Anger

Anger is an emotion that we all feel at one time or another.  In and of itself, anger is a perfectly natural and healthy emotion.  Anger can be felt for many reasons.  We can feel angry because someone has wronged us, because we made a mistake, because someone cut us off, or because someone said something negative about us.  Just like any emotion anger is a way for us to know when something isn't quite right.  If however, we notice that we are more easily angered over small things, feel angry most of the day, have less tolerance, increase in violent thoughts regardless of if we would act on them or not, start to hit things or destroy property, or even drive more recklessly, we may want to consider that anger could be a symptom of something else.  

Below is information taken from Mental Health Foundation 

(http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk

Anger is a powerful emotion and releasing the pressure that builds inside you can be essential to deal with problems and move on. But if anger isn’t dealt with in a healthy way, it can have a significant effect on your daily life, relationships, achievements and mental well-being.

What is anger?

Anger is one of the most basic human emotions. It is a physical and mental response to a threat or to harm done in the past. Anger takes many different forms from irritation to blinding rage or resentment that festers over many years. "I get this bubble of rage. I go wild. I feel like crying cos I don’t know how to control myself. It happens too quickly."

At any point in time, a combination of physical, mental and social factors interact to make us feel a certain way. It’s different for each of us. Our feelings are influenced by our emotional make-up, how we view the world, what happens around us and our circumstances. Like other emotions, anger rarely acts alone.

How does anger work?

As we go about our lives, we’re constantly weighing up situations and deciding what we think about them: good or bad, safe or unsafe etc. How we interpret a situation influences how we feel about it. If we think we are in danger, we feel afraid. If we feel we have been wronged, we feel angry. These feelings determine how we react to the situation. We translate meanings into feelings very fast. With anger, that speed sometimes means that we react in ways we later regret.

How do our bodies respond to anger?

Many of our emotions are linked to a particular physical response. Anger gets the mind and body ready for action. It arouses the nervous system, increasing the heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow to muscles, blood sugar level and sweating. It also sharpens the senses and increases the production of adrenalin, a hormone produced at times of stress.

At the same time as these physical changes, anger is thought to affect the way we think. When we are first faced with a threat, anger helps us quickly translate complex information into simple terms: 'right' or 'wrong' for instance. This can be useful in an emergency as we don’t waste valuable time weighing up information that doesn’t instantly affect our safety or well-being.

But it can mean that we act before we've considered what else is relevant and made a rational decision about how to behave. It may be that we need to take more time to look at the situation and deal with it differently. When anger gets in the way of rational thinking we may give way to the urge to act aggressively, propelled by the instinct to survive or protect someone from a threat.

Why do we get angry?

"I could scream down the throat of people who try to crowd into the train before people have the chance to get off."

Reasons for getting angry include:

If we think someone has wronged us on purpose, this can make us angrier. If we’re having a bad day and are in a state of constant tension, we’re more likely to snap when something else goes wrong, even if it’s something that wouldn’t usually bother us.

We may feel angry immediately or only feel angry later when we go back over a situation. Anger can surface years later that has its roots in abuse or neglect long ago. Sometimes anger stays locked inside us for decades because it wasn’t dealt with sufficiently at the time.

How do people behave when they are angry?

"When someone physically threatened my daughter when she was a newborn I exploded. I got a real physical sense of something being different that I haven’t experienced before or since."

Anger isn’t always negative. It can be a force for good. Moral outrage can drive people to campaign for change, right wrongs and enforce the rules that govern our society.

People often think of anger and aggression as the same thing, but they aren’t. Anger is an emotional state and aggression is just one of the ways that people behave when they are angry. Aggression often takes over when people act on their instinct to protect themselves or others. Alcohol can make some people act more aggressively and drug use can similarly lower our inhibitions.

People often express their anger verbally. They may:

Some people who are angry get their own back indirectly by making other people feel guilty and playing on that guilt. Others develop a cynical attitude and constantly criticize everything, but never address problems constructively.

Some people internalize their anger. They may be seething inside and may physically shake, but they don’t show their anger in the way they behave when they are around other people.

People who internalize their anger may self harm when they are angry as a way of coping with intense feelings they can’t express another way. This may give temporary relief from the angry feelings, but it doesn’t solve the problems in the long-term.

What kind of problems can be linked to anger?

Anger in itself is neither good nor bad; it becomes a problem when it harms us or other people. Anger is the emotion most likely to cause problems in relationships in the family, at work and with friends. People with a long term anger problem tend to be poor at making decisions, take more risks than other people and are more likely to have a substance misuse problem.

Long term and intense anger has been linked with mental health problems including depression, anxiety and self-harm. It is also linked to poorer overall physical health as well as particular conditions, such as:

How can managing my anger help me?

"If I could have expressed my anger more openly and constructively it would have been less damaging to me. Otherwise you carry the hurt with you."

Most people get angry quite often, but their anger is within a normal and healthy range. Other people experience anger frequently and intensely enough for it to interfere with their everyday life.

Both sets of people can benefit from learning how to deal with their anger more effectively. There’s lots of evidence to suggest that managing your anger in a healthy way can help people look after their mental and physical health, feel more positive about themselves, achieve their goals, solve problems and enjoy relationships with the people around them.

Anger can lead you to action, or even violence, you will regret. Bottling up your anger for a long time isn’t a good thing either. It’s important to deal with anger and move on, not let it stew inside you.

Tips For Managing Your Anger

Anger can often be the emotion that we most readily recognize. We may not however always understand or recognize that there are other feelings lying underneath the surface of anger.  Anger/agitation/irritability is often an emotion that comes out when we are sad, scared, anxious, or stressed.  It's not always easy to see what lies beneath it.  Sometimes we just recognize that we are agitated all the time.  If this is the case, here are some things you can do.

Breathe:  We have all heard people say, "When you feel angry count to ten before you react."  Well, though it may be easier said than done, taking a time out is a very good technique.  When we are angry we lose the ability reason as well as we would so, taking a breathe, or two or ten, will help us regain our reasoning abilities.  Deep breathes will slow our bodies down as well as our minds.  Instead of spitting out a cacophony of swear words or things we will regret, take a moment, breathe, try to acknowledge the feeling and express it in a way that won't have feeling bad afterward. 

Think before you speak: This is really the underlying theme of all of these tips.  If you don't feel like you can speak without being hurtful, ask for some space and take it.  Make sure though that you always follow up with the conversation.  Don't let things linger.  If you are able to talk about things but the person you're angry with is not, make sure you allow them the same respect that you would like.  Offer them space or time and make sure they know you want to follow up and attempt to resolve the situation.  There are few things worse than lingering anger and arguments that are about incidents that happened weeks or months ago when you are talking about something more recent. 

Exercise:  Sometimes we know we can't get ourselves to release the anger the way we want in that moment.  Sometimes we have difficulty clearing our heads or even releasing the angry tension from our bodies.  This is where some exercise may come in handy.  A good run, bike ride, swimming, anything that gets the heart rate going and gets you to focus on something else would be good.  It could even be yoga.  The main ideas is to let the angry tension make its way out of your body, slow yourself down and allow for your ability to rationalize come back.  

Participate in creating solutions:  We can't always be right and we can't always get exactly what we want, but if a relationship is important enough, work toward compromise and resolution that you both can live with.  

Tips For Dealing With Other People's Anger - Taken from mentalhealth.org.uk

How Can I Deal With Other People's Anger? 

Being on the receiving end of anger or just being a witness to it can be tough. If other people's anger is having a bad effect on you, you shouldn't have to put up with it.

Anger tends to be catching, but staying calm yourself can help both of you. If you get angry as well, things can quickly escalate.

Bear in mind the tactics that calm people down - use them yourself and remind the other person what can help them relax or distract themselves.

Help them to consider why they are angry and encourage them to explain it to you calmly.

Explain that sometimes anger is justified, but it can also make people lose perspective - unnecessary aggression makes things worse.

It may help to take yourself away from an angry person. Give them time to cool down, wait a few minutes, then talk to them when they seem less agitated and may be more able to look at the situation neutrally.

No one needs to put up with violence. If you are afraid or feel threatened by someone's anger, you should ask for help. If you have been assaulted, call the police.

Resources

The Deadly Effects of Anger on Your Health and Mind - Taken from undergroundhealthreporter.com by Danica Collins.

How to Recognize and Deal with Anger - Link to the American Psychological Association's website, and an article on the topic. 

The College Student vs. Anger - Blog posting from mycollegepal.com on how to keep anger in check. 

Managing Student Anger about Grades