who makes you feel comfortable.
If you’ve chosen well, this person will probably never know that you’ve chosen them because your relationship is inherently safe and loving. This choice is for your benefit even if you never tell anyone because you’ll know who you can rely on, and who you’ve probably always relied on.
Unfortunately, this will likely also be a painful activity because you’ll realize the people you love who aren’t safe spaces. Process these feelings while also remembering you have someone.
12. Make note of your triggers
Recognizing and noting your triggers will be an activity you complete overtime. It’s almost like an epiphany the moment you feel the symptoms of getting triggered and connect that with the cause.
It’ll still suck to get triggered—identifying the cause won’t necessarily help you measure your reaction because there’s pain and memory behind your reaction. You can definitely work through your triggers overtime and collect tools to help you in the moment.
In this case, however, we’re focusing on getting used to thinking about triggers, your triggers. So, when you get angry or notice physical discomfort, build the happen of working backwards to identify your trigger in the situation.
13. Use “I” statements to take quit pointing fingers
Everyone sees the world differently and, as frustrating as it is, there’s pretty much no way to really know how someone else sees the world—no matter how much they say and we listen.
So, when it comes to arguments and we think we’re right, we have to take a second to realize the other person will never see the world the way we do. We might have the same political beliefs, values, and life experiences, but we both experience everything differently.
Therefore, “I” statements remind of us of that. When we stop saying “you make me feel…” or “you did this,” we can stop blaming people and starting sharing our experiences. Sometimes, all we need to do is share our experience to de-escalate a situation.
14. Pick up on your warning signs
When we’re angry, we feel it. Our blood is pumping harder, our breathing is faster, and we’re wired. We don’t feel like calming down and we definitely don’t want to be told to calm down.
These are warning signs. The moment we feel our body activating—which happens way before we even notice it because our brains are incredible—we want to immediately find ways to get in control of our behaviors.
We don’t want to say something our body is only saying because neurotransmitters are flooding our brains. That’s why we can use our symptoms of activation as a clue to get us out of a negative situation and return when we can have a productive conversation.
15. Recognize when you need help handling your anger
If you’re reading this, you’re trying. You’re doing incredible work and you need to take a second to acknowledge that you should be proud of yourself.
Now that you’ve given yourself the credit you deserve, you need to be honest with yourself and think about the point at which you’ll get help. Most of us aren’t mental health professionals, so we’re doing our best to keep above water.
When you’re struggling to keep swimming, it’s okay to reach out. Resources aren’t available to everyone—hence the name of this blog. But, you’re never alone in this struggle, so reach out to the people around you, the professionals, local resources and you might surprised what support you find.
