Anger And Mental Health: How To Manage Your Anger So It Doesn’t Manage You
Concerned about anger and mental health? Perhaps you’ve been told by a loved one or coworker that you ‘seem angry’ or need to control your temper better. Or maybe you’ve been feeling flat but you suspect that underneath that sensation is ongoing frustration, anger and irritability.
If you’re concerned about anger and mental health, you’re not the only one. Generally speaking, anger is a normal human emotion and healthy in small doses. But what happens when you get angry too much? Uncontrolled or chronic anger is associated with a host of physical, psychological and social problems. For instance:
- Persistent anger and aggression as personality traits are a significant risk factor for suicide and suicide attempts
- Anger and aggression are frequently associated with increased interpersonal difficulties and violence
- Anger has been linked to higher rates of cardiovascular problems and mortality
When it comes to anger and mental health it is essential to remember: We all get angry sometimes but if anger has been bothering you or affecting the people around you, then it is important to learn how to control an angry mood with anger management strategies. Read on for some essential information on anger and mental health.
What Is Anger?
Anger is a fundamental human emotion. It is a response we experience physically and mentally to a sense of threat, harm, or injustice. Anger appears in many guises – from mild annoyance to white hot violent rage or a sense of resentment that foments over years.
Some people are more prone to anger than others, and a person’s susceptibility to anger can vary over the course of a lifetime, according to circumstance and physiological (such as hormonal) changes. Some people take their anger out on those around them, while others bottle it up and act it out on themselves (a prime example of this is self-harm).
Manan Thakrar, Consultant Psychiatrist at The London Psychiatry Centre says: ‘We will all get angry at times. It’s a natural human response that evolution developed so humans could protect themselves from harm. Trying to ensure you never feel any anger is unhealthy and leads to toxic internalising and emotional dishonesty. People with a healthy relationship to anger learn to deal with it constructively so that it doesn’t harm others or themselves.’
What Happens When You Get Angry Too Much? Anger And Mental Health And Physical Wellbeing
Anger makes a person ‘feel stronger’ because it readies the body for action. Neuroscience has demonstrated that outrage can arouse the brain’s reward centres. Some people even come to rely on anger as a motivating force.
You may think ‘it’s just my personality’ or ‘it helps me to get things done’. Perhaps you’ve noticed that others – such as work colleagues – respond more quickly to you when you are angry. In short, you may think it works for you. But there is a difference between fear and respect, and short-term wins versus long-term wellbeing.
Chronic anger is unhealthy for the mind and body. Generally speaking, becoming angry activates our sympathetic nervous system and puts us into a state of high alert (heart rate increases, blood pressure goes up, muscles tense etc). While this ‘fight or flight’ response is evolution’s tool to protect us from danger, it is not a healthy state of being to reside in. For example:
- Research has demonstrated that recurring anger could increase a person’s chances of suffering heart disease by restricting the capacity of the blood vessels to open
- In the long-term, this sort of vascular damage can lead to heart attack and stroke
- An angry temperament has been linked to a risk of type 2 diabetes
- There is a relationship between driving anger and road traffic accidents
Poorly-managed anger is also linked to personal and social problems such as substance abuse and violence. Recurrent anger takes a toll on relationships, creating an invisible wall between ourselves and the people around us. Chronic anger and mental health problems such as depression and anxiety can be interlinked (suppressed anger is still anger). In short, we need to manage anger so it doesn’t manage us. But how? Read on to learn.
How Do I Know When I’m Getting Angry? Symptoms Of Anger
How does anger feel? Knowing how to recognise when you’re getting angry can be the first step in learning to managing it. Symptoms of anger can include:
- Muscles tensing
- Heart rate increasing or feeling your heart pounding in your chest
- Breathing gets shallower
- Chest feels tight
- Feeling warmer
- Unnecessary risk-taking behaviour
- Feeling a sense of humiliation
- Experiencing a sense of powerlessness
- Self-harming
- Snapping at people or feeling that they are ‘in your way’
- Unable to sit still or relax
- Feeling tense and agitated
- Fists clenching
- A desire to withdraw from others or to sulk
- A sense of resentment, revisiting others’ wrongs or mistakes in your mind
- A sense that ‘nothing matters’
- Finding yourself getting louder or being told you are shouting without realising you are
It is important to recognise these symptoms because if you have an issue with anger, you may be the last to know. It may actually be the people around you who are urging you to learn more about anger and mental health. The first step in anger management is to recognise when you’re becoming angry.
How To Control An Angry Mood: 8 Anger Management Strategies To Beat Anger
1. Science says: write down your angry thoughts with a pen and then rip up the paper
Getting it all out and then getting rid can help decrease your angry feelings – and research demonstrates it. A recent psychological experiment found that after an event that triggered anger in participants, writing down their angry feelings on paper before ripping up the paper and disposing of it led to decreased anger scores to as low as baseline (i.e. before the angering event). On the other hand, participants who left the angry-thoughts piece of paper in a file on the desk still had higher anger scores than at the beginning of the experiment. The takeaway? Vent your angry feelings on paper (where you don’t have to edit yourself and your anger can’t offend anyone else) and then rip the paper up and bin it, to achieve a sense of resolution.
2. Count to 10 (or 100 if needs be)
Yes, it’s a cliché by now, but there is research to support the strategy of counting to 10 or 100 when you feel angry. Doing so can provide time for the arousal in the body and mind characteristic of anger (fast heart rate, blood pounding, thoughts racing) to simmer down. In pausing and counting, you give the fight or flight response a chance to dissipate and leave a door open for the parasympathetic nervous system (the part of our nervous system that ‘downregulates’ us back into the healthier ‘rest and digest’ mode after a threat has triggered our ‘fight or flight’ response) to take over.
3. Do some deep breathing
When we feel angry or stressed, one of the things that tends to happen is that our breathing moves higher up our chest and becomes shallower. Many research studies support the notion that a good way to ‘downregulate’ and trigger the parasympathetic nervous system (telling our body and mind that we’re not under threat and can calm down) is to breathe more slowly and from lower down, in your diaphragm. Thankfully today there are a wealth of resources out there to help you learn to do this. You can take a class or simply google ‘deep breathing exercises’.
4. Take up yoga
Yes it’s probably the last thing you feel like doing if you’ve been chronically angry, but there is evidence that yoga is an effective anger management tool, and research has shown it to be associated with a reduction in anger scores. Yoga encourages slower, deeper breathing, which we know can help to trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, helping us to calm down.
5. Meditation
Meditation can be helpful not only because it tends to encourage slower, deeper or more mindful breathing, which can help to get us out of fight or flight stress mode, but it can also help with a very unpleasant thought-based aspect of anger too. Namely rumination – a key aspect of anger and mental health.
Ever find yourself going over and over a situation that has made you feel angry? Perhaps you imagine what you would do or say to that person if you could have a do-over. This is rumination. Angry rumination drains our time and energy and can divert us from doing the things that give us a sense of constructive agency and reward – i.e. things which can help us feel more empowered and less prone to anger in the longer term. Well, a research study on meditation and anger found that a group that did mindfulness meditation (in contrast to a control group that did not) showed decreased anger rumination scores even four weeks later. So get started, there are a wealth of free YouTube exercises and even a few minutes a day could make a difference.
6. Cardio exercise like running or boxing
Cardio exercise such as running or boxing may not have a direct relationship to reducing anger ‘in the moment’ the way deep breathing and counting can. But regular cardio exercise can certainly reduce your levels of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol (key anger chemicals) and release feel-good chemicals like endorphins instead. This can help you to feel calmer and readier to meet your day-to-day challenges. In short, cardio exercise is a gold-standard stress-buster.
7. Learn assertiveness techniques
Are you assertive, aggressive, or passive? If you’re aggressive, you turn your anger out towards others, likely creating stress and fear in those around you. If you’re passive, you tend to turn your anger inwards towards yourself, or express it to others covertly through withdrawing, silent punishment or little ‘digs’ and ‘barbs’. Neither of these dispositions is healthy. What is healthy? Assertiveness.
Assertiveness is a style of communicating in which you express your opinions, thoughts, feelings and needs in a sincere, direct way that demonstrates respect for others’ thoughts and feelings too.
It’s common for aggressive people to mistake their aggression for assertiveness (‘I’m not a pushover’ or ‘no one’s going to take advantage of me’). On the other hand, for passive people, the thought of being assertive can feel so overwhelming that it seems easier to just ‘go along to get along’. In the long run though, passivity only builds resentment towards others and yourself.
Assertiveness is a skill that can be learned and practised. To develop it, you can find many helpful books, or access resources online. Or even better, seek the help of a coach or therapist.
8. Reach out for help
No, you don’t have to go it alone. Trying to shoulder an anger problem all by yourself is not a sign of strength – reaching out for help is. There are so many effective techniques for anger management that you can learn quickly with the help of a trained therapist: from problem-solving strategies to stress-busting fixes. It may also be the case that your anger comes from unresolved issues such as past trauma. An expert therapist can help you get to grips with this, leaving you finally free to live your best life with the people you love.
Here at The London Psychiatry Centre, we’ve been successfully treating anger problems for decades. Our team includes some of the UK’s finest mental health professionals and we employ the most up to date evidence-based techniques. We know that an angry person is so much more than the anger that’s bothering them. We can help you live free of problem anger.
We offer video or telephone consultations from anywhere in the UK, and take self-referrals.
To find out how we can help, get in touch today:
