How do I control anger?

Most of us would probably laugh if someone told you to ‘not react’ but in a nutshell, this is the key to regulating our emotions better.

Negative emotions such as rage are uncomfortable, often painful, and we’re constantly told we should strive to be ‘happy’. It is so human to have negative emotions and in fact if we didn’t have them we couldn’t appreciate being happy. Really it’s about sitting with painful feelings. The more we sit with them, the more our brain starts to understand that these feelings aren’t dangerous and so with practice we can learn to not react.

A good way to start is to become more observant over your body and physical sensations when you start to feel angry. These are what we call ‘warning signs’. Rarely is it 0-100 and if you feel it is, it is quite likely that you were absent to key sensations that your body was experiencing such as tension in your chest, heart rate increasing and shallow breathing. It is common to be unaware of these sensations, as mentioned above, often we do everything to get rid of or avoid difficult feelings.

Once we’re aware of the physical sensations, we can then begin to interrupt warning signs by using distractions such as focusing on the feeling of our breath as we breathe through our nose or focusing on the feeling of the texture of a part of clothing we’re wearing. Eventually we can get to the point where we are able to cope with the uncomfortable feelings of rage without needing to use any distraction.

Simply planning to not react the next time you’re in an argument is likely to reduce the severity of your reaction. If you’re thinking that’s too easy, I’m sure you would control your anger if it depended on 1 million dollars? It’s all about the importance you assign to changing your behaviour and reaction.

If all else fails, you can leave the room and come back in 10 minutes when you have had time to de-escalate and then you’re much more likely to be able to communicate effectively.