How to Rein in Your Anger

Anger can be a releasing emotion and has its place in a normal, healthy emotional life. It becomes a great problem, however, when you have outbursts of anger frequently and often for very trivial reasons, such as a queue, or an empty milk carton or someone sneezing while you are trying to watch a TV show. If these minor triggers are setting you off all the time and you are feeling irritable and angry most of the day, it's time to take charge before you suffer a health meltdown.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Patience
• Acknowledgment of a problem
• Less stress

1. Acknowledge your anger. The hardest part is to accept that you have a problem. Often an angry person is trying to defend themselves from hurt, pain and difficult situations and is trying to figure out how to cope without seeking assistance from others or without directly addressing the challenges upsetting them. Realize that you don't have to do this alone and you don't have to fend off problems
2. Look for symptoms of your anger. Your body will be telling you before your mind does. Are you hunched up and not standing straight? Do parts of your body ache a lot, especially the neck, shoulder and upper back regions? Are you clenching your fists a lot? Do you spend a lot of time frowning or muttering under your breath? All of these are direct bodily manifestations of anger that you are not as willing to release verbally in open conversations with people who could help you.
3. Talk it out. The first thing to remember is that you don't have to do this alone. You are never alone - there are friends, family members and health professionals who will be prepared to listen to you, offer advice and offer professional help in the case of health professionals. People are understanding when you are honest and voice your concerns openly, clearly and without blaming anybody, including yourself. This is a problem but it is not unsolvable.
4. Address the sources of your anger. Are you trying to do too much in life? If you are juggling too many things, you are probably living in the fast lane and anger can be a natural reaction to feeling that things are never done, never finished or never resolved in the way you'd like them to be. Or, maybe you lack confidence in your abilities and your interaction skills with other people and you blame yourself for being incompetent but this turns into resentment that reaches out to many others, not just yourself.
5. Be accepting of needing help. If you have been experiencing anger for a long time, it won't dissipate overnight, not even with the best of intentions. You need to talk through the underlying motivations that spark the anger. Professional counseling or supportive help groups will go a long way to helping you developing new and more positive coping mechanisms for the rest of your life. Acceptance is the first step; acting on the acceptance is the next step. You're on your way already.

Tips & Warnings

• Constant anger can harm your health; it lowers your immune system responses, thereby leaving you more susceptible to colds, flus and more. It also causes you to make fuzzy decisions that focus on the things that hurt you rather than on seeing the bigger picture, something that ends up preventing you from seeing that negative situations are not as bad as they seem and that you can find positive outcomes.
• Learn the difference between useful and healthy anger and prolonged, unhealthy anger. This article is not calling for you to never be angry, as there are times in life when anger is a healthy reaction. This article is about not letting anger become a dominant part of your personality that leads your life for you.
• Warning signs: getting angry more than once a week; anger that lasts 3 - 4 days in a row; constant irritability; poor decision-making; loss of friendships and/or jobs; road/supermarket/vacation rage (vacation time often brings out the worse in very angry people because of the change in pace and environment that causes one to feel like a fish out of water).