Know How to Tackle Your Anger
‘Father kills son.’ ‘Student runs amok killing five of his classmates.’ ‘Mother poisons her kids before committing suicide.’ ‘Disappointed lover throws acid on girl’s face.’ ‘Realtor hacked to death.’ ‘Teacher breaks child’s leg.’
Such headings catch our attention but are quietly and conveniently forgotten after some time. They should make us think about the meaning of our existence. What makes someone hurt and kill a loved person? Does it happen to only a few people or is it common to everyone? How do we react when someone is angry at us? If we can think about these then we may understand where we are heading.
Anger Hurts
Paul Ekman says that “anger is the most dangerous emotion”. The word anger is one letter short of danger. It is dangerous because it triggers us to hurt someone including ourselves. No anger can remain without hurting someone in one way or another. Whether this hurt is as dangerous as killing someone or as mild as slamming the door is a matter of degree but the hurt remains and is carried to precipitate further anger.
Distress and Anger
Anger cannot manifest without distress. Distress is aroused in the individual when the need is not fulfilled. It could be physiological needs like the need for food, water, or sex. It could be psychosocial needs like the need for belongingness, affiliation, self-esteem, etc.
One major type of distress that is directly connected to anger is frustration. Frustration is aroused in us when we are blocked from reaching the goal or when we lack goals. The automatic reaction to frustration is anger.
Does Anger Reduce Distress?
Anger helps us to attack the barrier towards our goal. The moment an individual is angry the blood flows to the hands enabling him or her to attack. At the same time, there is an increase in heart rate and respiration. Hormones like adrenalin are pumped into the body so that we can act with greater strength and energy. More about how emotions are connected to Stress can be found here.
The Question of Survival
Emotions like fear and anger are essential to ensure the survival of the individual. In case of a threat, the individual must be able to run away from the danger or attack the threatening object or individual. This flight and fight response is induced every time we are afraid or angry. In our everyday civilized life, we rarely come across physical threats to our bodily survival. However, we continue to feel threatened about our social and psychological survival. Hence, we get angry whenever things do not turn out according to our expectations.
Learning to be Angry
The majority of our anger is learned through conditioning. When a neutral stimulus or situation is associated with a stimulus that arouses anger, we start feeling angry about the stimulus that was neutral earlier. In addition, our anger is reinforced by others, which makes us manifest anger in similar situations. For instance, parents who yield to their child’s temper tantrums are helping the child learn to be angry. We keep what works for us and discard what does not, even though it is harmful to us. When anger helps us win, we continue to use it as a weapon.
The rest of our learning comes from imitation and modeling. Parental behavior, adults, movies, TV serials, magazines, novels, storybooks, and scores of other sources assist us in copying angry behavior, and we implicitly imbibe them without questioning. We are also capable of improvising in our learning, and as we age, we have too many things to be angry about.
Does Anger Help Us?
Consider the following situations:
A
father is angry at his daughter because she does not listen to his advice
A
mother is angry at her son because he does not keep his room clean
A
boss is angry at his subordinates because they make mistakes
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driver is angry when someone comes in front of his vehicle while he is driving
A
child is angry because she is told not to go out to play
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student is angry because his marks are lower than what he expected
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teacher is angry because a student has not done the homework
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homemaker is angry when someone in the family comes home late
Parents
show anger when children watch TV
What threats do you see in these situations? Where is the question of survival? Do the behaviors stop because someone is angry? What do we achieve in being angry? Is it justified to increase our distress?
Controlling Anger
People often tell us to count to 10 or engage in some other activity to control our anger. Common sense suggestions do not solve the problem but only help us in postponing it. There are two faces to anger or any emotion. One is the experience of anger and the other is an expression of anger. Our regulation should not be restricted to our expression of anger as enough damage would have occurred in us the moment we experienced it. Hence, the only solution to managing anger is to keep away from it.
Rational
Thinking
It has been over ten years since Daniel Goleman talked about Emotional Intelligence. However, very little changes have happened in the lifestyles of people despite so much insight being advocated by him. Goleman talks about the rational mind as against the emotional mind. In emergencies the use of the emotional mind is necessary. But we rarely have such urgency where we need to defend ourselves from the threat immediately. We have enough time to think about the threat but we rarely do so and act instinctively.
Pointers to Tackle Anger
ü Analyze apparent and real threat
ü Develop frustration tolerance
ü Delay your gratification
ü Have patience and hope
ü Tolerate ambiguity
ü Respond and not react
ü Reduce distress and increase positive stress
ü Control impulsive behavior
ü Cultivate internal locus of control
ü Learn relaxation and happiness
ü Do not defend unnecessarily
ü Use ego-defense mechanisms
ü Remember that anger breeds anger
ü Life is there to live, not to hurry
ü Accept mistakes in you and others
ü Cultivate a sense of humor
ü Manage your time
ü Be assertive and not aggressive
ü Encourage others to change
ü Remind yourself that anger is a silent killer
It takes some initial effort to change. Others do not allow us easily to change. However, persistence in trying to change is the key to overcoming our problems. The time and effort we invest in modifying our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and actions go a long way in tackling our anger.
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