02/25/2020 · Uncategorized · No comments yet
Anger is one of the emotional experiences of a person, which is closely related to cognitive processes, physical arousal, and aggressive behavior. In adverse situations, anger can spiral out of control and become an affect, interfering with a person's social functioning and overall well-being. Anger management - how to learn to cope with emotions on your own and when should you consult a specialist? You will find the answers in this article.
Why do anger attacks happen?
To more accurately understand the causes of anger, it is necessary to consider a number of factors that collectively influence the manifestation of anger:
Biological factors: a type of choleric temperament that is prone to anger. A mobile, strong nervous system reacts faster and more vividly to external stimuli.
Physiological factors : lack of sleep leads to levels of physical exhaustion, chronic stress leads to mental exhaustion. In states of neuropsychic exhaustion, a person reacts to external stimuli with negative emotions and maladaptive behavior, including aggressive behavior.
Psychological factors : dissatisfaction with work, financial situation, personal problems, obligations regarding the behavior of other people, inconsistency of the surrounding world with internal standards, inability to control and express anger - all this causes growing internal tension, which is just waiting for psychological release.
Anger in the structure of mental disorder . This individual factor affects different types of disorders: anger often accompanies personality disorders, bipolar disorder, relapses in eating disorders, chemical and non-chemical dependencies, and addictions. It can also act as a factor in the decompensation of psychopathology in loved ones.
Anger and its destructive effects
Anger is a negatively colored affect (a short-term emotional process of an explosive nature), this is how the concept of anger is characterized in psychology. These emotions are directed against the injustice experienced by a person and are accompanied by a desire for its immediate elimination. During anger, a person is able to “break the woods” and do something that he will later regret.
Buddhists consider anger one of the five poisons that should be avoided. In Islam, any action done in a fit of anger is condemned. In Judaism, any manifestation of anger is condemned unless it is justified. In Christianity, anger is perceived as “a state of mind against one’s neighbor.”
It is worth noting that anger that is not controlled contributes to deterioration of health, heart disease worsens, immunity becomes weak, blood pressure rises, depression and insomnia may occur.
Anger negatively affects a person’s mental state because it takes up a huge amount of mental energy and clouds thinking.
A person who shows anger faces difficulties in communicating in a team; during an outburst, a person can offend family, friends, and loved ones. Anger can be caused by a response to fear, sadness, pain that was previously received.
First steps when dealing with anger
Step one. First you need to track how often, after an angry affective discharge, a person justifies his actions, for example:
- "She took me out"
- “This time he really asked for it”
- "We got what we deserved"
- “They had no right to express themselves like that, I answered them correctly.”
It is necessary to try to abandon self-justifying attitudes in order to further successfully work with anger
Step two : determine the degree of intensity of your own experiences. Often, people with anger problems downplay the intensity, which also makes it difficult to deal with aggressive behavior because intense anger limits volitional regulation of emotion control, increasing the risk of impulsive behavior.
Step three : Determine your anger frequency (how many times during the day you feel angry).
And one more stage in the initial work: prescribe ways to express anger (this is the behavior that a person chooses for psycho-emotional release). Write a list of actions (throwing things, breaking dishes, avoiding communication, physical violence towards an irritating object, obscene language, breaking fists until they bleed) and distribute them into groups: verbal (verbal) aggression, physical aggression, passive (hidden) aggression.
How to overcome irritability?
When a person realizes that he is behaving incorrectly and is trying to find an answer to the question of how to overcome irritability, he is on the right path leading to the healing of his psyche. Individuals with inappropriate behavior do not understand that their incorrect reaction to others creates difficulties for them and ruins the lives of those who are close to them. Such people need awareness of their actions in order to stop being hot-tempered. But in this article we will talk about how to get rid of irritability if you already understand that this bad quality ruins your life.
I was inspired to write this publication by a message from a girl who, despite her young years, is aware of her actions. She learned to see herself from the outside. Therefore, she had a desire to overcome irritability forever. However, she doesn't know where to start to become a balanced person. In this article, I will tell her how to get rid of anxiety, depression and irritability. But you, dear readers, do not remain indifferent to the problem of this young woman and give her your recommendations in the comments, based on your practical experience of getting rid of incorrect behavior.
Read her message to understand her problem:
I am very hot-tempered and take everything to heart. I always get nervous about little things. Sometimes I cry like a fool because of little things. And sometimes I talk so rudely to my loved ones, but I can’t control myself. I want to become more balanced and calmly explain the situation. Don't take everything to heart.
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What is irritability?
To overcome the negativity that is devouring you from within, you need to understand what is happening to you. Irritability, as a rule, is a reaction to some actions of other people. But the reasons for such behavior of a hot-tempered person lie not in external stimuli, but in the energy of the aggressor himself. If you want to understand how to get rid of anger and irritability, then you should realize the importance of your energetic environment. Otherwise you will not correct your behavior.
Due to the reactions that occur in a person’s energy, his mind, body and psyche react in a certain way. For example, when bright and active energy appears in the energy system, the balance is upset, so the body receives an impulse, due to which it releases a large amount of adrenaline into the blood. Because of this, the psyche begins to react incorrectly to what is happening, transmitting incorrect information to the mind. The latter is influenced by energies, hormones and the psyche, but immediately begins to resist all this. Because of this, severe irritability appears, which is very difficult to overcome.
How to get rid of nervousness and irritability?
From the message of the girl who asked for advice, it is clear that her behavior changes like the weather. I described the reason for this state of affairs above. And in this part of the article, I decided to offer a way to get rid of the wrong reaction to what is happening. An unbalanced person who has realized that he needs to overcome irritability should understand that only by expressing a desire to become full-fledged will he not be able to achieve results. Finding peace of mind and psyche is achieved through constant work on oneself.
1. The main thing that an irritable person needs to do is to begin to consciously change their behavior. For example, if you want to get angry, you need to overcome irritability by distracting yourself with something very entertaining. The mind and psyche will have time to calm down in a few minutes and the unpleasant sensation caused by the imbalance of energies in the body’s energy system will immediately disappear. Positive videos and funny stories can be entertaining. What makes a person laugh helps him burn out active energies that upset the balance of his energy. And positive emotions distract from irritants.
2. The second step to help overcome irritability is to stabilize your energy, helping to balance the psyche and improve the thinking abilities of the mind. To do this you need to change your habits. For example, change your diet, excluding from it products with active energies that cause an imbalance in energy: - coffee; - tea; — alcoholic drinks; - foods and liquids with a sour taste; - fatty foods; — milk and dairy products; - green vegetables, fruits, berries and herbs.
Products that belong to energies that stabilize energy help to overcome irritability. Therefore, the diet of an irritable person should consist of these: - sweets that do not have a sour taste; - baked goods, bread, cookies, cakes; - porridges of all kinds; - pasta; - potato; - rice and products made from it.
Pharmacies and specialty stores offer nutritional supplements that can help combat severe irritability. The most effective ones should be consumed daily: - edible clay; - zinc tablets.
3. It is necessary to stabilize your energy by giving up bright and active energies, which, as a rule, force the psyche of an irritable person to react to everything incorrectly. To do this, you need to be in a state of rest more often, plunging into the dark substance. This is the most effective method to overcome irritability once and for all.
It consists of the following: you need to close yourself in a very dark room every day for half an hour or an hour, while relaxing on the bed or on the floor. You should lie on your back. Thoughts need to be turned off. For example, concentrating on some imaginary object. At the same time, you don’t need to think about how to overcome irritability. You just need to brush aside your thoughts, calm your psyche and extinguish the active energies in your energy. That is, the main thought that should arise in this case is “peace”.
It is recommended to lock yourself in a dark room every time severe irritability arises. The first two weeks it will be difficult to stop thoughts. The relaxation process itself will seem difficult. This is because you stopped being physically active, following the impulses of your psyche, which reacted to active energies, and began to mentally stop strong energies. Mental effort is not at all easier than physical effort. And for the first time after such exercises, you will experience fatigue. By constantly performing the exercise of immersion in the dark substance, you will understand how to get rid of aggression and irritability. And in just a month and a half you will be able to overcome your temper.
The girl who turned to this site for advice is not only interested in how to overcome irritability, she mentioned in her message that she also experiences a tearful state. It arises for the same reason – due to an imbalance of energies in the body’s energy system. This state also passes after constant immersion in the dark substance. But this time it is necessary to warm the body and give a positive impulse to the brain. For these purposes, pour hot water into the bath, pour a couple of tablespoons of mustard into it and take a bar of chocolate with you.
Turn off the lights, lock the door and lie in the bath with a chocolate bar in your hand. Feel the warmth of the water, the smell of mustard and the indescribably delicious aroma of chocolate. Take a bite from a chocolate bar and imagine yourself on a soft cloud with the sun's rays falling on it, warming you. Try to look at the rainbow that passes over the cloud. While your mind is busy imagining a fairy-tale picture, the brain will already receive a portion of serotonin, and the energy, like the body, will warm up, as a result of which tearfulness will disappear. However, keep in mind that irritability cannot be overcome in this way.
4. When thinking about how to get rid of irritability and anger, you should understand that heating activates energies and all functions of the body, and cooling slows down all processes and suppresses the activity of energies. Therefore, an irritable person should spend more time in an unheated room and often take walks in the fresh air. Strong cooling, for example in winter, helps to quickly overcome short temper, irritability, anger and even severe rage.
5. Your behavior can tell you how to overcome anger and irritability. Learn to analyze your actions and find their origins. For example, if you experience attacks of aggression after eating a salad or drinking coffee, then these foods are the causes of your imbalance. Give up these products and look at your own behavior. There should be improvements. If you smoked a cigarette, and after that something made you terribly angry, and then you started crying, then stop smoking. Indeed, in this case it is the cause of an imbalance in your energy.
6. The ability to look at yourself from the outside will help you get rid of irritability forever. You can learn this if you constantly analyze your every action. You just need not to criticize your steps, but simply observe your behavior and draw the right conclusions. How does a psychologist do it? A professional in his field never criticizes his clients. He only observes and draws conclusions, on the basis of which he makes some recommendations. You can do this yourself to completely overcome irritability.
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Anger management - exercises and techniques for doing it yourself
The most effective and fastest techniques for solving the problem of how to cope with attacks of anger - cognitive behavioral psychotherapy techniques, mindfulness skills, self-regulation methods
Before performing the exercises, it is necessary to understand the chain of anger, and to realize which segment of the chain the work of a particular technique is aimed at. It is important to select techniques so as to involve the development of all segments.
Sometimes the chain can look simple:
Trigger situation - angry thoughts - anger - aggressive behavior
Sometimes its appearance is much more complex:
Trigger - angry thoughts - emotions of indignation, anger, irritation - self-inflation - rumination - anger - aggressive behavior
This must be taken into account when choosing techniques.
How to get rid of a temper
Take a break whenever you feel irritated or feel that your emotions have risen, try to remember that you just need to relax. This kind of knowledge may seem annoying in these conditions, but be sure to do it. And this will be a big help in the fight against your excessive temper.
Before dealing with a temper tantrum, start breathing deeply - this allows oxygen to enter the brain, allowing it to function more efficiently. And drink a glass of water. Such actions will stop your irritability and temper for some time.
Don't be afraid to comfort yourself by surrounding yourself with things and activities that you enjoy: it could be a big scoop of your favorite pistachio ice cream or the new season of a comedy show. You can also inflate a balloon until it bursts - often, along with it, all the negativity that has accumulated inside you disappears. Whatever it is, do it when you feel that fire of indignation and discontent growing within you. This will balance your emotions and you will feel less irritable.
Learning to manage emotions
Trigger : We make a list of situations that provoke anger, ranking them by intensity, from the most powerful to the least annoying. We write down strategies for weakening its effect next to each trigger, for example:
Trigger – children demand attention when I come home from work tired.
A way to ease the trigger is to go to a cafe after work, drink coffee, relax after a hard day and gain strength to communicate with children. Try to find a solution for each trigger yourself.
Thoughts and self-inflation : use cognitive therapy techniques, write down the pros and cons of each thought, correlate thoughts with reality, remove value judgments, develop an alternative thought for each angry one, introduce alternative thoughts into your life after the trigger.
Rumination : the so-called “mental chewing gum” that a person plays in his head over and over again. These are thoughts about the triggering situation that cause new waves of negative emotions.
Advice: learn to put off rumination, set aside one time for it during the day (for example, at seven o’clock in the evening), and not allow it to invade your consciousness at another time of the day.
Emotions of anger, anger, irritation: breathing techniques, Jacobson muscle relaxation, pleasant visualizations and other self-regulation techniques.
Aggressive behavior : use of coping cards. Cards are prepared in advance; alternative methods of behavior that replace aggressive ones are written on them. These cards can be quickly used when anger arises.
How to deal with irritability?
We described the main causes of irritability above. Think about in what situations and/or when communicating with what people irritation is especially pronounced. When looking for reasons, it is important to be honest with yourself and attentive to yourself - otherwise nothing will work out.
If the anger is too strong, do not rush to sort it out. It is better to wait until it subsides and then study the problem. To calm down, you can use the figurative-associative method: imagine that you are putting your anger in a book, closing it and putting it on the library shelf.
When you are calmer, you will pick up the book and think about what is happening.
If your feelings are overwhelming, let them out and relieve the tension with a run, a minute of exercise, or a short walk outside. For some, the opposite advice will be more effective - be alone with yourself. Sometimes aggression is a natural reaction to stress, and your brain is trying to tell you that you should ignore all sources of irritation and just be alone.
We experience irritation due to everyday little things on average several times a week. The next time this happens, focus on thinking about how much good there is in your life - you and your family are healthy, you have a roof over your head, etc.
Have your shiny new shoes already been stepped on by several people on the subway this morning? But you go to work in a high-speed train, and in general you have a paid job. Or maybe the freshly cooked pasta from which you drained the water fell out of the pan into the sink with dirty dishes? It's unpleasant, but you have free access to electricity and food to cook a new batch.
The same approach - looking from the other side - applies to psychological attitudes. Think about the current situation in a different way. Debilitating thoughts like “Why is it that all the bad things happen to me?” can lead to despair. It is better to tell yourself “I remain calm”, “I have the situation under control”.
As we said, irritation often arises from the fact that what is happening does not meet your expectations. However, in many cases we ourselves are to blame for this - we keep negative feelings to ourselves instead of expressing dissatisfaction out loud. Remember: people cannot read minds. If you don't like something, tell about it to the person who caused you negative emotions.
What happens when you let aggression run its course? You spend energy on anger, putting stress on your body, and then try to get rid of the irritation by throwing it out on whoever comes along first. As a result, the situation may repeat itself, and you risk ruining relationships with others who actually have nothing to do with your problem. At the same time, the problem itself will not receive a solution.
What is the right thing to do? It is necessary to direct internal resources to understand yourself and realize what exactly you expect from a person. Remember that he himself will not guess about it. Firmly, calmly and politely voice what exactly you are not happy with. To do this, you must, firstly, find the root cause of irritation and bad mood. Secondly, ideally, talk to the person as early as possible - to do this before you have a big blow.
Other Anger Management Tips
It is very important to concentrate your attention on the first signs of anger (it is at this moment that the volitional component of control has not yet been weakened, which means that you can more successfully cope with the effect of an unpleasant emotion).
Be attentive to the factors that cause anger: it is always better to prevent the entire chain than to deal with the consequences
Watch how other people express their anger, focus on the consequences, note the most adaptive behavior for yourself.
You can deal with anger on your own or together with a psychologist.
In what cases is specialist help needed?
In cases where attempts to cope with anger on your own have failed. A person begins to use emotional and physical violence against close family members: child, wife, etc., in the case of a previously established diagnosis of a personality disorder or mood disorders, it is necessary to seek the help of a psychologist.
Irritation as a violation of our rights
To understand how to cope with irritability, you need to find out what causes it.
Even if your feelings seem confused and complex, it is important to get to the bottom of the truth, since sometimes just understanding the cause allows you to get rid of the oppressive feeling and/or shows you what to do and where to move next. It is very possible that you yelled at your colleague not because of his request to take on an extraordinary project, but because you had an argument with a family member in the morning and are still angry. But sometimes the answer is not on the surface. For example, you may be annoyed by a colleague's pen-clicking habit. Is it the pen? Perhaps the real problem is that the colleague is clicking his pen when he actually has no work to do. And you are irritated by the fact that he has such periods quite often, but you are in constant time pressure.
You need to be especially careful if you have increased irritability towards a specific person or certain situations. In other words, it infuriates you if Ivan clicks his pen, but you calmly react to the same actions of Andrey.
Often the source of irritation is trifles, behind which quite complex problems are hidden. You may not be aware of this, but it is all the more important to understand the true reason. For example, you might be annoyed when a friend beats you at a board game. Usually a loss causes more resentment or annoyance,
but if it leads specifically to irritation, this is a signal from your emotional system. Think about what this might be connected with? For example, with the fact that you, in principle, do not accept losses, or deep down in your soul do you envy your friend in some way?
The source of irritation may be restrictions, taboos and other prohibitions that you adhere to one way or another. For example, you think that talking loudly on the street is indecent and always speak quietly. Accordingly, you may be annoyed by those who act differently. We are often irritated by those who put or can put us in an awkward position.
For example, you are a social phobe, but you are accosted by an overly talkative person in a store. You don’t know whether you need to answer him or not, and if so, what exactly, how long you need to keep the conversation going, whether he will be offended by your refusal to talk, etc. As a result, due to the risk of awkward situations, you become annoyed by all the people who like to chat with strangers in public places.
Unfortunately, some people, sensing the gentleness of others, begin to shamelessly take advantage of it or mistake politeness for permissiveness. Train yourself to put such individuals in their place. If you are not used to saying no and are generally a fairly gentle person, learn to stand up for yourself, but move gradually. This skill will help you cope not only with irritability, but also with some other problems.
Recreate situations when, when communicating with other people, you said and did something you didn’t want to do. Think about when your rights are most often violated. For example:
- The elderly woman from the next apartment constantly reprimands you that young people nowadays dress too unkemptly and behave even worse.
- A classmate who constantly skips lectures once again asks you to copy your homework.
- The boss systematically demands that I stay at work for several hours without additional pay.
What to do? Conduct analysis!
- What rights were they trying to violate in those situations?
- Do I really have these rights?
- How to express refusal or disagreement in a polite manner?
Formulate a correct and, most importantly, polite response to your opponent in order to use this template in the future. Having a ready answer in hand will boost your morale and help you stand up for your rights. Apply this skill in all areas of your life and develop it.
When this behavior becomes a habit, you can move on to the next step - predict in advance when others will try to manipulate you, and respond promptly.
How does a psychologist solve the problem of anger?
The most important function of a psychologist , which cannot be achieved when working with anger independently, is to find unique personal reasons for anger, a person’s responsibilities, and deep-seated beliefs. Help him understand where and in what ways his boundaries are violated, build a step-by-step, competent work with anger.
Usually, after outbursts of anger and irritation towards a child, a feeling of guilt falls on the person, and the emotional picture becomes complex. A psychologist helps you understand these difficult feelings. Develops a personal strategy for solving a problem for a person, monitors results, and supports the person in working on anger.
It is also difficult for a teenager to cope with anger on his own, since during the period of maturation of the body, the psyche becomes mobile and unstable, and the area of the volitional coping component is not yet sufficiently developed and cannot cope with the control function.
The task of a psychologist is to teach a teenager the skills of control and coping with anger. Explain the mechanisms of aggressive behavior. Role-play daily situations in which the teenager cannot cope with anger and aggression.
Traffic light of emotions
The traffic light of emotions is a psychological technique. It allows a person to independently determine in which zone he is currently located. There are three zones - green, yellow and red.
Ekaterina Burmistrova - family psychologist, mother of 11 children
Green Zone
Being in the green zone, a person feels complete control over his actions. He is not bothered by negative emotions and is generally balanced. To stay in the green zone as long as possible, you need to push its boundaries.
It’s one thing when young spouses live together, without denying themselves anything. But when children appear, you need to expand your green zone so as not to break down during night feedings, lack of finances, and the inability to relax with friends.
Yellow zone
When a person enters the yellow zone, he feels a flash of anger, but can control himself. Outwardly he is calm, but inside he is overwhelmed with negative emotions.
Usually people fall into the yellow zone due to the habit of living for tomorrow. What is happening today seems to people like a worthless draft that they will someday rewrite from scratch. However, that same “tomorrow” still does not come. As a result, a person accumulates nervousness and dissatisfaction.
If you don’t find the strength to accept reality as the norm and rejoice in what you have today and now, there is a great danger of slipping into the red zone.
Red zone
Being in the red zone, a person loses control over himself. Anger comes out in the form of hysteria or assault.
However, even in the red zone you can fight anger. One way is to tell others that you are no longer in control of yourself: “If you don’t stop immediately, I am not responsible for myself...”. Some of the anger will go away and it will be easier to calm down.
If an angry outburst occurs, you can return to the yellow zone by saying: “Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout like that. This and that just pissed me off..."
Anger management: cost and time frame for solving the problem
In the absence of concomitant mental disorders that complicate working with anger, this problem can be dealt with in 5-8 meetings with a psychologist, with the frequency of sessions being 1 time per week. The cost of one consultation in our clinic starts from 1000 rubles. When working with anger in the structure of a mental disorder, 10 to 15 meetings are necessary.
An appointment with a psychologist at PsiMedClinic can be made by calling +7 (3532) 45-95-03 or using the feedback form.
Let's sum it up
Coping with anger without understanding its mechanisms and structure (chain) is not so easy. When working with anger on your own, it is important to remember that a single technique or exercise will not help you cope with this difficult task. An integrated approach is important: working through all components of the structure of anger.
If you cannot cope with anger on your own, there are outbursts of aggression towards a child, emotional and physical violence towards a partner, as well as if you have an established mental disorder, you need to contact a specialist for professional help.
Psychology, Anger Management
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