Anger Attacks: Why They Arise And How We Can Manage Them
Human beings are very emotional animals with our moments of positive and negative emotions, necessary to adapt to the world around us.
Sadness, happiness, anger, disgust and other emotions and feelings are necessary to be able to adapt to the demands of our social environment and cope with everyday life.
Anger is an emotion as necessary as any other, but sometimes when it occurs uncontrollably and too frequently is when we should consider the need to seek help and think about the consequences in our closest environment.
Here we are going to address what anger attacks are what are its common causes and we will explain some useful techniques to control them.
These are episodes of anger in which the person reacts suddenly and violently to something that has bothered them, such as an injustice, a personal offense or a situation that makes you uncomfortable. The difference that occurs with normal and adaptive anger is the fact that the person can lose control of themselves, throwing objects, screaming and hitting both furniture and people.
Given the severity and violence displayed by the possessed person in the attack, this behavior is clearly socially undesirable behavior. Besides, the environment itself can provide feedback since people who are nearby can contribute to more tension and may even be infected with an attack of anger.
Behind domestic incidents, domestic fights and other tense situations, it is common to find that the fuse was lit with an attack of anger on the part of one of the people involved, which incited the rest to behave in an equally violent manner.
In addition to family life and relationships with friends, people who suffer from frequent anger attacks They can have their work life ruined when they suffer one of these episodes in the workplace. Problems can also occur with the authorities, when fighting with a police officer or trying to attack someone on the street.
A common characteristic of people who suffer from anger attacks is that, after experiencing one of these episodes, they deeply regret what they have done, but the damage has already been caused.
Causes
The causes that can produce an attack of anger are very varied. Some situations that can produce these episodes are when someone’s patience has been exhausted due to serious negligence or a personal offense that cannot be let go.
It can also occur when coexistence with loved ones such as parents, siblings and the partner is not occurring adequately, household chores are not being fulfilled, there is overprotection and abusive control over the lives of family members, among other aspects that can occur. generate tension and start an incident at home.
Of special mention are some disorders in which anger attacks can occur: bipolar disorder, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, alcoholism …in addition to diseases that apparently may seem unrelated to emotional instability, such as diabetes mellitus, cirrhosis, hepatitis, epilepsy, abuse of benzodiazepines, hormones, steroids, anabolics and medications to reduce cholesterol.
It is worth focusing on substance abuse, since it is common in all of them to cause episodes of excessive anger, since they directly affect brain chemistry.
Techniques to control our anger
Below we detail some of the useful techniques to keep anger attacks at bay and avoid their detrimental effects on our lives, personal relationships and health.
1. Learn to express yourself emotionally
A key to preventing anger from taking over us is to try to give a name to what is happening to us. It may be that we have experienced a situation that is unpleasant to us, but we haven’t said how it has made us feel.
It is very important to talk to the person who is involved in the bad thing that has happened to us, whether they are the cause of the evil or a person who has been able to experience the problematic situation with us.
Expressing ourselves helps us understand the problem more deeply, since it forces us to reflect on it. In addition, it encourages the person listening to us to show a little empathy towards us and be more understanding of our feelings.
Thus, potential anger attack turns into self-reflection in understanding what happens to us, in empathy and, eventually, in better self-knowledge that will give us joy and satisfaction.
2. Change emotional language
On many occasions, at the beginning of what will later become an attack of anger, the angry person says things like “you always say bad things to me”, “you treat me like I’m trash”, “you never listen to me”…
Instead of saying it in these words, and using a hostile tone, let’s try to translate it into a more positive language.
Lowering the tone, and trying to avoid increasing the tension, we can express the same ideas in the following way: “I think the way you treat me makes me feel in a way that I do not want”, “I have become angry because I feel that I have never You listen to me, or at least not in the way I would like”…
These sentences say, in essence, the same as the first ones, only the tone in them changes in a way that makes them softer in addition to detailing how we feel without resorting to bad words or generating tension.
3. Be empathetic
This maxim, which may seem obvious, is, in practice, very little used. Being empathetic means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and try to understand why he told us something that bothered us.
It may be that the person is going through a bad time, and they found it necessary to say something somewhat unpleasant to release some of their emotional discomfort. We must try to make the effort to understand what is happening.
If you can, ask the other person how they feel, if they need help, and if they prefer that you leave aside the topic you are arguing about to address their problem. So, In addition to de-escalating the situation, you will encourage positive feelings to emerge.
4. It is not a battle
Whether it’s your partner, your friend, your boss or anyone else, the fact that they feel and think differently than you and perceive the situation differently does not mean that they are attacking you.
Human beings are very varied and we almost never agree on the same things. There are as many opinions as there are people in the world, and that is why we must make an effort to prevent a misunderstanding from turning into a real pitched war.
Sharing your reflections and thoughts can become something really positive, since it helps us have a richer vision of the world around us.
5. Enhance active listening
How many times has it happened to us that we have spoken to someone and what went in one ear came out the other? When it happens to us it is very frustrating, since we feel belittled and that we are not taken seriously.
It is very important that, if someone is telling us about their problems, we listen to them actively, that is, trying to understand and remember what they are telling us, ask them about how they feel and, if possible, explain something of our feelings. lives that is related to what you are sharing with us.
If we listen to her, she will also listen when we share our feelings. Many conflicts are the result of people not knowing how to speak or listen to each other, leading to terrible misunderstandings.
6. Be aware of the consequences
Stop in your tracks before you say something unpleasant. Breathe. Think about what all this could degenerate into. You have already experienced this before, what happened? how did it end? Do you feel satisfied with the situation at that moment?
It is very important to be aware of how the escalation of tension will develop. If you have lived it before and, therefore, have experience of previous attacks of anger, it is very important to reflect on how all this ended.
It may seem obvious, but remembering what happened in the previous anger attack can be a useful technique for stopping the current impending attack in its tracks. This way we avoid going further.
