7 Tips For Effectively Controlling Anger

We’ve all had moments in our lives when our emotions got the better of us. You may have been feeling particularly tired, or you had a lot on your plate, and you reacted to someone with annoyance or in some other way that you later regretted or felt embarrassed by.

Our emotions are important parts of who we are, but just as there are healthy ways of experiencing and releasing these emotions, there are unproductive ways to express those emotions. Emotional maturity lies in learning ways to get rid of destructive patterns of behavior while growing in how to experience and express your emotions in healthy ways.

One emotion that requires growth and maturity to handle well is anger. Anger can be triggered by both external and internal factors, such as being mistreated by a loved one or being cut off in traffic.

Some internal triggers of anger include persistent thoughts of past negative experiences, and the severity of one’s anger can be exacerbated by tendencies one inherits from their family as well as learned behaviors. It can be hard to keep anger in check but being able to do so can bring many benefits.

3 reasons for controlling anger.

Anger is a strong emotion, one which unfortunately tends to be perceived negatively. However, anger is part of our emotional makeup, and it has a positive role to play in our lives.

Anger can be harnessed and leveraged as a powerful impetus and catalyst toward action as you move to remedy a situation of injustice, for example. Even good things can become unhelpful in high doses, and there are several good reasons to control your anger so it doesn’t dictate your life choices or lead you into tough situations.

There are at least three reasons why controlling anger is important, including:

1. To improve your health.

If you find yourself feeling angry a lot, that can have some serious negative impacts on your health. Just like if you experience a lot of stress, persistent anger increases your risk of developing health conditions such as ulcers, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and gastrointestinal diseases. Additionally, excessive anger can increase the risk of mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression.

2. To prevent damage to relationships with others.

When anger controls you rather than you being in control of it, it can not only harm your physical and emotional health but your relational health as well.

If you’re angry all the time, it makes it hard for people to be around you without walking on eggshells. If a person is afraid to say something for fear it’ll trigger an angry outburst, it makes for inauthentic connections. This is to say nothing of how an anger outburst can destroy relationships through hasty and hurtful words spoken or actions taken in anger.

Bringing anger under control will also benefit your spiritual health, as James reminds us that “human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” (James 1:20, NIV) Our anger, if left unchecked, can lead us to dishonor God and others.

3. To help stabilize your moods.

If you allow it, anger can dominate your life and overshadow other emotions. Instead of being even-keeled, leaning too much into your anger can make for erratic behavior and moods. Controlling anger will help you to embrace it, learn from it, and then move past it, making for better emotional health.

7 Tips for controlling your anger

1. Acknowledge the role of anger in your life.

Earlier it was mentioned that anger is often perceived negatively, and that’s not without reason. Unhealthy expressions of anger abound, from road rage, internet rants, or domestic violence and other forms of abuse. However, the issue is unhealthy expressions of anger, not anger itself.

Don’t deny your feelings or try to suppress your anger, as that can cause problems later such as significant impacts on your health. These can include heart disease, stroke, a weakened immune system, and an increased risk of anxiety and depression.

Instead, permit yourself to feel your feelings. It’s okay to feel irritated, annoyed, and frustrated, as these feelings have a role to play in our lives. Anger is a reaction to a perceived threat, and it points to something going on in your life that you need to acknowledge and rectify.

2. Learn to calm yourself.

When anger is triggered, it sets off our fight-or-flight response which helps us respond to potential threats. When you’re angry, your body releases cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones that cause you to perspire and increase your heart rate and blood flow to your muscles. All of this is to get you ready to either fight or flee.

When you’re angry, it affects you physically as well as mentally and emotionally. One way to interrupt anger is to calm your physical responses to anger. You can do this through a variety of techniques such as deep breathing, focused breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, visualization, and meditation.

These are all ways to focus your attention away from whatever initiated your anger response, putting your anger at bay and leaving you feeling calmer and at peace. Being able to calm yourself will help you rein anger in when you’re feeling angry, but it can also help to control your anger before it sets in.

3. Find a healthy outlet.

When you feel angry, you feel like doing something. Your body is chock-full of hormones that have primed you for action, and all of that pent-up energy needs to go somewhere. You can control your anger by finding a healthy outlet that allows you to safely metabolize some of the chemicals that were released when you became angry.

Some ways to handle anger well include walking away from the situation or taking a brisk stroll around the block. Some people help themselves calm down by doing the dishes or mowing the lawn.

Physical activity such as going for a run, an intense bike ride, or using a punching bag or rowing machine helps by diverting your attention, and releasing your pent-up aggression, all the while releasing feel-good neurochemicals such as endorphins that elevate your mood.

Additionally, you can also release your feelings of anger through creative endeavors such as drawing, painting, coloring, or writing a journal. Journaling physically or electronically can have a calming effect by allowing you to express your feelings without venting them toward the person that angered you. 

Finding a healthy outlet for your feelings gives you room to calm down and process what you’re feeling. You can also calm down through helpful distractions such as relaxing with a friend or playing with your pet; these can help refresh you without you hiding from the anger.

4. Adopt healthy routines.

Being healthy in general helps you handle emotionally challenging situations much better. For this reason, getting good sleep, nutrition, and regular exercise can help you deal effectively with anger and keep it under control.

For example, have you ever noticed that if you’re feeling tired or hungry, it’s easier to feel or get angry? When your mind is tired due to poor sleep, or you’re low on energy due to hunger, that can lower your anger threshold. Making changes such as getting a full night’s rest every night and eating meals regularly can make a big difference in how you deal with anger.

5. Avoid alcohol when you are angry.

When you’re angry, you need every advantage you can get to keep that anger in check. Alcohol tends to lower your inhibitions, decrease your ability to control your actions, and make it harder to make rational decisions. Alcohol can make it easier for you to lean into aggressive behaviors, and it can also lower your anger threshold so that you are more sensitive to offense.

If you know that alcohol has the effect of making you more belligerent than usual, avoid it in general so it doesn’t create a gap for unhealthy anger.

6. Pinpoint your triggers. 

We get angry over different things, such as when we feel like we’re being ignored, disrespected, insulted, or overlooked. Anger also arises in situations that are reminiscent of past trauma. This is why it’s important to know what triggers your anger. This prepares you to understand how you respond to and interpret particular situations.

Knowing your triggers can help in at least two ways. It allows you to avoid those triggers and it can also help you navigate situations in which those triggers are present. Knowing your triggers helps you communicate well with others about what you’re going through and why.

When dealing with your triggers, it may at times be best to take a break from them, whether permanently or temporarily. This may mean, for example, making changes such as ending or taking a break from a relationship, changing jobs, taking a different route to work, or not patronizing certain establishments.

7. Practice forgiveness.

It may not be easy, but one way to overcome anger is to practice forgiveness and let go of whatever offense someone has caused you. Forgiveness is about relinquishing any desire to get the other person back for whatever harm, real or perceived, that they may have inflicted upon you.

For the Christian, one reason forgiveness is possible rests in the life and work of Jesus Christ, through whom God forgave us our many sins (Ephesians 4:32). Not only that but understanding that God will deal with whatever wrongs we’ve suffered in a just manner helps us to let go of our vengeance (Romans 12:19-21).

Finding help for anger issues.

Having someone to talk to about your anger makes a difference, particularly if they are an effective listener. Effective listeners understand what is being said by asking good follow-up and clarifying questions, paraphrasing and summarizing what’s been said, and not interrupting or jumping to conclusions so the other person expresses themselves fully.

Counselors are trained to be effective listeners and they can help you work through your anger so that it works for you and doesn’t control you. If your anger is causing issues in your life, you should consider counseling. Your counselor can walk alongside you as a partner as you seek to reclaim your well-being and mitigate any damage to relationships caused by unhealthy anger.

You can seek guidance on controlling anger and talk through your concerns with your counselor. Contact our office today for help.