Ways of Overcoming Anger Instantaneously
Anger is an emotion that everyone possesses but I like to believe that it’s only the weak that hold onto it. Anger is nothing but destructive and negative and it can be very toxic to you and your mental health once you let it manifest. Anger is the one emotion that brings out the worst in us, makes us say and do certain things that isn’t in our character some of which take a moment but we would regret for life.
Learn to control anger before it controls you through these 4 steps:
1. Breathing Techniques
Your breathing has a huge calming effect on your body.
Whenever a certain uncomfortable emotion arises, our breathing becomes altered and it can aggravate the situation even further. I understand that it can be difficult to find a calm retreat in the middle of your rage, however it helps to visualize and to imagine yourself in a different place in order to calm your body’s heart rate down.
Breathing Exercises shows us some helpful tips on how to breathe once you feel yourself getting angry, stressed or frustrated:
1) Right now, or whenever fear or anger occur immediately force an exhale. Do not “gear up” by taking an in-breath, just force an exhale now.
Continue the exhale until you can not exhale any more air and then let a deep effortless in-breath come in. Repeat this again, please.
2) Right now, or whenever fear or anger occur immediately force an exhale. Do not “gear up” by taking an in-breath, just force an exhale now.
Continue the exhale until you can not exhale any more air and then let a deep effortless in-breath come in. Repeat this again, please.
3) Right now, or whenever fear or anger occur immediately force an exhale. Do not “gear up” by taking an in-breath, just force an exhale now.
2. Surrender
When I say surrender I mean everything that’s holding you back from calming down and letting the stress go. This could be your ego even if you don’t call yourself an egoistic person, you might not realize that it’s actually getting the best of you.
Surrender your need to be right.
Even if you are, you don’t need to prove that to anyone else, just keep it between you and yourself and let go of your need to prove something to someone.
Surrender the blame game.
It doesn’t matter who did it and it’s not going to diffuse or help the situation any better, either. Let go of the finger pointing.
Surrender the need to be spiteful and vengeful because this is toxic to your own health at the end of the day.
Letting your anger completely control you to the breaking point of wanting to hurt someone else or get even is going to do more damage to you than to anyone else.
3. Laughter and Smiling
Similarly to what I said about breathing techniques, laughing and smiling could be hard to do in a situation where you’re becoming angry and getting frustrated. However, scientific research comes to show that once you smile (even if it’s forced), it releases positive ‘happy’ chemicals in your brain.
Let’s give it a shot right now and show me that big smile of yours.
According to NBC News, Dr. Gupta who is a neurologist from IGEA Brain and Spine explains,
A smile spurs a chemical reaction in the brain, releasing certain hormones including dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine increases our feelings of happiness. Serotonin release is associated with reduced stress. Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression and aggression. Low levels of dopamine are also associated with depression.
In other words, smiling can essentially trick your brain into believing that you’re happy when you’re actually not and it can spur the actual feelings of happiness.
Although you may look a bit psychotic trying to crack a smile while you’re angry, faking it till you make it seems like it’s worth a shot!
4. Face the Problem
For the sake of closure, try tackling the problem that’s making you angry in the first place. Address it head-on and seek an understanding of why then articulate the reasons for why something made you as angry as it did.
Do things that will help you move forward instead of staying where you are, drowning in your anger, the closer you are to a resolution or a solution, the faster you can set yourself free from any anger that’s been holding you hostage.
Look for the ending of what made you angry whether it was something significant or once important to you if that helps you move past your anger.
Conclusion
Although being anger and feeling rage or hatred is normal, it’s extremely toxic towards our body and our soul. It can even go as far as affecting our health and put us in a situation where we are at a greater risk for heart disease.
A lot of us can go through life not even realizing, understanding or acknowledging our anger triggers and it can cause us to take a lot of irrational actions and decisions.
If you’re someone who focuses on the betterment of yourself and your future self-development, you owe it to yourself to work on how you can maintain your anger and set yourself free from one of the most toxic emotions ever known to man.
