5 Ways to Understand and Manage Your Anger

Anger is one of the basic emotions on our emotional spectrum

As such, it fulfills a specific function, and the manifestation of this function can be defensive as well as constructive.

How to relate to your anger in an appropriate way?

Below we will see 5 ways to connect with your anger from a healthier emotional place.

1. Do not pathologize our anger

We must understand what we are talking about when we talk about anger. As we anticipated, it is an emotion; As such, it fulfills a very specific function, even at the bodily level: when we are angry, our heart rate accelerates, muscle tension increases, as well as blood pressure. At a neurological level, the prefrontal cortex (largely responsible for cognition and complex behaviors, and attentional control) gives way to the amygdala (largely responsible for our emotional reactions). All this to prepare to attack or flee instinctively

Therefore, getting angry is a natural emotional state, we should not make this state a mental health problem in itself. Here we must differentiate between getting angry per se, and the emotional reaction that we manifest to this state.

2. Constructive facet or defensive facet

Let’s say we are ready to enjoy a beautiful sunny afternoon on a Sunday morning and a much-needed rest after an intense week of work. We sit in the garden or patio, grab a good book, and suddenly our neighbor plays music very loudly, to the point that we cannot concentrate. This will probably make us very angry and irritated.

Our anger can trigger various reactions One of them may be to start making assumptions about our neighbor: He is inconsiderate! He lacks empathy! He should go live somewhere else! Etc etc. Immediately, this thought process leads us to want him to pay for interrupting our rest, so we go and very rudely start throwing rocks at his house.

This is an example of defensive anger management, where we give way to the assumptions that the emotion generates in us about what is happening.

Another possible reaction would be to get up, go to his house (also driven by our anger) and tell him about the situation, evaluate his response, and with this information draw a more accurate conclusion. Here the possibilities are endless, perhaps we will see that they very willingly apologize and leave us their phone number to be more in touch, perhaps we will realize that they are passing through, or that we ourselves have needed a change for a long time.

The same engine, handled in very different ways, can add value or complicate things more depending on how we react to anger. Now… How do I control this reaction?

3. Identify the signals it gives us before reacting.

What am I feeling on a bodily level? We can evaluate our breathing, notice that we are more agitated, pay attention for a few seconds to our chest inflating and releasing air suddenly. We realize that we are suddenly hotter, as a result of the increase in body temperature.

We can evaluate what kind of thoughts we have at that very moment: He’s going to pay me! It always happens to me! He does it to me on purpose, etc. Realize that these same thoughts have been repeated in other angry circumstances, almost like a scene that happens over and over again, only the actors change.

Of course, we only have a few seconds before reacting therefore, with practice, the control of my reaction will become more and more effective.

Also identifying emotional response patterns in certain situations can help us introspect on deeper aspects, experiences not yet addressed, that are demanding my attention.

4. Anger, rage and aggression

An angry person is not necessarily an aggressive person.

Anger is an emotion. We can consider anger within the spectrum of emotions, although at a much more intense level That is, if the stimulus that generates anger is sustained for a certain time, we can begin to intensify our anger to the point of being almost instinctive. We can call this anger.

On the other hand, Aggression is the physical or verbal response to anger We could say that aggressiveness is the discharge of anger or anger.

This usually happens at the height of anger. Therefore, taking a few seconds to see in perspective how we feel (in my consultation with my patients we call it “balconing”, as if we were seeing a scene on the street from a balcony) this will give us a margin of time to regain control of our emotions.

5. Dialogue with my anger

As we talk, our emotions are functional, they fulfill a specific function. We can visualize our anger as a person coming to care for and protect us, or to help us escape from a situation.

How is this person? Man, woman? High, low, wise or irrational? Does he know how to communicate or, on the contrary, was he never socialized? This will give us a concrete image of a part of ourselves

Understanding this, we can ask: What are you trying to protect us from? Is it from the neighbor? Or from some similar situation that happened before and took us by surprise? Am I really that unprotected this time? Could it be that things are going differently now?

We must be grateful for their protection and care, and evaluate their need according to the situation Also ask (ask ourselves) if other accompanying emotions come along with it: frustration, sadness, anguish. Since behind anger, (not always) we can show other emotions whose expression was not validated for us.

These points will help us connect with one of our most important emotions, and socialize it to find its healthy side.