Anger Management
ANGER… it’s bad, it’s wrong, it’s too much, why am I so angry ALL THE TIME! We have ALL experienced anger in our lives and perhaps even explosive anger that leaves us shaken up. Now there’s nothing wrong with feeling angry, the important part is how we react and how we manage our anger. In fact, anger is one of the six core emotions; when we channel our anger well it can help us feel strong and healthy, it can be used to protect ourselves or our loved ones, and it can open up lines of communication in our relationships.
Anger tends to have a negative connotation but every single human emotion, whether we enjoy the feeling or not, is there to serve a purpose. The purpose of anger is to restore interpersonal harmony; this means that anger is energy, it’s a signal, it’s a feeling NOT a behavior, it’s a normal emotion, and often a protective emotion. We experience anger when there’s something in the way of our goal, our expectations feel like they’ve been violated, or we feel taken advantage of as a result of faulty boundaries.
If we were to take a look at your brain while you’re angry, we’d find an activated amygdala. The amygdala is an almond sized part of our brain that reacts to emotions, behaviors, and processes our memory. It most commonly associated with our fear/danger response; fight, flight, or freeze. Your body responds to the danger by releasing cortisol, your stress hormone, which reduces our serotonin levels which is our natural mood booster. When angry, stress hormones including cortisol and adrenaline are released; this gives our body a burst of energy to respond to negative situations. This is where anger becomes an incendiary rage, a part of your brain perceives danger whether it makes sense of not. Often, we don’t even remember when or why we “rage out.”
So what do we do? As an Anger Management Specialist, one of the first steps I walk people through is identifying their physical, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive manifestations of anger. This could look like an increased heart rate, feeling like they’re boiling under their skin, their teeth or jaw is clenched, and they may be thinking someone or something made them angry on purpose. I also offer a few quick tips: change the scene, take a walk, breathe with intention, journal, positive self-talk, and progressive muscle relaxation. So long as you’re looking at the whatever is making you angry, you’re going to stay angry; even then our body stays tense even after our brain has slowed down. This where breathing in for 4 seconds and exhaling for at least 6 or more seconds helps ground both our body and our mind. It sounds simple but many of us don’t practice intentional mindful breathing. This is just snippet of all that happens within us when we feel angry so it makes sense that it’s hard to feel. Remember anger isn’t bad and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you, it means your brain is reacting to something important in you and that’s what we need to attend to; you have the power to manage it, more power than we give ourselves credit for. Reading this post means you’ve already taken the first step!