Anger Management: How to Stop Being Angry

There are moments when we feel a sudden surge of anger.   We all have different emotional resources available to us, so when we do, we all react differently.

Some people get violent, some get obnoxious, others will just cry.  I used to like bottling it in, now I just lash out.  Sometimes I get in trouble but I’m always able to appease it after I cool down.

The problem when you bottle your anger in is it never goes away.  Two days will pass and you’re still angry everytime you remember whatever triggered the emotion.

It’s silly because all you have is a memory of the event and it’s not even affecting your present moment in tangible terms.  Yet you still feel the same. In this situation, I used to always wonder: Am I really angry again?  Or am I simply justifying the old emotion by reliving how I felt?

When I first read Brad Blanton’s Radical Honesty, one of the best resources, there was one passage there where he said something along the lines of : “Just because I’m mad at you at 8:15, doesn’t mean I have to feel the same way at 8:45.”  It made such an impact on me.  I realized that all my anger for past events and people I feel have wronged me, is just me working to stay congruent to my original feelings for those events. And that act of holding on to old emotions was keeping me trapped in my past.

In the heat of the moment, the best way I’ve found to get rid of the anger is to let it out.  I’m a pretty scary guy.  And when I’m mad, I literally see people fold up.  I’ve made peace with that and I just lash out.  After I calm down, I make apologies when I can.  Nothing broken can’t be fixed.  I didn’t believe that when I was younger, but I’ve seen and done enough now to know that it’s true.

When you find yourself angry all the time, it may be a different story altogether.

If you’re always angry at your spouse, check how satisfied you are with the relationship and get counseling if you can.  If you’re always angry at your kids, check what you feel your kids are depriving you of.  If you’re always angry at someone or something, sit down and check what area of your life is making you feel inadequate and unhappy.  It will normally be related to that.

Some people will be worried that when they get angry, they will lose control.  The reality is, if you allow the anger and express it with no further judgment, it goes away in a matter of seconds.  If, instead, you express your anger and, at the same time, keep justifying it in your head, you’ll jump from angry to incredibly frustrated to possibly another negative feeling.  It will loop and never end until you simply allow the emotion and not judge whether it’s wrong or right.  Learn to deal with the feeling as something that exists which you need not judge nor expound on further.

For example, a guy bumps hard into me at the bar. I get angry and scream,”Be careful! Watch where you’re going!”  I’m usually done.  If, instead, I question what I just did and wonder whether I over-reacted, my tendency will of course be to justify my own rage.  Whether I do it by thinking how that guy is an asshole, or by being even angrier or something else, it doesn’t matter.  I’ve refused to simply accept that anger is an emotion that can come and pass and I hold on to it for fear of being wrong.

If he gets angry right back, I’ll go out of my way to make apologies.  Sometimes, you’ll get trouble.  Most times, it ends there.  Whatever happens, nothing broken can’t be fixed.  I believe that and it’s true.

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