Anger and affect our ability to make good choices and to think rationally; it can become all-consuming and difficult to deal with. Many people choose to learn anger management techniques to free themselves from these kinds of destructive and negative effects.
Frequent feelings of anger can cause a great deal of damage - they hurt you and also hurt others around you. Your body will be suffering through increased stress levels and higher blood pressure. Your mind will be plagued by negative thoughts leaving little room for positive emotions. Your relationships will suffer if you do not know how to manage your anger safely and positively.
Anger management techniques are fairly easy to learn but do require a little practice to really impact on your life on a daily basis.
Some Simple Anger Management Techniques
This first easy technique for managing your anger is centred around changing your thinking patterns. Instead of blaming others for our anger we need to accept, that for the most part, the things that people do are not designed to make us angry – they are just getting on with their lives. Their actions are not personal to us and therefore we shouldn’t take it personally!
That driver that cut you off last week could have just come from visiting their dying mother in the hospital or they might have seen another danger on the road that you failed to see. It’s very unlikely that they cut you off on purpose.
Is The Threat Real?
The truth is that most of what causes us to feel angry is not a personal attack on us though we often perceive it as such. When we think we are being attacked, anger is a natural biological response to help us fight off the danger, but those of us with anger management problems can see attacks and threats in the wrong places. Here are a few examples of when anger may not be appropriate and we when need to think about whether the action is personal or not:
- A friend lets us down at the last minute
- Our spouse forgets to do something we asked them to do
- Our teenager borrows something without asking
- The waiter brings us the wrong order
- Someone cuts us off when driving
- Our boss does not praise the work we do
- Our parent criticizes a decision we made
Some of these actions above may make us feel sad, neglected, disappointed or ignored, but those are our feelings to deal with – we don’t need to make someone else responsible for them.
Try to remember that 99% of the time, that person will have just been getting through THEIR day, without any intention of hurting you. There are many anger management techniques available and this one called “It’s not personal!* can be mastered quickly - give it a try!
