Buddha said:
“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”
- Are you angry often?
- Are you getting mad regularly?
- Do you lose your mind with rage?
- Do you fume in silence for long periods of time?
Some Statistics about Anger
About 30% of adults and 65% of teenagers struggle with anger management, while 10% of adults may become violent and about 10% of the population have significant anger issues. Anger remains a societal concern.
What is anger?
Anger, part of the sympathetic nervous system’s fight-or-flight response, once helped our ancestors survive danger by providing a burst of energy. Today, it signals when our values or boundaries are crossed and lets us release frustration or stress. Many struggle to manage anger because they react impulsively to perceived threats, making this ancient safety mechanism less useful in modern life.
The Cave man way
Aggression is likely a persistent part of human biology as primates. Freud argued that aggression is an innate instinct, creating significant challenges for culture and society. Today, acting on these instincts is no longer acceptable.
Irrational beliefs
To stay calm, we should use different strategies and question irrational beliefs. When anger takes over, logical thinking becomes difficult because emotions bypass the brain’s reasoning centre, leading to unfiltered reactions.
Anger whilst driving
When another driver cuts you off, your anger comes not from their action but from how you interpret it. By reacting emotionally, you let others control your feelings. Road rage often stems from expecting everyone to drive like you. This can lead to aggressive responses, such as speeding up, using your horn, or even acting violently. Ultimately, these reactions occur when you feel your values have been challenged.
Contributing factors causing anger
Anger may result from prolonged stress and frustration. Losing one’s composure can be attributed to factors such as insufficient sleep and diminished patience. Children frequently exposed to parental conflict may internalise the belief that such interactions are typical within relationships. Additionally, alcohol consumption impairs clear and logical thinking, which can lead to misinterpretation of social cues essential for rational decision-making. Read more about Alcohol and Aggression When someone belittles or degrades you, it can hurt your ego and trigger anger. Read about Becoming Offended and The All Mighty Powerful Ego
The Mental Health Foundation
The Mental Health Foundation stated that long term and intense anger has been linked with mental health problems including depression, Understanding Depression & the Road to Recovery , anxiety Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and self-harm Suicide Prevention. Anger is also linked to poor physical health such as Coronary Heart Disease, stroke, cancer and increased bouts of cold and flu.
But you choose your anger.
Anger can be viewed as a response influenced by personal perception. For example, consider a situation where your child has been absent from school or engaging in unauthorised activities for three months, and you only recently became aware of this behaviour. The anger that arises is not directly caused by the actions themselves, as you would have experienced anger at the time they occurred if that were the case. Rather, it is the awareness of the act and the cognitive processing of this information that elicit the emotional response. Without knowledge of the behaviour, anger would not be a possible reaction.
An old Chinese proverb:
“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape 100 days of sorrow”
The Cues of anger
Physical signs of anger include:
- clenching your jaws or grinding your teeth
- headache
- stomachache
- increased and rapid heart rate
- sweating in areas, especially your palms
- feeling hot in the neck/face
- shaking or trembling
- dizziness
Emotionally you may feel:
- like you want to get away from the situation
- irritated
- sad or depressed or crying
- guilty
- resentful
- anxious
- like striking out verbally or physically
You may also be aware of:
- rubbing your head
- pacing back and forth
- getting sarcastic
- losing your sense of humour
- acting in an abusive or abrasive manner
- craving a drink, a smoke or other substance that relax you
- raising your voice
- beginning to yell, scream, or cry
Anger is also damaging to relationships and society.
I’d like to mention a story from the book called “Fathers who dare, win” by Ian Grant.
There was once a very upset boy who was constantly angry. His father gave him a hammer, a bag of nails and took him over to the backyard wooden fence. The father said that every time the boy got angry, he was to hammer a nail into the fence. The first day the boy hammered 37 nails into the fence, then next day 20 and the next 10.
One day the boy went to his dad and said that he didn’t get angry that day. The father took him outside to the fence and said that each day he didn’t get angry he was to remove one nail. Gradually the boy pulled out all the nails from the fence even though there were a couple of angry days in between.
Finally after the boy had removed all the nails from the fence, he went back to his father telling him of his success. The proud father took his boy back to the fence and showed him all the scares from where the nails were. The father profoundly said: “Each time we react with anger we leave scares like these nails did, that may never ever heal.”
You may also like to read Building Healthy Relationships
Control the thoughts and remove the self-defeating emotion of anger from your life forever.
How can I control an angry outburst
Here are a couple of quick techniques to stop you exploding.
- Read the cues of anger above and write down which ones are yours.
- When you notice your cues of anger arising, then say to yourself or even better out loud STOP. This will bring awareness to your anger.
- Distance yourself from a situation or a person if you can. Say to this person: “I’m starting to get agitated about what’s going on. How about we take a break for 30 minutes and reconvene when I’ve had time to calmly think this through.”
- Breathe in the nose for five seconds. Then exhale out the nose for five seconds. Do this 10 times. This will give you time for your logical brain to catch up.
- Various forms of meditation can also be effective. See below.
- Communication skills may also be of benefit. See below.
Read The Power of Meditation Read Better Communication Read Breath and Ice Therapy Read Work through a Disagreement
You may also like to listen to a podcast where I talk about anger and other topics:
https://candour-communication-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/adrian-spear
Take action now
You and I will investigate the reasons behind the anger, the triggers, look at your thought processes and your irrational belief system which in turn influences your body and mind. Thereafter we will design solution based techniques to manage the anger and produce a calmer emotionally stable future for you. Anger management is my forte. Find out more 4 session programmes or individual sessions. https://apspear.com.au/services/anger-management/
You can also give me a call for a free 15 minute chat to see if my service is right for you 0405 391 110 or fill out the contact form: https://apspear.com.au/contact/
Check out my social pages:
https://www.facebook.com/MMEI01 or https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-p-spear/
