—
Every one of us carries around some degree of anger. That’s totally normal. Anger, along with fear, helps us survive. But instead of letting anger boil over, we can harness it so that it doesn’t spin out of control.
I don’t know anybody on the planet who doesn’t get angry. Granted, some are more physiologically prone to anger or their triggers or are easier to access than others. But I have no doubt that if you put Mother Teresa in a Department of Motor Vehicles waiting room, you would see an angry person.
We all know the feelings of frustration that come with life, and feelings of frustration can quickly lead to anger. But what we do next, how we respond, is key.
We often get pissed off when someone gets in the way when we’re trying to do something. But, when people are asked to describe their anger in these moments, they usually describe their frustration, because their anger got in their way. Did anger make anything move faster at the DMV? No. Did a road rage-induced temper tantrum make the slow driver ahead move faster? No. Anger, in these moments serves no purpose. Adding anger to frustration just makes our lives and other peoples’ lives harder.
We’re basically built to be cranky — being tired, hungry, cold, overworked, bored, lonely, anxious, surrounded by people who piss us off. Just living in the world brings all of our sensitivities to the surface. Any situation that leads us to be irritable makes us more aggressive. By learning what these feelings are and putting them in their proper context, we can quickly move through them without having strong reactions. Virtually none of this will kill us, so if we give it a few minutes, chances are we’ll feel better.
Our ability to regulate our emotions and not just reach for violence at the drop of a hat is essential. And, we’re currently living in a world boiling with volatility. Too many people are justifying violence as a solution to solve differences. The better we are at being aware of our emotions, and of choosing how to act on them (or not), the more personal power we command and transmit.
I once worked with an Olympic gymnast who trained with some of the Eastern European coaches well-known for their abusive styles. I asked her how she had survived her experience. She didn’t seem psychologically damaged, though others on her team were permanently scarred by what they went through.
What she said was truly brilliant. She told me that she realized some of her coaches were just bad people, but also that they were the best in the world at the technical side of the sport. So she learned to turn off the volume on them and just listen for the correction. In this way, she was able to take advantage of the useful advice and improve as an athlete without being destroyed by their nastiness.
For those of us who aren’t part of an abusive Olympic team, the lesson is the same: try to hear the positive in the stream of sh*t coming our way so we can react without overreacting. Otherwise, if we’re not careful, the negative we see, hear, feel, and experience overshadows the good in our lives.
Here are some tips for regulating emotions so anger doesn’t sabotage your life:
1. Pay attention to your emotional state. We live in overwhelming and exhausting times that leave us emotionally and mentally drained. This cognitive fatigue makes it hard to process different situations. We have difficulty filtering out the things that don’t matter. But the more you’re able to pay attention to your emotions and identify your triggers, the more you’re able to let most things slide off you.
2. Slow down your reactions. One of the biggest problems people have with anger is that they presume there’s a required behavioral response. This just isn’t true. Before aggressively acting on any perceived provocation, take a beat. Consider the possible explanations of how a situation may have developed. Then contemplate the different ways you could go about handling it and their potential consequences. If you act too rashly, you could end up hurting yourself more than the other person. Truthfully, 99 percent of conflicts can be avoided if you take a second to realize that in nearly all cases, no response is the right one.
3. Tap into your de-escalation techniques. Whether you realize it or not, you have de-escalation skills, even if you had no idea you came loaded with this software. The escalation of anger can happen in a matter of seconds, and it can take a little time to mentally catch up. Pay attention to your body and note its changes — rapid heart rate, muscle tension, shakiness, sweating. This is your sympathetic nervous system activating. Two key ways to control it are through slowing your breathing and progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), in which you focus your mind to systematically relaxing the muscles holding tension as you inventory your body, head to toe. PMR takes some practice, so don’t wait until you’re in the heat of the moment to experiment with it. The more skills you have to de-escalate and the more you are proficient with them, the more you’ll be able to lower the temperature of your anger when needed.
4. Learn to be in charge of situations. We can predict many things in the world. If you punch a cop, you’ll be arrested. If you present yourself poorly to a potential client, you may never get the opportunity to close the deal. Success in life is about aggressively going after your goal without so much anger that you can’t think clearly – often shooting yourself in the foot as a result. The goal is to be able to identify what amount of emotion a situation calls for and adjust the flame to the level needed to “hit it out of the park.”
Using these self-regulation techniques will help us lower the volume on what we don’t like so we don’t spin out of control. We only have control over ourselves, and using these levers of control leads to better outcomes.
* * *
