6 Effective Tips for Controlling Anger

There are many shades to the emotion we call anger. You might feel violated when someone comes into your personal space uninvited. The feeling you get when you’re trying to work but the Wi-Fi keeps dropping may best be termed “frustration.” And you could be feeling furious if someone tries to harm your child. This could be on the opposite end of the spectrum from feeling annoyed that a friend made you late for your appointment.

Anger looks different in different situations, but it is nonetheless a powerful emotion. It also affects people differently, even in the same situations. This is why you may or may not have related to the scenarios above. What one person finds annoying or frustrating could make another person indignant or mad. It’s important to understand your anger and to know how to manage it well.

Understanding Anger

When you feel angry, several things are going on all at the same time. Anger is a feeling of displeasure, one that varies in intensity depending on what’s happened as well as the mood you happen to be in when it happens. When you feel angry, it can affect you physiologically, resulting in muscle tension and an increased heart rate. Your anger may result in you acting out physically or verbally, and you might have thoughts of blame or getting even.

A person may have a set pattern to their anger, and that pattern describes how they typically act and think when they get angry. When you get angry, you can settle into a default pattern that may not be healthy. Additionally, if you don’t handle anger well or have a healthy outlet for it, you may find yourself feeling intense rage over something relatively small like not finding your car keys as quickly as you’d want to run a simple errand.

How Your Anger Works

It may be helpful to break down anger a bit more to understand how it works. When you get angry, the typical move is to look at what’s happening around you and to attribute the feeling of anger to the closest event before the feelings of anger. A lot happens between experiencing bad traffic, to the feeling of rage or intense anger that wells up while you’re sitting in the car. It’s crucial to understand those in-between steps.

The process of getting angry brings together at least three elements that interact with one another. First, there is the provocation, which is the situation or the event. Next, is your mood, or how you’re feeling at the time. Last is your interpretation of the provocation, which is influenced considerably by your mood. That’s why, for instance, the same thing happening two days apart won’t necessarily affect you the same way.

Over the course of a day, you could face many potential provocations, such as your alarm not going off, coffee not being ready downstairs, not having hot water in the shower, the dog leaving a mess in the yard, backed-up traffic, meeting an unpleasant character at work, or getting to a meeting late because you were delayed in conversation by a colleague. Any number of these things can be a sufficient provocation.

What you’ll notice is that these and other provocations don’t always meet with a response of anger. On some days they might, but on others, they won’t necessarily provoke an angry response. One reason for this is your mood. One way to think of your mood is to think of it as your pre-anger state, and depending on where you’re at, a provocation could just slide off you like water off a duck’s back, or it could stick in your craw and get you livid.

Your mood could include things like whether you’re hungry, tired, stressed, overwhelmed, recovering from something else that got you angry, etc. If you’re feeling hungry, it is much easier for the provocations you experience to result in anger. This is why self-care is a key component in helping you be in a better frame of mind to handle provocations without them boiling over into anger.

The main reason your mood is so important is that it is a key factor in how you interpret the provocation you encounter. If you haven’t slept well, and you arrive at work to find that your usual parking spot has been taken, that could be enough to set you off. Despite the fact that the parking spots aren’t designated, you could interpret the loss of your spot as a direct attack, or as people being inconsiderate. Your read on the situation affects your response.

When you’re feeling rested, you might not take the loss of “your spot,” or an off-color joke by a colleague, as things that matter much. When you’re in a better mood, you can cope better with these provocations and be less prone to anger as a result. When you’re feeling stressed or anxious, it is easy to blow things out of proportion and make it harder to respond calmly.

Similarly, when you’re in a foul mood, you’re just not feeling great, or you haven’t slept well, you can fall into the trap of generalizing or labeling other people. In this frame of mind, it’s easy to use inaccurate but inflammatory words like “never” or “always”, as in “Why does this always happen to me?” When you label people as “fools” or “incompetent” it can lead to you getting angrier than you justifiably should.

Understanding your anger this way helps you to process what’s going on inside you, and it can help you start to address challenges before they arise.

Effective Tips for Controlling Anger

There are many different ways to control your anger. Controlling anger isn’t always about not feeling angry or not expressing that anger. It is, however, about managing your anger so that provocations don’t regularly result in anger, you have your anger in hand, and you don’t go overboard in your reactions. It should go without saying that anger can cause a lot of damage if it is let loose. Human anger doesn’t lead to godly outcomes (James 1:19-21).

Some of the tips that could help you in controlling your anger include the following:

Recognize your triggers Each of us has certain things that can more easily trigger our anger. Knowing the situations, people, or moods in which your anger is closer to the surface is helpful. When you know this about yourself, it makes it easier for you to prepare in advance for possible anger-inducing situations.

Learn to step back When you take the time to learn yourself, you’ll figure out the cues that suggest that you’re starting to get angry. Some feel their face flush, or their neck feels hot. Others can feel themselves clenching their jaws or balling their fists. You don’t have to stay in the situation when you feel yourself getting angry. Instead, take a break and step away from the situation.

You can use that time away to do something that relaxes you, whether that’s deep breathing, going for a walk, progressive muscle relaxation, visualization, or listening to calming music. Additionally, you can use the twenty-second rule. When you’re getting angry, allow yourself to pause for twenty seconds before you respond or react. Take a breath and ponder whether your reaction will help or worsen the situation.

Communicate effectively It is a reality that poor communication can escalate anger. Try to stop and listen before responding to someone. Think about your responses carefully before you give them. When you express yourself, use “I” statements instead of “you” statements, as the latter come across as blaming and accusatory.

Growing in communication also includes other active listening skills like not jumping to conclusions, asking clarifying questions, and summarizing what the other person said so that you don’t mishear or understand them. Listening with empathy can help you neutralize anger as you consider that there is another side to the situation.

Get moving and practice self-care Your mood plays a huge role in how you interpret provocations. You can help yourself to control your anger by doing regular exercise to help reduce your levels of stress and anxiety, making it easier for you to manage your anger. Do something you enjoy doing so that you keep doing it.

Other aspects of self-care include eating healthy meals regularly or carrying healthy snacks to prevent hunger. Getting a good night’s rest every night is also a huge help in managing your emotions. Taking these small, daily steps can be a huge help.

Challenge negative thinking Along with your mood, anger can also be the result of negative and distorted thinking patterns. Jumping to conclusions, generalizing, or focusing on problems can fuel anger. By reframing negative thoughts, challenging unhelpful thinking, and focusing on finding solutions, you can short-circuit anger.

Practice forgiveness Your disposition toward others can also be heavily influenced by negative past interactions with them. Unforgiveness primes you to be angry, even with smaller provocations. Don’t allow yourself to dwell on what’s past, letting go of grudges and resentment toward others. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21, NIV).

As a bonus, it’s also important to seek help from a professional to deal with anger. Anger can damage relationships, and it’s important to know what steps to take to deal with that. A professional can also help you learn ways to manage your anger, as well as identify any underlying causes such as depression that need to be addressed. With help, you can learn effective coping strategies to bring anger under control.