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Here’s what your anger is telling you — and how you can talk back
Angry thoughts make us angrier
People who are more likely to think maladaptive thoughts tend to be angrier overall. They express their anger in unhealthy ways and experience more days with negative emotions, aggression, and risky driving.
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The role of anger
Anger is not actually bad for us - it alerts us to the fact that we've been wronged. The racing heart and hot face is your body preparing for a fight or flight response, energizing you to confront injustice.
Anger only becomes a problem if we are unable to manage it, and it manages us instead.
Managing your anger
Managing your anger is all about managing your thoughts. Your thoughts will determine how you respond.
Strategies like cognitive behavioral therapy can teach people healthier thought patterns.
The Angry Cognitions Scale (ACS)
It helps a user read a set of blood-boiling scenarios and rates how likely they are to have each of six possible reactions. It enables you to recognize unhelpful thoughts that cause a knee-jerk reaction. For example: When you are driving through a residential area, and someone backs their car out of a driveway and nearly hits you. There are six possible reactions:
- "They did that just so I'd have to stop." This is a fallacy known as misattributing causation - you don't know the other person's intentions.
- "They almost totaled my car." It catastrophizes a scary situation into utter destruction.
- "Nobody knows how to drive anymore" overgeneralizes a specific situation into a universal truth.
- "I was here first. They shouldn't have gotten in my way." Here you make an unreasonable demand that somehow other people should know where you're going.
- "That dumb jerk!" is inflammatory labeling that dehumanizes and insults the other person.
- "He must not have seen me" is adaptive and more likely to calm you down.
Angry thoughts make us angrier
People who are more likely to think maladaptive thoughts tend to be angrier overall. They express their anger in unhealthy ways and experience more days with negative emotions, aggression, and risky driving.
Labeling people is toxic
Inflammatory labeling is incredibly toxic as it degrades a human into an object and minimizes any or all of their other qualities.
The antidote to inflammatory labeling is empathy. When you start to think of other people from a different perspective, you will do the opposite of labeling.
How to deal with anger
Instead of escalating your anger with insults or vengeful thoughts, start by focusing on the facts. Rational thinking can reduce your anger.
Changing your angry thoughts takes time. But if you can recognize your thoughts, you can learn to stop yourself and refocus your attention.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Elements of well-being
Well-being can be broken into five elements:
- Positive emotion
- Engagement
- Relationships
- Meaning
- Accomplishment
If you improve ...
Wired for pessimism
Pessimism comes naturally to people because thinking about the bad stuff that could happen helps us to prepare for survival.
The problem is that pessimists think bad events are permanent and unchangeable. "I think my interview is going to be a disaster." We need to learn to recognize what we're saying to ourselves and then argue against it. "I've done many interviews in my life, and they generally turn out well."
The need for hope
Meditation - mindfulness, focusing on the moment - is an excellent anti-anxiety, anti-anger tool..But accepting suffering and finding contentment in that means you can't move into doing something good in the future.
One important idea is hope. Positive human future doesn't come about by accident - it needs hopeful people who plan for it and make it happen.
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Quick Tips For Anger Management
Eat well: Make sure you eat healthy vegetarian food.
Rest: Ensure at least 6-8 hours a day.
Meditate daily: can be done at any time, in a quiet place and doing so i...
7 Techniques To Manage Anger
- Sudarshan Kriya: a breathing technique that releases stresses accumulated as impressions.
- Sahaj Samadhi Meditation: through mantras, it helps the meditator to clear the layers of consciousness from the impressions stored in it, bringing better perception and calmness.
- Be aware of the emotion rising: it helps you to control it but regular meditation is required to sustain it.
- Accept anger: just accepting yourself for getting angry calms you down.
- Show anger, don’t get angry: showing and being angry are different. The former is an appearance and can be done without affecting your inner calm.
- Smile more often: you cannot get angry when you’re busy smiling.
- Recognizing anger's transiency: you get angry at something in the present. With proper training, you will be angry less frequently or for less time and prevent anger from becoming hatred.
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Mindfulness
Knowing what triggers your anger
Emotions are made up of 3 components:
- physical (the way your body responds when you experience an emotion),.
- cognitive (the thoughts that go along with the emotion).
- behavioral (the things you do or have urges to do when you experience an emotion).
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