Anger is a normal human emotion. It’s a natural response to threat, injustice and personal attacks. We may also experience anger when someone or something blocks a goal that we are trying to achieve, when things don’t turn out as we expected, when we lose power, status or respect, or in response to being in physical or emotional pain.

Anger is a powerful emotion and if we lose control or react to anger impulsively, rather than responding with free will, then this can lead to problems. People who regularly get angry are more likely to suffer from heart disease, stress-related illnesses, and digestive problems. What’s more, difficulty managing anger can damage relationships and self-respect contributing to feelings of isolation, low mood and low self-esteem. 

When we learn to recognise and manage our anger in healthy ways, it is a very useful emotion that alerts us to problems and motivates us to make positive changes. To help you do this, we’ve put together our tips for recognising common physical sensations, thoughts and behaviours associated with anger and how to manage these effectively.  

“Anger is a normal human emotion. It’s a natural response to threat, injustice and personal attacks.”

How anger shows up in our body

We feel all our emotions in our body – it’s how it communicates with us! But we’re not always great at picking up on the signs. 

Think for a minute about how you experience anger in your body: 

• Do your muscles tighten?

• Do your jaws or hands clench?

• Does your heart beat faster or do you feel hotter or become flushed? 

If we can spot these common signs of anger and really pay attention to them, then we give ourselves the opportunity to make space to respond to anger effectively rather than reacting impulsively.

Two ways to manage the effects of anger on your body: 

• Slow your breathing down. See if you can pace your breathing to around five or six breaths per minute. Try breathing in for a count of five and breathing out for a count of seven.

• Do some intense exercise. A short burst of high intensity exercise like squatting, push ups, lifting weights or running up and down stairs, can release the tension that starts to build up in your body when you feel angry.

Scenarios that fuel our anger

Emotions colour our perspective of the world and make it more likely that we’ll interpret situations and events in ways that fuel our emotion. One way to think of it is when you’re angry you are viewing the world through anger goggles! How do you interpret situations when you feel angry? What kind of assumptions or judgments do you make? Are you more likely to start blaming or criticising yourself or others?

“Emotions colour our perspective of the world and make it more likely that we’ll interpret situations and events in ways that fuel our emotion. ”

One way to manage your thoughts when you feel angry: 

• Take a step back and describe the facts of the situation. Just the facts! See if you can unglue what you actually observe through your senses from your thoughts and assumptions about the event that prompted your anger. 

An example might be:

FACTS: I saw my manager walking down the street, I waved at them, they didn’t acknowledge me and kept on walking. 

INTERPRETATION: I thought “They ignored me on purpose! How rude!” 

Challenge your interpretations by practicing looking at all sides of a situation and all points of view. Are there other ways of looking at the situation that might also be true? 

ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION: My manager may not have seen me, they might have been lost in thought or in a rush to get somewhere. 

Expressions and actions when angry

One of the main functions of ALL our emotions is to get us to take action. When we experience anger we might get all sorts of urges to say and do things that express our anger and communicate it to those around us. 

Consider these questions:

• How do you express yourself when you’re angry?

• Do you want to raise your voice, shout, swear or use a sarcastic tone?

• What happens to your face and body language?

• Do you frown, stare, lean forward, move more quickly or with more exaggerated movements? 

• What do you do when you’re angry? 

• Do you make threatening or aggressive gestures? 

• Do you pound, stomp, throw or slam things? 

• Has it ever got to a point where you have physically or verbally attacked another person? 

Anger can make us want to do all these types of things but if we react without thinking, it can get us in all sorts of trouble!

Two ways to manage your behaviour when angry: 

• Be ASSERTIVE not aggressive. When we’re assertive we express our thoughts, feelings and opinions clearly and confidently. Keep your head up and your shoulders back and maintain appropriate eye contact. Hold your ground but don’t move forward.

• Use healthy communication strategies. Share statements on yourself (“I think/ I feel/ I believe/ It seems to me that…) and don’t make statements on other people (“You’re this or that/ you should/shouldn’t have done…”). Ask open-ended questions to help you understand the other person and see things from their perspective. 

Anger is a normal human emotion

We all need to release anger sometimes, but don’t do this in ways that could be harmful to yourself or others. If you need to get your anger out, try screaming into a pillow, sitting in your car and having a good yell, or share how you’re feeling with someone you trust. Ask their permission first and let them know you don’t want them to solve the problem for you, but you’d really appreciate the chance to get some stuff off your chest.

Try these tips when you’re aware of your anger and what has triggered it. At times when anger seems to strike out of the blue and the intensity goes from 0-100 in an instant, then you need to manage that differently. You can watch my video on how to manage intense anger here.