Anger Management
Overview
While nearly everyone experiences anger at times, anger can be problematic if it occurs too easily, too intensely, in inappropriate situations, or is poorly controlled. If you believe, or have been told by others, that you may become physically aggressive because of your anger, the best response would be to make an appointment with EAP or with a behavioral health professional. Despite the best of intentions and strong determination, if you have been close to physical aggression in the past due to excessive anger, there is a risk of becoming physically aggressive in the future, and a consultation with a behavioral health professional can be much more effective than going it alone. This will help to ensure your own professional and social well-being, which could be harmed if your anger led to physical aggression.
Others may not be likely to become physically aggressive when angry, but may be less effective on the job or at home because of frequent or prolonged feelings of anger. In addition, when someone is easily angered, their relationship with co-workers, friends, and family members can be harmed, as can be their work reputation. Making sharp comments to co-workers, getting frustrated over minor issues, and angry behaviors such as slamming doors, cursing, or visibly seething, can cause someone to quickly develop a reputation for being difficult to work with and volatile.
There are several techniques that can be used to manage anger more effectively. They include identifying situations and thoughts that trigger anger; learning to identify early signs that anger may be developing; planning and rehearsing in advance effective coping strategies; developing and rehearsing more adaptive ways of thinking; and practicing ways to lower physiological arousal, so that you can more quickly revert to a calmer state by self-instruction. In addition, developing a set of Daily Questions to ask yourself at the end of each day can serve as a regular reminder to keep you on track in becoming calmer and more positive.
Identifying Triggers
If you look back on past experiences when your anger was elevated, can you notice any sort of pattern? Have you become angry more frequently in certain situations, such as when you are under more stress or facing a deadline? When running late? Or in different locations, such as in a crowded restaurant or noisy meeting room? Or with certain people, either a specific co-worker or family member, or someone in a specific role, such as a supervisor, or employee in training? As you think about these events, try to notice when you started to become clearly angry. Did someone make a careless mistake, or say something that you took as a criticism?
Key Point: Triggers are stimuli that precede an anger response. Common anger triggers include being treated with disrespect, feeling a lack of control, witnessing injustice, being lied to, witnessing someone you care for being mistreated, perceiving that you have been wronged, or having your physical safety violated.
For some, a noisy environment can set them on edge, so that they become irritated and then angry more quickly. Others are very sensitive to perceived criticism or being looked down on, and may escalate into anger rapidly if they perceive that someone has disrespected or belittled them.
Once you identify the triggers that are often followed by becoming angry, you may be able to modify your routine to avoid or reduce such triggers. This may include trying to avoid being in crowded, noisy environments when it is important to keep calm. However, an avoidance strategy will usually be of limited effectiveness, because it is likely impossible to avoid all triggers at all times. A more helpful approach will be to develop strategies for managing your emotions.
Catching Anger Early
Some people describe saying or doing hurtful things while angry, knowing that they will regret it, but saying it anyway once the momentum of anger has developed. Some wish they could rewind the experience and delete what they did in anger. While they cannot delete past experiences, they can use physical cues to signal to them the need to pause, assess the situation, and draw upon their coping strategies. For most people, anger is signaled physically by a feeling of increased heat in the face or neck, pounding heart, feeling of of muscle tension, often in the fists, and clenched jaw. Mentally, there are typically thoughts or images of aggression, either toward a person or object, and a desire to lash out. Each of these changes can become signals, indicators to refer to coping strategies to avoid letting anger take charge.
Key Point: Learn to identify the physical cues that provide a forecast (or advanced warning system) of anger and allow you to engage in coping strategies sooner rather than later.
Coping Strategies
Evaluate Your Thoughts
We all rapidly process large amounts of information automatically, much of which is fairly accurate. However, sometimes our automatic information processing is inaccurate, and leads us to assume that someone was being insulting when they intended to be playful, or to interpret someone’s comments as critical when they were meant to be useful feedback. If you have been angry in the past with someone, it can be worth considering other explanations for the behavior or statements that resulted in you feeling angry. You might try writing down the thoughts you were having when you were angry (for example, “He was trying to embarrass me in front of my colleagues,” or “She was taking all the credit for my ideas”). After writing down this thought, consider the evidence that supports this interpretation. Next, write down evidence that would support a different interpretation of what happened. After reviewing the different possibilities, ask yourself what would probably be the most accurate and objective interpretation of the events. This process often results in more benign interpretations that are less likely to promote anger. You can then rehearse this type of mental process when you encounter similar situations.
Develop Useful Self-Instructions
Our stream of thought can influence us for good or ill. If your stream of thought includes statements like, “I’m being taken advantage of,” “I’m being treated unfairly,” or “Nothing ever goes right for me,” you will likely feel angry and resentful. While there may be a grain of truth to some of these thoughts—sometimes we are treated unfairly—it can be useful to choose a more helpful and effective form of self-talk. For example, “Even if things aren’t going perfectly for me, I can do my best with what I have” or “I can be generous and kind to others, even if I am not treated perfectly fairly.”
To practice replacing anger-inducing thoughts with more helpful thoughts, it can be useful to develop phrases like these that you can write out on coping cards, and to refer to these periodically for a few weeks, so that they become very familiar. They can also travel with you in your pocket or bag, so that if you are about to enter a situation or encounter a person that you have had anger problems with in the past, you can review the coping cards in advance, mentally rehearsing how you will handle anticipated triggers.
To help decide what kinds of coping card statements to develop, try making a Cost-Benefit Analysis in which you weigh the advantages and disadvantages of allowing yourself to become angry, against the advantages and disadvantages of managing your emotions more effectively. An advantage of becoming angry at a co-worker might be that you will experience some satisfaction in saying what’s on your mind; a disadvantage could be harm to your work relationships and work reputation. Weighing these advantages and disadvantages in a clear, objective way can help you to decide which option is best for you in the long run, and allow you to take deliberate steps toward more effective emotion regulation.
Lowering Arousal
Anger is associated with significant physiological arousal, including increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, quicker breathing, and muscle tension. You may notice your fists clenching or your jaw tightening, and may feel flushing in the neck and face. These automatic changes are part of the fight-or-flight response, preparing us to confront physical danger. However, they are not particularly useful in the work environment. There are several easy methods for reducing this physiological arousal.
• Deep Breathing
Guided breathing exercises for maintaining calm can be learned quickly through available online scripts. These exercises counter the rapid, shallow breathing that occurs when angry, and induce significant relaxation and calm. By practicing this regularly on your own, you will be able to quickly and easily turn to this strategy to induce a state of calm in situations when you notice anger starting to rise. During practice, sit comfortably, place one hand over the belly, and take a deep breath, noting the rise and fall of the belly as the breath goes in, and then slowly, calmly goes out. Many people find it useful to visualize themselves breathing in calmness, and breathing out tension as they exhale.
• Guided Relaxation
Similarly, practicing progressive muscle relaxation or relaxation through body scan or directed relaxation helps you develop the ability to quickly induce a relaxed calm state. As you become very familiar with the physical sensations and mental state of deep relaxation, you will find it much easier to instruct yourself to relax and become calm in situations in which you might find yourself becoming angry.
• Meditation
Several different forms of meditation exist, and as yet there is no clear advantage of one method over the others. However, the regular practice of meditation has been shown to reduce arousal and tension, and to enhance positive emotions, as well as reduce negative emotions such as anger. There are many freely available guided meditation audio scripts available online, so you can select the type that would work best for you. It is also useful to learn and practice mini-relaxation exercises so that these highly efficient stress management techniques can be utilized when time is limited.
Key Point: There are many different coping strategies for managing anger. Determine which strategies work best for you across different situations, then commit to mastering those techniques.
Daily Questions
As described in other articles on this site, Daily Questions have been found to be an effective strategy for maintaining progress toward behavior change goals. As described by Marshall Goldsmith in his book “Triggers,” the idea is to list simple valued goals that you want to work toward, and at the end of the day rate yourself on a 1-10 scale in terms of how well you tried to achieve those goals. With a goal of being less angry, appropriate daily questions could include:
• Did I do my best to be patient? (1-10)
• Did I do my best to be forgiving? (1-10)
• Did I do my best to develop harmonious relationships? (1-10)
These questions can be modified to better match your specific goals. Spending perhaps 30 seconds at the end of each day to consider whether you did your best at each of these endeavors can, over time, help to shape your behavior during the next day. In reviewing your performance for the day, you notice what choices you made, what strategies you used, and what you did well. In addition, you will notice mistakes or slip-ups that may have occurred, and can use these to plan in advance how you would handle similar situations, either through coping cards, self-talk, or better anticipation of triggers in the future.
Key Point: Succeeding in changing behavior requires a long-term commitment and sustained, focused effort. Using daily questions on a consistent basis can help to focus your efforts as you hold yourself accountable and measure your progress over time.
© 2017 Cordico LLC. All Rights Reserved.
