6 Ways To Channel Your Anger When You’re Raging
We all experience momentary bursts of anger every now and then. For the most part, though, these relatively minor annoyances are easy to deal with: You feed yourself or sign off Twitter for the day and the anger subsides.
But walking back your anger when you’re having a heated conversation with someone ― a spouse, a friend, a co-worker, some very unfortunate person at a call centre ― is a lot more difficult.
There are things you can do in the moment to calm yourself, though. Below, therapists offer their best advice for getting control of your temper before it gets control of you.
1. Acknowledge that you’re angry.
When you’re angry, you notice it in your body. You experience it physically far more than you do cognitively, said Kurt Smith, a therapist in Roseville, California. You are literally hot and bothered.
“Anger will often also cause changes in our body, such as muscle tension like a stiff, sore neck, rapid heartbeat or breathing that becomes rapid and shallow,” Smith said. “Feeling fatigued or heated up for no obvious reason can be a sign of unrecognised anger.”
If you’re not physically feeling it, you might hear it in the sound of your voice.
“One way to realise that you’re getting angry is to listen to the volume of your voice. Is it increasing?” Smith said. “That’s a sign your emotions are building and can indicate you’re getting angry.”
Once you notice this, try to modulate your voice.
“Just as increasing anger can correspond to an increasingly loud voice, so can the opposite,” Smith said. “Try responding to your loud voice by gradually lowering it. This is an effective strategy to emotionally talk yourself back down.”
2. Follow your body’s cues, safely and slowly.
The standard advice here is to take deep breaths, in and out. When you’re really in anger though, and the breathing, counting or similar techniques aren’t working, it pays to take cues from your physiological sensations. Ask yourself what...
