Six-Step Process for Managing Your Anger

Once you've grappled with your feelings, the next challenge is managing your anger by following these steps:

1. Avoid anger.

2. Calm yourself physically.

3. Think logically.

4. Express your feelings appropriately and effectively.

5. Seek solutions to the underlying causes of your anger.

6. Let it go.

1. Avoid Anger
When thinking about this important step, keep in mind the wide range of things likely to cause anger; for example, big-picture (systemic) causes, blocked goals, perceived inequity, divergent values, and unequal power relationships.

If you lead an active life, have a busy career, and interact with many people, you cannot isolate yourself from every external irritant. You're going to sit in traffic jams, be put on hold when making business calls, and so on. Sometimes you will get less than your fair share, or your children will, or your parents will, or your friends will. You won't make every sale or meet every deadline. You will probably work with people who are less diligent than you, less competent than you, or less honest than you. You will probably have a boss, or a teacher, or a family member, or a customer who has power over you. And you will probably find yourself with power over others.

Even if you could hide from every environmental factor likely to anger you, you still would be vulnerable to internal causes of anger. You might be mad at yourself for placing such restrictions on your life, for depriving yourself of all that the outside world has to offer. You might feel that others disapprove of your hiding. And so forth.

Although you cannot hide from the causes of anger, you can take steps that make you less susceptible to them. If you feel happy, confident, and in control, then you are less likely to respond as strongly to anger stimuli. Try these steps:

Consider your environment and lifestyle.

Examine your outlook on life.

Start taking better care of yourself.

Consider Your Environment and Lifestyle
Start by compiling a list of the things that make you angry; then see whether you can avoid any of them or at least make helpful adjustments.

For another approach, take a look at your typical daily schedule and then fill in the details. Be as thorough as possible about what you usually do each hour:

Where are you, with whom, doing what, and how?

Then think about which aspects of your environment and lifestyle are most likely to make you feel angry.

Can you think of adjustments that might reduce the anger? For example:

If you and your spouse tend to fight at a certain time each day, perhaps you can make it a point to cross paths at a different time.

If your commute drives you crazy, maybe there's an alternative mode of transportation you can use or an alternative time you can travel.

If you hate your officemate, maybe you can move to a different workspace.

If you become angry when you watch the evening news, maybe you can read the newspaper instead.

Start Taking Better Care of Yourself
Make sure you're getting enough sleep and exercise. Eat well, selecting healthy foods, but don't eat too much. Drink lots of water and less coffee and liquor. If you smoke or do drugs, stop. The better you feel physically, the less susceptible you will be to anger. Lack of sleep, health problems, alcohol consumption, and drug use all increase the likelihood that even small annoyances will provoke your anger. In the long run, feeling good physically will contribute to a healthier approach to anger and make harmful anger less likely.

That said, you also need time alone to think and relax. Schedule personal time for just thinking—not watching television, reading, doing chores, or anything else.

Finally, take care of yourself in your dealings with other people. Be assertive (not aggressive), expressing your needs and wants in straight, simple terms. That doesn't mean you need to become selfish and unreasonable. But if you keep your needs and wants to yourself and never express them, you're likely to be very disappointed very frequently. And that leads to resentment and anger. Other people cannot read your mind; so you have to speak up and make yourself understood.

2. Calm Yourself Physically
No matter how diligently you try to avoid anger, you will still get angry on occasion. Pay attention to the people and circumstances that tend to make you angry, and learn to recognize the early warning signs of anger:

Do you tense up? Clench your fists?

Does your heart race?

Do you sweat? Flush? Pale?

Do you breathe rapidly? Grind your teeth? Glare? Shudder? Twitch? Become speechless? Feel like yelling? Crying? Hitting?

When you detect those warning signs, take the first step to effective anger management by calming yourself down. How? Try one or more of these techniques:

Physical Exercises

Jump up and down eight times.

Do 11 jumping jacks.

Clench your muscles—fists, toes, legs, arms, chest, stomach, neck, face—and release them. Do this three times.

Close your eyes and clasp your hands behind your head and count to nine.

Close your eyes and breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Do this 10 times.

Close your eyes, cross your arms in front of you and clasp your shoulders (right shoulder with left hand, left shoulder with right hand). Hug yourself and rock from side to side five times.

Take a five- or 10-minute walk or run.

Mental Exercises

Close your eyes and sing or hum to yourself.

Recite a brief poem to yourself, or say a prayer.

Tell yourself, "Relax, don't let this get to you." Do this 10 times.

Count backward from 100.

Tell yourself a joke, or think of something funny.

Think of someone you love.

Think of a beautiful place where you've spent important time.

The physical exercises will help to dissipate or at least diffuse your anger, and the mental exercises will help to slow your heart rate and reverse some of the adjustments your body is making to prepare for aggression. These techniques will also give you enough distance—physical and/or temporal—to think through the situation and break it down into its component parts.

Note that any physically purposeful interruption (exercise or exertion) and form of mental relaxation will provide similar benefits.

3. Think Logically
It's critical to realize that what makes us angry is not just a certain stimulus but also our interpretation of that stimulus. For this reason, once you've begun to calm yourself physically, it's time to start thinking—to review your situation before you speak or act.

First, admit to yourself that you're angry and remind yourself that anger distorts your thinking; then get ready to do some cognitive restructuring. As you think through the situation, stay away from absolutes like "never" and "always." These are detrimental because:

They are usually inaccurate.

They make you feel overly justified in your anger.

They suggest that a situation cannot be changed (and thus that problems cannot be solved).

When expressed, they alienate people who might otherwise be willing to work toward a solution.

Start asking and answering these questions for yourself:

Who or what is making me angry?

Why am I angry?

What provoked me? When? How?

Is there an alternative explanation for the provoking event?

How would the other people involved describe the provoking event?

Does my self-esteem feel threatened?

How do I feel? Do I feel betrayed? Disapproved of? Deprived? Exploited? Frustrated? Humiliated? Manipulated? Restricted? Threatened?

What is my anger telling me? What data is it providing?

Is my anger legitimate? If so, why? And at whom or what should I be directing it?

How angry should I be under the circumstances?

What are some reasons why I should be less angry?

What do I want to accomplish with my anger?

Questions such as these help you develop a task orientation toward the anger, in place of an ego-driven focus. Again, admit to yourself that you're angry. Simply say, "I am angry at [OBJECT OF ANGER] because [REASON]." Then set your intentions to do the following:

Express your feelings effectively to the appropriate recipient of your anger

Seek solutions to the underlying cause of the anger

Let go of the anger

4. Express Your Feelings Appropriately and Effectively
If you want to express your feelings appropriately and effectively, you first have to know how you feel, what you think, and what you need or want. This is why it's so important to think logically before you speak or act on your anger. Angry people often jump to conclusions and react in the heat of emotion. Whether you repress anger or vent it, this approach is ineffective.

If you've calmed your physical response to anger and logically thought through your anger, then you should know whom you're angry with and why. What is more, you should have a more balanced view of the situation and a diminished level of anger. Most important, you should know what you want to accomplish with your anger.

What might you decide to accomplish by expressing your anger? There are a number of possibilities:

You might seek revenge for the hurt you feel.

You might try to repair hurt feelings by confiding your vulnerability to the person who hurt you. Here you hope you'll receive an apology, an admission of the other person's vulnerability, or a similar gratifying response.

You might remove an obstacle to effective communication by "clearing the air."

You might seek a specific remedy to a particular, identifiable harm.

You might look for ways to prevent similar anger-provoking events from occurring in the future.

Of course, all but the first of the above goals are productive. While the desire for revenge is a natural impulse, it is extremely counterproductive, escalating conflict, fear, defensiveness, and anger, and posing serious problems for effective resolution.

Express your anger in the right words to the right person at the right time. Schedule a meeting soon, but not too soon, to discuss the matter with the appropriate person. Remember your goal: What do you want to accomplish? Decide what you want to say. For example, "I am angry with you because [REASON]. I think the underlying cause of my anger is [CAUSE]. What I want [or need] now is [WANT OR NEED]." Be honest. Be reasonable. Keep the message brief, straight, and simple.

When you know what you want to say, rehearse. However, when you speak with the other person, remember that you want to have a conversation, not give a speech. Say up front, "I know we may have different points of view about this situation. I'd like to tell you how I feel, and I'd like to know how you feel. Would you like me to go first? I'll be very brief." When it's your turn to speak, you can present your case.

Be sure to listen carefully to the other person's viewpoint. Don't get distracted; don't start preparing defensive responses; don't interrupt. Listen. Hear what the person is saying. Perhaps he or she is still upset and expressing a lot of anger. The person might even respond vengefully, seeking to hurt you because you hurt him or her. Try to listen and realize that. If the person's response begins to make you angry, try to calm down and think logically.

As you're listening, try to identify next steps. Maintain a task orientation: You think you know the underlying cause of your anger. What is the underlying cause of the other person's anger? You know what you want or need (your goals). What does the other person need or want (what are his or her goals)? Are your goals in alignment with the person's goals, or do they clash? What is the relationship between the cause of your anger and the cause of the other person's anger?

Bear in mind, there are cases when a person's behavior or an entire situation is unacceptable. In such a case, you must be able to describe the behavior or situation, take responsibility for your view that it is unacceptable, and describe the behavior or situation and its tangible effects. If the anger's causes are intransigent or the person's goals and yours are mutually exclusive, there may be no obvious next steps. Here the best approach is negotiation—to work together to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution involving mutual compromises.

If you wish to use the data provided by anger to your advantage, you must go beyond resolving acute hostility. The next step is to seek solutions to the underlying causes of the anger.

5. Seek Solutions to the Underlying Causes of Your Anger
Remember that anger has a wide range of causes and influencing factors. Some issues can be addressed easily; others are more difficult. For example, if you're ticked off that you didn't get a free donut at work on Friday, you can come to work earlier next Friday, in plenty of time to get a donut. Or you can go buy yourself one. Or you can congratulate yourself on saving the calories. That's an easy one. More challenging would be if you were angry that you didn't get a promotion or a significant raise this year. But you can take action: build new skills, tackle important projects, do great work, and impress important decision-makers.

Other issues are simply beyond reach. For example, if you're angry at a system that allows terrorism to occur, there may not be much you can do. Still, you can seek a solution that will help your anger by changing your response to the underlying cause.

First, you must look closer at the underlying cause of your anger. By this point, you should be clear about who or what is making you angry and why. Ask and answer the following questions:

Are you angry about some large systemic factor (the weather, the economy, the culture, the government, the company)?

Do you perceive some inequity somewhere?

Are your goals being blocked somehow?

Are you clashing with someone over values?

Are you dealing with someone who has authority over you in a formal or informal hierarchy? Is the person using that authority in a way that is making you angry?

Are you dealing with someone who answers to you as an authority in a formal or informal hierarchy? Is the person letting you down in some way?

Is your self-esteem being threatened in some way? How?

Do you feel betrayed? Disapproved of? Deprived? Exploited? Frustrated? Humiliated? Manipulated? Restricted? Threatened?

Second, ask yourself: Is the underlying cause something I can change? If the answer is yes, prepare to make a plan of action. If the answer is no, prepare to make a plan of action that will help you change how you feel about the cause or at least how you respond to those feelings. In the end, you may simply have to "let it go."

Third, make your plan of action:

State the cause of your anger.

State your objective in the form of a concrete goal with a clear deadline.

Schedule intermediate goals and deadlines.

Plan your next steps. What are you going to do about this today?

Monitor achievements along the way and stay on track

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Be aware that some plans of action take a long time to implement. If the undertaking is worthwhile, stick it out; but don't hold onto your anger. Draw strength from the fact that you're taking action to address the underlying cause, and channel your anger into that action. As for any residual anger, "let it go."

Finally, upon reflection you may decide that changing the underlying cause is possible but not worth your time and energy. In which case, once again, you may simply have to "let it go."

6. Let It Go
You must be able to let go of your anger eventually, whether the underlying cause is (a) immediately resolved, (b) resolved over a long time, (c) impossible to resolve, or (d) simply not worth the time and energy needed to resolve it. Let go of the anger, and move on.