Anger Management

Anger is a two-step process. It starts with the experience of pain, either physical or emotional, such as a stubbed toe or feelings of rejection. It can be something that frustrates your needs or threatens your safety. The pain is unpleasant and makes you want to put an end to it. The second component of anger is trigger thoughts. These are interpretations, assumptions, and evaluations of a situation that make you feel victimized and deliberately harmed by others. Trigger thoughts blame others for the painful experience you have suffered.

Pain plus trigger thoughts creates anger. Once you get angry, trigger thoughts can also make it worse. They can escalate your upset by continually painting the other person as bad, wrong, and out to harm you. Each new trigger thought pushes your anger a notch higher, until you end up saying and doing very damaging things. Pain leads to trigger thoughts, which lead to anger, more trigger thoughts, more anger, and so on. Your thoughts and angry feelings become a spiraling feedback loop.

With all the negatives associated with anger, why does it remain such a powerful force in your life? A good place to start understanding this question is the five short-term payoffs anger can provide.

Anger Payoffs

1. Anger reduces stress. Stress creates physiological arousal—tension. The greater the stress the more unpleasant the arousal is. Right after a blowup, people often feel relaxed. Even thought these effects are brief and tension soon returns, the anger discharge can be highly reinforced. Unfortunately, the stress comes back with a vengeance and creates more anger. Your anger gets worse and so does the anger of those around you. Anger is a good strategy for short term discharge of stress, but tends to boomerang and result in broken relationships.
2. Anger hides emotional pain. It is a good defense against fear, loss, guilt, shame, rejection, or failure, locking most of the feelings out of awareness. But the short-term payoff has long-term consequences. First, you don’t experience feelings that may be important signals that offer guidance. Second, the hidden feelings often get worse over time. Third, the anger becomes habitual.
3. Anger gets attention. People become alarmed and try to placate you. But again, the immediate payoff has long-term consequences. Many people may respond to your anger with defense and tune you out, avoid you, or hold it against you. The people who responded to your anger get hardened over time and shut down.
4. Anger may be used for punishment or revenge. You want people to feel as much pain as you do. The trouble is, you make enemies of the people you love and need most. Also, your enemies want to punish you in return, creating a continuous power struggle.
5. Anger helps change others. In the short run, people often give you what you want. However, in the long run they turn off and turn way from you. Also using anger to change others makes you feel helpless. The other person has to fix your pain and you feel powerless to overcome the problem yourself.

Addressing Anger

A powerful antidote to anger is taking personal responsibility for yourself. You are the one who knows your needs the best. Rather than blaming or judging, most effective coping strategies involve a specific plan for dealing with a situation. “I will negotiate the best deal I can get.” “I will find another way to solve my problem without their cooperation.” A good plan that takes responsibility for meeting your own needs helps you feel more in control and less angry.

Seven Traits of People Who Express Their Anger in Healthy Ways*

1. They treat anger as a normal part of life.
2. They use anger as a signal that there are problems they need to address.
3. They take action when necessary, but only after they’ve carefully thought through the situation.
4. They express their anger in moderation, without losing control.
5. Their goal is to solve problems, not just express their feelings.
6. They state their anger clearly, in ways that others can understand so that others can respond appropriately to their needs and wants.
7. Finally, they let go of their anger, rather than hang on to it once the problem is over.

If anger is something that you are unable to learn to control on your own, you may need to work with a therapist to help you uncover and heal the pain underneath your anger and get back in touch with the other feelings that your anger has been helping you avoid.

* Taken from "Letting Go of Anger" by Ron & Pat Efron.