How To Control Your Anger

Do you know how to control your anger? Anger is an innate universal emotion. Anyone can experience it. It is one of the six basic emotions experienced by all people according to psychologist Paul Ekman: surprise, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and anger.

These six emotions are associated with people’s ability to adapt to their environment. They are therefore part of our current emotional repertoire, as they have been evolutionarily beneficial to us. While some of these emotions are indeed more pleasurable than others, they all have a function and a reason for being.

What exactly is anger?

Anger is an emotion that a person experiences in response to a real or fictional threat. It causes, among other things, irritation, feelings of indignation and frustration. It occurs when someone feels vulnerable.

The evolutionary role of this emotion is to motivate you to fight against what could harm you. To do this, the body responds at a physiological level by increasing heart rate and blood pressure and secreting adrenaline and noradrenaline.

In the past, it was common for people to get scared or angry when they saw a predator trying to prey on them or in front of a rival who threatened their survival by stealing food. This emotion was completely adaptive. The mind and body responded to a real threat.

The problem is that there aren’t too many threats these days that put us at risk. However, people express excessive anger in many situations due to their inability to properly control their emotions.

Two kinds of anger

While anger is a natural emotion in humans, it can harm you if you don’t know how to control it. There are two ways to express anger, namely: aggressive anger and passive anger.

Aggressive Anger

This is a visible way of expressing frustration that does not lead to misunderstandings. Some people act in the following ways when they are very angry. They:

• shouting exaggerated.
• also judge others because they feel superior.
• blame someone else or some outside issue for their frustration.

• threaten others.
• destroy objects.
• can be physically violent towards others.
• show no empathy at all.
• may unjustly punish others.
• seek revenge as a way to solve problems.
• are unpredictable.

Passive Anger

Besides aggressive anger, on the other hand, there is also such a thing as passive anger. People with this form of anger express passive anger in different ways. They:

• do not control their anger well and suppress it.
• feel resentment, but do not express it.
• manipulate others.
• ignore others by showing indifference.
• avoid eye contact.
• feel superior because they seem to “control” their emotions.
• criticize others behind their backs.

• take on a victim role.
• sabotage others.
• avoid conflict.

So feeling this way of anger is much more subtle and can easily go unnoticed. Yet both the aggressive form and the passive form of anger are harmful.

Strategies to Control Your Anger

People who have trouble controlling their anger, especially if they are more aggressive, often say they can’t control themselves. However, anyone can learn to handle their emotions in a much more appropriate way. Here are some keys that can help you manage your anger.

1. Know Yourself

Self-knowledge can help you improve your emotional management. We all inevitably build up emotional wounds throughout our lives. However, if you know what causes your wounds to bleed again, you can better resolve your conflicts the next time a situation hits you.

2. Accept reality

In most cases, the suffering of people who feel angry and helpless comes from not accepting reality. So the sooner you accept circumstances as they are and not as you would like them to be, the sooner you stop resisting and suffering from them.

3. Detect cognitive distortions

Admittedly or not, your internal dialogue is full of irrational ideas and cognitive distortions. If you try hard to discover the thoughts that are harming you, you will be able to respond better the next time a situation hits you.

4. Improve your social skills to manage your anger

People who struggle to deal with their anger can thus benefit greatly from social skills training. It enables them to learn to respond assertively and with much more respect and empathy in conflicts.

5. Work on your self-esteem

People who don’t know how to manage their anger usually have unhealthy self-esteem. Often they are not even aware of how they are hurting others. And when they become aware of this, they usually feel self-contempt. You must therefore know and value yourself well.

6. Feel Compassion to Control Your Anger

This point is related to the previous one, as people who have trouble controlling their anger need to learn to forgive and feel compassion for themselves. A deep acceptance and unconditional love will allow you to heal all your wounds.

Latest Recommendations to Control Your Anger

So it is not easy to learn to deal with anger and everything that comes with it. You must be humble to recognize your past mistakes and muster a lot of willpower to change.

Fortunately , psychology offers numerous tools to help you manage and control your anger. So use them today and say goodbye to negative comments!