How To Control Anger?

Anger is an innate universal emotion. We all have the ability to experience it. It is part of the six basic emotions that psychologist Paul Eckman identified as common to all human beings: surprise, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and anger.

These six emotions are associated with the ability of human beings to adapt to their environment. Therefore, if they are part of our current emotional register, it is because they have been evolutionarily beneficial for us. It is true that some of these emotions are more comfortable to experience than others, but all of them have their function and their reason for being.

What exactly is anger?

Anger is an emotion that people feel in response to a real or fictitious threat. It causes us anger, irritation, feelings of outrage and frustration.

It arises in a context of vulnerability, and its evolutionary role is to motivate us to fight what can harm us. To do this, the body reacts at a physiological level by raising the heart rate and blood pressure, and secreting adrenaline and norepinephrine.

In the past, it was common to feel fear or anger in front of a predator that tried to hunt us down, or in front of a rival that threatened our survival by stealing our food. It was a totally adaptive emotion. Our mind and body reacted to solve a real threat.

The problem is that today there are not too many threats that threaten our integrity. On the other hand, there are many situations in which people express an inordinate anger, due to our inability to manage emotions properly.

Two types of anger

Depending on our way of expressing anger, we can differentiate two clear ways: aggressive anger and passive anger.

Aggressive anger

It is a much more visible way of expressing frustration that does not give rise to misunderstandings. Thus, we can find that people perform some of the following actions:

• They yell disproportionately.
• They judge the other person from superiority.
• They blame their frustration on someone else or something outside.
• They threaten the other.
• They destroy objects.
• They exercise physical violence against the other person.
• They don’t show any kind of empathy.
• They punish unfairly.
• They use revenge to resolve the conflict.
• They act unpredictably.

Passive anger

It can be expressed in the following ways:

• They do not manage anger well and repress it.
• They hold a grudge, but don’t verbalize it.
• They manipulate others.
• They despise the other person by showing indifference.
• They avoid eye contact.
• They feel superior to seemingly controlling their emotions.
• They criticize the other behind their backs.
• They adopt the role of victims.
• They sabotage the other.
• They avoid conflict.

This way of feeling anger is more subtle and can go unnoticed, but both aggressive and passive anger are harmful to those who exercise it.

Anger Management Strategies

Subjects who have difficulty managing anger, especially when they are more aggressive, often state that they are not able to control themselves. However, we can all learn to express our emotions much more appropriately. Let’s look at some ways.

1. Know yourself

Self-knowledge is essential to improve our emotional management. We all have emotional wounds that accumulate throughout life; it is unavoidable. However, keeping in mind what causes the wound to bleed again can help us resolve the conflict more adequately the next time something especially affects us.

2. Accept from reality

In most cases, the suffering of people who feel great anger and helplessness comes from not accepting what is happening. The sooner we assume that circumstances are as they are and not as we would like, the sooner we will stop resisting and suffering.

3. Detect cognitive distortions

Whether we admit it or not, our internal dialogue is full of irrational ideas and cognitive distortions. If we carry out training to detect the thoughts that are especially harming us, we will be able to react better the next time a situation is threatening.

4. Train social skills

People with anger management difficulties can greatly benefit from social skills training. In this way, they  learn to react in an assertive way, a much more respectful and empathetic way of resolving conflicts.

5. Work on self-esteem

Subjects who do not control their anger are often people with unhealthy self-esteem. On many occasions they are not even aware of the pain they cause in other people, but when they are, they usually feel great contempt for themselves. Therefore, it is important that these people know themselves well and learn to value themselves in a healthier way.

6. Feel compassion

Related to the previous slogan, individuals with difficulties in managing their anger have to learn to forgive themselves and to recognize themselves from compassion. Only then, from a deep acceptance and unconditional love, will they be able to close all their wounds.

Final tips for managing anger

Learning to manage anger, and all that it entails, is not something we can learn quickly in a few days. It requires a lot of humility, to recognize the mistakes of the past, and a lot of will to want to change from now on.

However, if people decide to solve this difficulty, psychology offers numerous tools to carry it out successfully. The inability to control anger can become a conflict from the past.