How to Control Your Anger Before it Controls You!

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Emotions Self-Care40 Comments on How to Control Your Anger Before it Controls You!

How to Control Your Anger Before it Controls You!

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You may be feeling frustrated and a little stressed out that no one is listening to your angry feelings inside. Trust me, you’ve come to the right place to learn how to control your anger before it controls you.

Dealing with anger as a child has always been a very intense experience for me. I was very quick-tempered and always blew things out of proportion. Sometimes, I would even go from 0 to 100 faster than you could count to 10. 

I didn’t understand why I was so angry in the moment or why my first reaction to a particular situation was anger. 

It truly felt like a lost cause for me. 

I think the tipping point was when my sister and I had a really intense conversation and I got sooo angry that when I went to hand — more like throw — her phone back to her, it hit her on the head. Hard. She started crying, and I felt really bad right after. I knew I had to address my anger issues head-on and change my habits. 

In time, I began to fully understand that my anger was a secondary emotion to something deeper that I was feeling inside (sadness and depression). This led me on a quest to figuring out the core root of my anger. And once I did, I was able to control it rather than have it control me. 

What is Anger?

Anger is described as a strong, emotional feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility. 

According to psychologist  Charles Spielberger, anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irrational to intense fury and rage. As part of the human experience, everyone experiences anger through external and internal events. Some of the triggers that can provoke anger include hearing criticism, being treated unjustly, not getting what you want, and being bored or irritated. 

When escalated and out of control, anger can be destructive and can lead to problems in the workplace, within personal and external relationships, and even with your health.

Though it seems like a terrible emotion to have, anger can help set off an alarm within and around you that something is not right and you need to fix it. Anger can also give way to expressing negative emotions and motivate you to find solutions to occurring problems. 

Primary emotions such as love, joy, surprise, fear, sadness, and anger are the body’s first response to something and they’re usually pretty strong. 

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Among others, secondary emotions include optimism, peace, loneliness, anxiety, guilt, and depression.  

When anger is not busy being a primary emotion, it can also serve as a secondary emotion to a primary emotion such as fear and sadness. 

Sometimes, the feelings of fear and sadness can be hard to deal with as a human. These sad and fearful emotions from within you can subconsciously shift to anger, giving you a temporary surge of energy and control to mask what’s really going on. Anger as a secondary emotion can also be triggered by a whole slew of other feelings such as abandonment, depression, and other traumatic events in life. 

Different Types of Anger

Research suggests that there are 4 main types of anger: justifiable anger, annoyance anger, aggressive anger, and temper tantrums.

Justifiable Anger – This is the type of anger where you have a sense of moral disgust about the injustices of the world. It can be triggered by external events like the destruction of the environment, oppression of humans or human rights, animal cruelty, and violence within the community. This type of anger comes from a very passionate place and can lead to an action of change.   

Annoyance Anger – Now, this might be the most common type of anger for most people. It’s the type of anger that visits you throughout the day and can be triggered by many frustrations in your daily life. Examples of this can include your family members not listening to you, your boss being critical, your friends saying something that you feel is stupid, or that driver that just cuts you off in the middle of the road. 

Responding to situations with this type of anger creates a negative experience within ourselves. As a result, we let other people’s words, actions, and problems become our own problems to deal with. And that, my friend, is too much of a burden to bear.

Aggressive Anger – This is where anger is used as a form of control and works as a secondary emotion to mask a deeper sense of fear or weakness from within. It’s used to show dominance, intimidation, manipulation, and control over other people. 

In relationships, aggressive anger can be seen as a sign of bullying, oppression, psychological violence, and emotional abuse. Although it’s seen as being powerful and scary on the outside, the anger actually shows a person’s real insecurity, flaws, and weaknesses on the inside. 

Chronic aggressive anger is the result of destruction through painful conflicts, destructive relationships, and damaged reputations. Over time, if an angrily-aggressive person does not change their habits, the anger can lead to the destruction of this person.

Temper Tantrums – When someone’s selfish wants and needs are not fulfilled, they can display erratic outbursts of aggressive or non-aggressive anger. You can catch this form of anger take place during childhood where the child is in the developing and maturing stages of their life. The children that never grow out of their temper tantrums, usually unleash their tantrums when they don’t get what they want as adults. These types of people often have trouble developing healthy and successful relationships in the future.

Showing off Your Anger, The Right Way

There are three main ways that you can show off your anger. You can express it, suppress it, or calm it down. 

To express your anger in an assertive (not aggressive) type of way is probably the healthiest way to go about it. In doing this, you make it very clear of what your needs are, how you want those needs met, and you don’t hurt anyone else in the process of expressing your anger. You are not pushy or controlling but are respectful to yourself and other people.

Another way is to suppress your anger. Suppressing means you hold your anger inside, you stop thinking about it, and then you focus your energy on something positive. When anger is held from within, the danger of that is you hurting yourself from the inside with acts of passive-aggressive behavior, depression, hypertension, or even high blood pressure. Hopefully, the goal of suppressing your anger is to turn it to something positive, rather than something harmful.

When you calm your anger down on the inside, you are in control of both your internal responses and outward behavior. You can perform these methods by taking a walk or taking a deep breath to lower your heart rate, calm yourself down, and let the angry feelings wither away.

Controlling Your Anger

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Find Your Peace of Mind. 

Someone once told me, if the emotion is too heavy, just let it down.

When dealing with anger, finding your center or peace of mind is so beneficial to your progress of controlling the anger. 

When you have peace of mind, the load that was once on you becomes lighter and can make you more of a calmer person as a result. Also, the internal and external triggers that provoke the anger have less of an impact on your reactions. 

To find peace, you must learn the art of relaxing and breathing. 

Breathing deeply and repeating a calm word to yourself can help during intense moments. Yoga and meditation can also help to relax your muscles and help you to stay calm.

You can also seek out helpful books and courses that teach you different relaxation techniques and aide you in finding your peace of mind.

Self-Awareness.

When you’re angry, it might be helpful to be aware of the way you think, the way you harbor emotions in, and the way you talk to yourself or others.

Sometimes, when you’re in the heat of the moment, you can say things that are out of line and can later cause much regret. In moments of escalating anger, try to remind yourself to use logic for more of a balanced perspective on the issue. Remind yourself that saying or doing things out of anger is not going to fix anything but possibly make things worse. And that’s no good for anyone.

Communication is Key.

Arguing while angry is just not fair. You have both parties mad at each other and everyone just wants to be heard. The key to communicating while angry is to truly listen to what the other person or party is saying. In the heat of the moment, people can get defensive and talk over each other to see how loud the other person can get. This is not productive at all.

It’s best to tell your brain to tell your mouth to quiet down, be the bigger person, and really take in what the other person or party is saying. Then you can respond calmly by addressing that you heard the person, repeat what you heard them say, and explain how you feel in return. This should help to de-escalate the angry moment from getting worse.

Think of Something Funny.

Sometimes, the best way to de-escalate a very intense moment is by cracking a really funny joke or thinking of something funny. When you imagine certain images like people running around the desert in their underwear or your favorite comedian telling your favorite joke, it can help to defuse your rage radar.  

Now don’t get me wrong, there are certain moments that call for seriousness, but for the moments where you don’t want to feel angry or get upset, staying calm and thinking of something funny can help to keep your emotions down from elevating to something worse. 

Change Your Surroundings.

There are certain places that can instantly make us feel irritated whenever we travel there. Try to take a break from those places and find a place where you can escape for a while. I find that a quiet place like a library, a quiet park, or even a vacant mall are really cool places that help me stay calm.

Along with environmental surroundings, adjust/change the group of people that you surround yourself with that make you angry or upset. Seriously, no one has the time for any negative energy. The longer you hang around toxic people, the more you, your mentality, and your emotional well being will suffer.

Related Post: How to Keep Your Sanity in These Trying Times

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Look Within.

Like they say, to every problem lies a solution. Whether good or bad, you have to be willing to figure out what the problem is within you and how you plan to solve it. 

When I was quick-tempered, it took me several years to work through what was going on within me and in my past to find the root of my anger. Once I saw the problem, I addressed it within myself, then with my family, and lastly figured out a solution of how to move forward so that the triggers won’t affect me in moments of anger. 

It’s crazy but when you have full control over your anger, you definitely notice a big change. And you’re supposed to!

The things that used to trigger you, just don’t affect your mood anymore. You take life less seriously and the need to create angry situations starts to dissolve from your mentality and appears in your outward behavior. The angry feeling kind of just washes over you like ocean water and you move on. Even family and friends notice when your anger doesn’t rise anymore or is non-existent. They might even comment with a wow you used to get mad at this and now your calm. That’s amazing.

Related Post: 8 Things to Quit Right Now in 2020

If you find that your anger has become a problem for you, please seek out a licensed mental health professional, therapist, or a psychologist to help you manage your anger: Find a Psychologist.

What kind of methods or tricks do you use to control your anger?

Let me know down in the comments below.

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Josie D. is a content writer and editor. She's passionate about encouraging millennials to practice genuine self-care. She also wants to help millennials dress the part, travel to cool places, and feel good about themselves! 💕✨

40 thoughts on “How to Control Your Anger Before it Controls You!

    1. yes, anger is a really strong emotion that has to be reeled in sometimes. I’m glad this helped some. Thank you for stopping by!

  1. that was a good title!
    anger has its merits and demirits.
    but too much anger is bad for everybody!
    nice article, thanks for sharing!

  2. I like this article because at some point, everyone has a bout with anger. It can either make you miserable or in the way you demonstrate you can stay happy and sane by approaching it correctly. There are many ways demonstrated here, such as yoga.

    1. yes! its all up to us on how we want to use anger, we are in control if we use it right. Thank you for stopping by!

  3. Love this! Justifiable anger is understandable but for the other types of anger we really need to look within. Thanks for the reminder!

    1. yes, justifiable anger makes sense to me to keep the world in check but the others need a little more direction to get rid of. Thank you for stopping by!

  4. I used to have the most frightful temper. Maybe because I wanted to change or at least be able to express myself better during those heated conversations that lead to frustration, I started putting a lot more intention into what I said, as well as stopping to think about how I wanted to speak my mind.
    Thinking of something funny is an awesome tip to change your inside mood!

    1. ooh intention is good because i was at a point where I just didn’t care about how my anger came across to other people. I just was screaming to be heard, it was terrible. Thank you for sharing !!

  5. This was a really interesting and informative post. Annoyance anger is definitely the main kind that I experience. I always used to suppress my anger but found that overall that wasn’t helping because I was just letting it build up internally rather than dealing with it. I look for some sort of release now. A distraction is good for small amounts but something like a workout as a form of energy release works really well for me if I’m extremely annoyed about something x

    Sophie

    1. yeaaaa it feels the worst when I suppress/bottle up my anger and then it boils over into something else. Its kind of scary for me cause someone might get the wrath that was not dealt with. Thank you for sharing!

  6. This is such a detailed and informative post! It can be really hard to understand our anger in the moment, so I think it’s important to reflect on it afterwards to help us understand what we can do better going forward. Thanks for sharing!

    1. definitely!! Reflecting is awesome because you can understand what triggers caused it and how to combat it the next time the anger comes up. Thanks for stopping by!

    1. Aw yay that makes me happy! I wanted it to be informative and deep because I know I struggled with controlling anger for a long time. I’m glad this helped. Thanks for stopping by!!

  7. This is such an interesting and insightful post. I don’t often get angry, but whenever I start feeling irritated I take a step back, breathe, and try stay in control of my emotions. I then usually distract myself for a while before reflecting later on! Great post! x

    Evie x | http://www.eviejayne.co.uk

  8. This is such an informative post! I used to really struggle with anger a few years ago, and I found changing my surrounds used to help me break out of that cycle of thinking.

    1. So trueee! Activities like boxing or karate help to let some of that steam out. Thanks for stopping by!! xxx

  9. Anger management is something that I’ve been struggling with these past few years, and there are some great tips here that I definitely want to try. Thank you, Josie, for this insightful post! xxx

  10. This article will help so many people who are dealing with this. And it’s so true, you need to look within to discover the reasons that trigger your anger. No person is just angry by nature and it can be solved.

  11. Oh yea meditation is amazing! Sometimes after meditating, I feel so calm that I even forget what I was mad at. Thanks for stopping by !! xxx

  12. Hey Josie – I think this post is very powerful and a timely reminder, especially in this current time. The world is a pretty tough place atm, but we need to control our emotions! Thanks for sharing 🙂

    1. Aw thank you so much!! Man, I definitely hear that. Its very strange times we living in now sadly :/ but we got this!! xxx

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