Anger is the body’s natural reaction to injustices and violations. A violation could be feeling betrayed or slandered. It could be your house being robbed or someone taking credit for your project. An injustice could be witnessing discrimination, hearing about corruption, or being called out at home plate when you were safe. When we experience injustices and violations, we naturally feel angry. Our temperatures rise and we want to strike out and do some damage.
We also perpetuate our own anger by focusing on other people and situations, thinking the world and those in it “should” be different than they are, negatively judging what we don’t accept, and believing everyone should conform to our wishes because we know best. This creates all sorts of relationship issues. Wanting to strike out, saying or doing mean things, or viewing other people, things, and situations as enemies won’t bring you love. In fact, your anger-based actions can land you in jail or locked up in an emotional prison of feeling separate and isolated.
How to Control Anger
Breathing or thinking your way thru flashes of anger is not realistic. Anger is an emotion, like each of the six emotions, anger is: e+motion — “energy in motion” in our bodies. We must deal with that hot, urge to lash out and inflict damage in a constructive way and express it safely, physically and naturally. Only then will the anger pass.
- Express anger energy physically without damaging a person or anything of value. Find a safe place to push against a wall, stomp around the room, or pound the heck out of old phone books. Do it hard, fast, and with abandon. While expressing the anger don’t say negative things and swear. Just make sounds and move the physical energy out of your body.
- Interrupt destructive thinking about how people and things “should” be different and accept what is. Repeat 100,000 times or until you truly get it, “People and things are the way they are, not the way I want them to be.”
- Look within and determine what you need to say or do to feel resolved about the specific event that triggered your anger. Then do it.
Anger Management in a Natural Way
When you get rid of anger’s emotional energy, you get back to yourself, your heart. You’ll feel more loving and assert yourself with honesty, kindness, and empathy. Barriers you’ve built with others will come crashing down and your connections will be real and healthy.
Each time you own and deal with your anger physically and constructively and accept what is, you create love. It’s hard at first. We’ve got our pride. Our ego is strong and we feel so justified. But it works. It’s effective. Natural. Fast.
It’s all part of a positive emotional change – your Attitude Reconstruction.
