How to Control Your Anger: 6 Practical Tips

One of Marvel’s superheroes is The Hulk. He is an average guy who, when he gets angry, becomes green, muscular, larger than life, and extraordinarily strong. His strength is his superpower and the angrier he gets, the stronger he becomes. The transformation from soft-spoken scientist to raging superhero comes as a result of his fight-or-fight response getting triggered.

It is easy to lose our cool. Whether it’s a snide remark, road rage, yelling at our kids, breaking something, slamming our hand into the wall, or storming off. For some of us, reacting in anger seems to be our go-to reaction. It can leave us feeling like the Hulk after he’s reset to his normal, human state, wondering what happened and feeling a bit disorientated.

It is the fight response. Hormones are released for one reason or another – a feeling of danger, a perceived threat of disapproval, someone not listening, the day seeming to spiral, unchecked frustration, denied emotion, disappointment, or loss of something important.

Our heart rate speeds up, breathing gets deeper, our adrenal glands kick in, and before we know it our anger gets the better of us. For some of us, we become the Hulk and fly off the handle. For others, it’s frustration and lost patience, and words spoken we cannot take back. Learning how to control your anger is hard. It is, however, one of the most important things we can do.

Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. – Ecclesiastes 7:9

How to control your anger: 6 practical tips

Left unchecked, anger can turn us into a person we do not want to be. It can fester and spread and soon becomes our first reaction. Anger can make us mean, ungrateful, judgmental, and cruel. It can escalate from yelling at the dog to taking a kick at him. It’s the hardest thing to catch our anger before it escapes. But there are some practical ways we can choose to react instead.

You do have a choice in how you react. You control your anger by taking back your response.

Take a breath

Three beats in – hold – five beats out. Repeat as long as needed. It takes mere seconds and yet can save us from a litany of words or actions we then must undo.

The point is to take a breath, literally, and think about our knee-jerk anger response before we just let it run free. Is the fallout worth whatever you want to say or do when you are lost in your anger?

Walk away

This is always an option. If it’s at the end of a meeting, go back to your office. If it’s with the kids, go to a different room. If it’s a fight with your spouse, call a 10-minute time-out and go somewhere else. If it’s the news or social media, turn off the screen and walk away. Remove the stimulus for your anger at that moment. Walk away.

Give yourself a five-minute buffer

If you tend to fire off an email, text back in the moment, or say whatever first comes into your head – force yourself to take five minutes. Do not allow yourself to respond. You have that choice. Turn the phone over and do not look at it. Work on another email or get some water. Bite your tongue and wait. You do not have to respond in the moment. Choose to wait it out.

Slow down

Often when we are angry, we move faster. We drive more aggressively. We get more impatient. We write emails with less thought. Our heart rate picks up and we think less. So, slow down. Intentionally drive in the slower lane and take a breath (see above). Think about the email you want to send, and how it will be received, and ask if it is the most beneficial idea.

Before you snap at the kids, slow down and ask if it is needed. What do you want from them? Is there a better method (or tone) to use? Try to see the situation from their point of view. If you just don’t like the noise because you had a bad day at work, go for a walk instead.

We have more agency and choice in our reactions than we believe. But we have to give ourselves the space to slow down, take a breath, and decide if anger is how we want to react.

Stop and ask what is really going on

This is a big one. Often our outbursts of anger are misdirected frustration. You feel talked over at work, so you yell at the kids. You don’t like something about yourself, so you make a snide remark at someone else. You feel powerless after watching the news, so you blow up at other people.

The reality is your boss, other drivers, the kids, your spouse, and that other mom at the kids’ school are not the issue. They are decoys. So, before you use your horn and spiral into road rage, ask what is really going on. If you felt overlooked at work, didn’t get the promotion, or took the blame for someone else, admit that and let the target of your misplaced anger off the hook.

Controlling your anger means not destroying decoys. It means not letting our spouse become the punching bag because our boss did not like your idea. By stopping and asking what is really going on, you can be honest and not flip off other drives during rush hour.

Take a different route

Instead of yelling at the kids or snapping at the dog, go do something else – make some tea, put away laundry, scrub a toilet, walk to the end of the block. If driving on the interstate is a trigger, take city streets. If your co-worker puts you in a bad mood, go to work earlier or later, or get to your desk a different way. If you hate the PTA and dread going and are in a bad mood for days before and after, walk away from the committee.

If you can remove the stimulus for your anger – do it

You do not have to get on social media first thing in the morning. You do not have to check the news sites every day. You do not have to be a part of PTA, say hello to that co-worker in the morning, or listen to the chit-chat that drives you batty. You do not have to do it.

This is your permission slip to let the commute take longer; to tell that mom you cannot drive her son to school in the morning; to tell the church you cannot serve on that committee or do preschool duty again.

You have permission to remove from your life that which only puts you in a bad mood.

Agreeing not to react in anger is a promise to yourself. You make it in the good times and hold fast to it. Literally bite your tongue if you have to. Have a twenty-four-hour (or a two-hour) delay on emails. Do not text when you are mad. Make these promises to yourself – and then follow through.

Set consequences. If you yell at the kids, then you lose your phone for twenty-four hours. If you scream at the dog, no Netflix for the rest of the week. If you cannot drive without raging, let your spouse do the driving and if you have to sit in the back with your head down, so be it. We are breaking a habit and that is the first step in how to control your anger.

There will be times when you fail. But if you are tired of this habit, then it must be confronted, and new attitudes and actions put in its place. You cannot chastise yourself out of getting angry. Guilt will never get you there.

If you fly off the handle, go and make amends. Apologize for the words you spoke, the tone you took, for yelling at the kids, or breaking a glass. Take full responsibility. Your anger is not a justifiable reason for wounding other people.

Counseling for anger control

If you need counseling, go get it. Talk about why you fly off the handle. Let someone help you learn how to take a breath and react differently.

Like the Hulk learns to control his anger and decrease the hangover, we too can learn to take a breath and think before we let our anger win. Controlling our anger starts with consciously choosing to do so and then establishing new habits to help us on the journey.

You can do this. Change is possible! If you would like the help of a professional counselor in dealing with your anger and establishing these new habits, please contact our offices today.