Anger...... Dont let it ruin you.....management tips

Anger Management

We all know what anger is, and we’ve felt it at one time or the other. That fury sensation when you found your closest friend talking about you behind your back. Or whatever the reason is that makes you yelling, swearing, and blasting at someone or throwing things around like the hot-headed. I will be sharing steps to managing your anger. Although anger management may take sometime but its worth trying.

An angry person

Tips to anger management

1. Understand that anger is a problem

If you’re not convinced of this, then anger management tips will go right over your head, like sex tips aimed at Tibetan monks. How is anger a problem, you ask? Surely it’s healthy, and useful to some degree...? Anger is unhelpful in a number of ways, but there are a lot of commonly used arguments that I won’t bother with: ‘Anger’s not nice; people don’t like it’.
'Um... that's the whole point', you might respond! You may not want to be a 'nice' person; and you definitely don’t want people to like it. Anger is bad because it is an
an ineffective way of operating in the (social) world, can occasionally backfire, and ultimately ruins relationships.
At its core, anger is an evolved intimidation strategy. The most publicised instances of anger occur in war zones, in traffic, and in hotel lobbies. But surveys tell us that approximately 80% of day-to-day anger actually occurs with family and loved ones whom you care about (by definition). These aren’t necessarily people you wish to bully and intimidate. Actually, anger is much less effective in getting people around you to behave
‘correctly’ than, say, heart-to-hearts, cajoling, incentives, or calmly stated assertiveness. And even when anger does have the odd pay-off—your husband remembers to lift the toilet seat or your housemate turns the music down—it comes at the cost of warmth and intimacy, and tends to come back to bite you (in the form of defensiveness or escalation mostly). Just about every bit of research out there suggests that having warm (non- angry) relationships is the key to human happiness and emotional well being. So this is no small cost.

2. Acknowledge and accept your anger

Take some time off, walk to a corner or walk anywhere to give yourself a space. Then, recognise the angry sensations in your mind, your body, and let it flow like a river. Remember that current anger state will not stay very long.

3. Monitor your anger

I strongly recommend keeping an anger log over at least two or three weeks. You may be surprised at what it reveals. As well as raising insight, it can help you to take a detached ‘observer stance’ with regard to your anger. Monitor any and every episode of anger, from fleeting moments of frustration or impatience, to extreme rage.
For each one, note down the facts of what went down (neighbour’s dog still barking despite our asking them to deal with it); the intensity of your anger 0-10, where 0 = no anger, and 10 = maximum rage; any thoughts or images you were aware of during the scene (wringing the
dog’s neck, keying the neighbour’s car, memories of the conversation you’d had with him the week before, etc.); any other feelings you may have experienced in the scene (e.g. anxiety, dread); and what you actually did (ranted to wife). This habit of systematically describing your angry outbursts is often all someone needs in order to gain a little perspective. Give it a whirl.

4. Feel the anger and DON’T do it anyway - Take a deep breath

Anger interferes with problem-solving and good judgement,and males you rash and rigid in your thinking. This is why even the most articulate person you know can be reduced to repetitious expletives when enraged. Ambrose Bierce, the American satirist, wisely remarked, “speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” While fear drives us to flee, anger drives us to aggress and confront. Anger motivates revenge and retaliation. Unfortunately, the best revenge is not, as a rule, to live well. Anger is a poor guide to happiness. Hence my counter intuitive advice to ‘Feel the
anger and not do it anyway’—the flipside to the pop- psychology slogan. I would recommend you: go to bed angry (despite your grandmother’s advice); sit on the angry email for a day or two before sending it; walk away from a fight where possible; and seek advice from a (non-angry) third party before taking any hostile action. If you still wish to carry out these actions when you’re calmer, then go ahead. They may coincide with self-interest. But, chances are you won’t want to. In the heat of anger you’re likely to make decisions you’ll regret. When you are angry, your breathing and heart rate will increase. Take a deep breath from your diaphragm to calm your mind and slow your heartbeat. Keep breathing slowly for five minutes or until your breathing rhythm back to the normal state

5. Understand your feeling vocabulary and do something positive to let go of your anger

Once you feel relaxed, ask yourself what you really feel. As anger is only a camouflage, find out exactly what is your real feeling. Do you feel sad because your colleague betrays you? Do you feel disappointed because your parents are not around when you need them? To let go by doing something positive. It can be anything depending on your personality type. If you like to exercise, go for a run or kickboxing to let the steam off. If you like to write, grab a pen and walk your feeling into a writing like Sue Sylvester from Glee who constantly expresses her angry emotion in her diary. If you are a music lover, listen to favourite music to soothe you down. Or watch a comedy movie to make you laugh. Whatever it is, choose an activity that does not harm yourself or others – no violence, no abuse!

6. Watch yourself angry: the Federer cure

The angry are often proud of their anger. Even if they leave a scene having achieved nothing (such as giving the finger to a car that pulls in front of them), they often experience a warm inner glow of self-satisfaction as a result of their actions. They appear to believe they’ve just accomplished something tough, powerful and righteous. This is not, of course, how they are perceived by their victims, spouses, or onlookers… And more interestingly, it’s not necessarily what they themselves might think if they could watch themselves from the outside while not angry. It's worth seeing or hearing yourself genuinely angry at least once in your life. If it’s difficult to catch yourself in a spontaneous fit of rage, it’s worth replaying an angry scene in front of the mirror. According to tennis great Roger Federer, who was a racket-smashing brat in his junior years, it was watching himself throwing tantrums on TV that put him off it for life.

7.Become less judgemental

If anger is driven by internal rules of how others ought to behave, this makes it a very ‘self- righteous’ emotion. But if you can see some of your rules for what they are —‘just the way I was brought up’ or ‘my way of doing things’—then it will naturally seem silly to judge others for not following them. It helps to remind yourself of the many different ways in which humans around the world operate. There’ll almost always be someone who agrees with you, and others who staunchly oppose you. That’s because these things are matters of opinion, not fact. Must people work hard and strive to reach their fullest potential, or is a breezier, more spiritual life acceptable too? You probably have opinions on these things, which is fine. But if you walk around convinced your opinions on how people must behave are right and universal, you’ll live a restricted life, as well as an angry one.

8. Empathise

Empathy overlaps somewhat with ‘thinking scientifically’, except that it’s more intuitive. Empathising means living in the skin of someone else. It is an antidote to anger, because it’s hard to condemn someone if you really understand where they’re coming from. Anger almost always involves an inability to get the person you’re angry at. It stems from a failure to understand them. This is why so much anger is expressed verbally in statements of apparent astonishment or perplexity:
Why the hell would you do something like that?
What’s gotten into you?
How could you ... ?
I can’t believe this!
What was she thinking?
These, incidentally, are actually very good questions to ask yourself in earnest when you're angry, but people only ever intend them rhetorically (and pejoratively). Often, interestingly, the people we profess to find the most perplexing are those closest to us, whom we'd be best placed to empathise with. A couple I saw recently was fighting over domestic chores. As it turned out, the husband liked things to be clean and hygienic, but was relatively oblivious to tidiness; the wife needed things to look neat and orderly, but didn’t worry that much about dust or germs. Each thought that their own standpoint was sensible, and that the other person’s was entirely neurotic. The truth is: neither of these viewpoints is silly or hard to relate to. They simply reflect different concerns or priorities. Most of the time it’s not so much that individuals can’t relate to one another, it’s that they just don’t : they’re blinkered by their own point of view and place more importance on making their own points than on understanding others'.

9. Get your facts straight

Angry people often display a bias toward interpreting others’ behaviour as hostile, deliberate, or nasty, even when they lack the information to really be sure. They’re occasionally right, of course, but very frequently they’ve gotten something wrong, or taken it the wrong way. The simplest first step in reducing your anger is to take a moment and make sure you’ve got all your facts straight. Are you sure the acquaintance who passed you by really snubbed you and didn’t just not see you? Can you be certain that your wife’s forgetting to pick up the milk was really a personal sign of disrespect , and not just an oversight? Are you positive your neighbour is playing that music just to spite you? Is it really fair to say that so and so is always late, or that such and such never does anything nice for you? Are you sure you've understood your opponent's position? If you aren’t positive beyond a reasonable doubt, why not suspend your judgement, pending further evidence. Innocent until proven guilty. This little habit alone can save you a lot of unnecessary grief, or should I say grievance.

10. Communicate your feeling

Now that you have explored and accepted your anger, communicate it to the person who makes you angry. Stay objective, stick to the issue, and do not put judgement on the other person. A simple formula to communicate your feeling is to state the fact and your need.
Fact – Take an example, when your friend talked about you behind your back, and you feel hurt. State the fact to him/her “When you talked about my personal problem to Tom and I don’t know about it, I feel hurt.” This way, you’re explaining what the person did have affected you.
Need – Once you get the fact straight, don’t miss the boat of telling the person what you really need from him/her, like “I need to be able to trust you”.

11. Listen to the other persons point of views, find a solution and learn from the situation

Finish with your fact and need, and continue with listening to the other person’s story. There might be a reason why he/she did that action too. Try to understand his/her fact as well. Do not be assumptive and quickly jump into conclusions. At the end of the day, find a solution that works best for both of you. Make a request of what you expect fromthat person in the future and vice versa. Don’t pinpoint who’s right or wrong, and don’t be harsh in stating your request. For the case above, you can request something like this “If you don’t mind, would it be possible for you not to talk about my personal problems to other people?” Remember, your goal should be solving problems without damaging the relationship.
For every situation, there is always a lesson to learn. Maybe you play your part in this situation too, so learn how to improve yourself for example try to be more patient. Learn how to improve your response when the situation hits in and learn what can be done differently in the future.

12. Talk to therapist 

If you are still struggling a deep anger problem and don’t know how to deal with it anymore, you can contact professional therapist or psychologist near you. They will guide you step by step on how to explore your feeling, respond to triggers, and learn problem-solving
skills to resolve your anger.