Anger Management – How To Deal With Anger Issues
Do you need help with anger management to deal with your anger issues?
If your anger issues are having a detrimental effect on your life – damaging friendships, relationships, your career or other areas of your life – then just talking about it, or holding it in, or wishfully hoping that it will never happen again are unlikely to be effective anger management techniques.
To release your anger issues successfully you need to diffuse those triggers and find more constructive ways to handle situations. So what is the best anger management method and how can you deal with anger issues?
Dealing with Anger
As Bruce Banner (aka The Hulk) used to say in the 1970s TV show, ‘you won’t like me when I’m angry’ and if your anger issues lead you to snap, attack and explode then it’s probably true for those around you too. After all, who wants to be walking on eggshells around someone who could explode at any instant?
I’ve helped people who would be verbally unpleasant to others or smash things when caught in the peak of their anger.
And whilst anger itself is a normal human reaction in the right circumstances, like when we need to defend ourselves from physical harm, when it comes to anger issues often it can be even small things which trigger that rage to rise.
If you lack effective anger management then we aren’t talking about having a once a year argument with your partner; it’s much more likely to be an ongoing and often repeated event.
Sometimes anger can almost seem like a learnt way of getting your own way, much like a toddler throwing a tantrum. And if you are habitually used to getting your way or forcing your will in this way, it may have almost become a habitual coping mechanism.
But of course there are the consequences which come with getting angry: damaged relationships and broken things and then the remorse, apologies and attempts to try to act differently next time.
And because it is a learnt way to deal with things, you experience all those thoughts, reactions and emotions because it has always had some sort of purpose. Yet the more we do something, the more we do it and the more ‘hard wired’ it gets in our minds, making it hard to just do things differently. You may even get angry about your anger.
So how can you bring in the anger management that works to calm your anger issues effectively?
Anger Management – How To Overcome Anger Issues
To deal with your anger, use these proven anger management steps:
1) Know Your Triggers
Get a piece of paper and write down all the situations, people and things that trigger your anger to take over. Start becoming aware of these triggers as you go through your day. You may also start to notice when you don’t get angry too. And start thinking about the impacts and consequences of your temper on your life – the arguments, damage to relationships, the guilt, the apologising, the hours spent dwelling and justifying to yourself and much more – so you can start to weigh up whether winning that argument or getting your own way is really worth it, especially in the longer term.
Like everything we do over and over again, after a while that pattern starts to kick in automatically. So once you know what pushes your anger buttons you can start to take those specific things one at a time and work out how you can defuse them by doing something different like using one of the strategies below.
2) Defusing The Anger Bomb
Once your angry emotions take over you will have a strong desire to take action, to do something. Whether that is gesturing, shouting, smashing something or more than that, every part of your being will want some sort of action.
And as part of that your breathing rate increases as you take in more oxygen to go to your muscles ready for that action.
So start to purposely undo this process. By learning how to trigger your relaxation response you can nip anger in the bud, or even stop it arising in the first place. Regularly practice having your out breath longer than your in breath (this causes you to relax). The more you practice it, the easier it will be to defuse any of those old patterns and associations of anger as soon as they arise.
3) Stop Being Stupid!
Strong emotions make us stupid. When strong emotions take over, we are designed to act now and think later (the fight or flight response). That makes sense when we are in physical dangerous as the last thing you want to do if a threat approaches is stop and have a good think. Yet ‘threats’ these days are primarily psychological and we respond in the same way, seeking action and not thinking rationally or logically until we calm down again.
So when the anger is triggered, immediately start reciting the alphabet backwards in your head. This forces the rational, thinking part of your brain to work and sends the signal to your emotions that they can calm down again.
4) Be Right…Or Be Happy
Anger is often the result of people now doing, thinking or saying what we think they should. We may read their minds or decide they fall short of our rules in some way (ignoring the fact that our rules and expectations may not be theirs).
So if you feel the rise of that anger, breathe and pause and then ask yourself what if the other person is right, or what if they have a point in at least some of what they say? Things are rarely completely black or white so just start to wonder if that may be so. You don’t even have to change your views – yet wonder, be curious, and then consider whether you would rather insist on being right or would you prefer to be happy?
5) Take control…of your mind
The most effective way to deal with anger is not to get angry in the first place! Use my free hypnosis audio and whilst listening, imagine being cool, calm and collected in the situations you identified. Imagine dealing with those situations calmly and confidently, staying in control of your actions and reactions as you respond in a healthy and constructive way, whether that means letting the small stuff slide, calmly asserting your viewpoint or expressing yourself in another way. Focus on responding in this way as vividly as you can and then take a moment to think how responding in this way will lead to positive impacts on your health and happiness.
Help Dealing With Anger Issues
If you would benefit from overcoming your anger issues then get in touch to see about booking your free initial consultation, a chance to meet, discuss a way forward and have your questions answered before deciding to go ahead.
Dan Regan
Anger Management Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket
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