Anger gets a worse reputation than it probably deserves. It’s a normal emotion, a healthy one even, right up until it starts running the show instead of you.
The problem was never feeling angry. It’s what happens in the ten seconds after.
What’s Actually Happening In Your Body
Anger isn’t just a feeling sitting in your head somewhere. It’s a full physical event, and your body treats it that way.
Heart rate spikes. Blood pressure climbs. Adrenaline and other stress hormones flood in, basically prepping you to do something fast, whether that’s useful or not.
Most people don’t catch it until it’s already loud.
- A raised voice
- A pounding heart
- Breathing that’s picked up without you noticing
- Hands clenched into fists you didn’t consciously make
Learning to spot those signs earlier is honestly half the work.
Why “Letting It Out” Usually Backfires
People are always told that they need to “let it out.” You are told to punch a pillow or scream. The belief is that it will help relieve your anger.
People are often led to believe that expressing your anger is a good thing. In reality, it gives you a false sense of control and makes your anger even worse sometimes.
Swallowing your anger isn’t ideal either.
As you probably know, holding on to anger can create other issues. For example, people may:
- Become irritable
- Get sick
- Have a mental breakdown
IIt is also likely that people may not see the built up anger coming.
Somewhere in the middle of these approaches is the best approach to dealing with anger.
Starting With The Body
The American Psychological Association points to the body first, not the mind, when anger’s running hot.
Slow, deep breaths from the diaphragm rather than the chest. In for a few counts, out even slower.
Progressive muscle relaxation helps a lot of people too, tensing and releasing different muscle groups one at a time. Even something as simple as a walk or a few minutes of stretching can bring the physical intensity down enough to think clearly again.
None of this is about distraction for the sake of it. It’s about lowering the physical arousal underneath the anger so the thinking part of your brain gets a chance to catch up.
Catching The Thought Spiral
Angry thinking has a way of getting dramatic fast. Small stuff starts feeling like a catastrophe in real time.
This is where cognitive restructuring comes in – which is really just a clinical way of saying: catch the exaggerated thought and swap it for something closer to what’s actually true.
Repeating a calming phrase to yourself – something like “relax” or “take it easy,” said slowly a couple times. It works for a lot of people.
So does picturing somewhere peaceful, even briefly.
Buying Yourself Time
Anger wants an answer right now. That urgency is exactly why waiting helps so much.
Even a short pause, a few minutes, gives the initial surge somewhere to go before you act on it. A longer delay works even better. Sleeping on something really does change how it looks by morning, more often than people expect.
This isn’t the same as avoiding it. It’s giving yourself room to actually respond instead of just reacting.
Writing It Down
Keeping some kind of anger log sounds almost too simple to work, but it does.
What set it off. What you were thinking right as it happened. How strong it felt. What you did next. Patterns show up fast once it’s written down somewhere instead of just living in your head, certain people, certain times of day, certain kinds of situations that keep repeating.
Once you can see the pattern, it’s a lot easier to plan around it instead of getting blindsided by it again.
Sometimes Anger Is The Right Response
Not every instance of anger needs to be managed away. Some of it is doing exactly what it’s supposed to.
Anger in response to a real threat, a genuine injustice, a boundary actually being crossed, that kind of anger is useful information. It’s pointing at something that needs to change. The line worth drawing is between anger over something that genuinely matters and anger over something small that got blown out of proportion. The first deserves action, channeled well. The second usually just needs to pass.
Saying What You Actually Mean
Anger is frequently covered up by other, seemingly unrelated feelings. A common source of hidden anger is the feeling of being unheard.
Clear communication before the anger builds up will often prevent a lot of that.
One of the most effective ways to communicate feelings is to say “I feel … ” followed by the feelings.
When It’s Bigger Than These Tools Can Handle
It is worth considering whether the anger is negatively impacting your personal relationships or your ability to effectively function at work.
- Do you think you might be taking your anger out on others?
- Are you dealing with unresolved anger, depression or post-traumatic stress?
- Are you actually avoiding looking into/ addressing these issues?
Anger can have very real physical effects. Long term frustration and anger can increase your risk of developing heart disease and other physical conditions.
It is not a personal failure if you are unable to resolve long term anger with the resources available to you.
Getting Support
You don’t have to get rid of your anger — you just have to find better ways to express it.
If you find it hard to control and it’s having a negative impact on you or others around you then reaching out for professional help is the best option.
Reach out to MWMHS to learn more about support for anger and emotional regulation.