11 Techniques To Manage Your Anger

Everybody gets angry. It's a universal feeling, and sometimes it points to something deeper. Anger can show up as one symptom of depression, alongside long stretches of sadness, worry, shifts in how you sleep, and changes in appetite. Carol A. Bernstein, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City, puts it this way: if you notice you've become short-tempered, irritable, grouchy, or your patience runs out fast, that can tie back to depression. The techniques below give you practical ways to handle the feeling before it runs you.

Counting is the oldest trick there is, and Thomas Jefferson said it plainly: when angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count to a hundred. There's a reason it works. According to Brad Bushman, PhD, professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University in Columbus, angry people are highly aroused, and when people are that stirred up they say and do things they end up regretting. Counting slowly regulates your breathing, buys you a moment to collect your thoughts, and can bring your blood pressure down. Give it time and the arousal fades on its own. Forgiveness belongs in the same category. You may never forget what happened, but forgiving the person who provoked you is a strong way to quiet anger. Bushman points out that it interrupts rumination, the loop where the same negative thoughts replay in your head like a bad scene from a movie. Left alone, that loop keeps the anger alive and lets it bleed into other parts of your life.

Pull your attention somewhere else. Pick up a book, cook a meal, go for a walk, or throw yourself into a chore. Cleaning the house might not thrill you, but it occupies your mind with something other than the thing that set you off. Katherine Kueny, PhD, director of behavioral medicine in the department of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, has people rate themselves on a 1-to-10 scale where 10 is the angriest, then uses distraction to bring the number down.

Slow breathing does a lot of quiet work. It lowers your heart rate, eases your blood pressure, and steadies the rhythm of each breath. The American Psychological Association suggests breathing deep from the diaphragm rather than taking shallow breaths high in the chest. Bushman adds that calming music and muscle-relaxation exercises can help too, and both yoga and meditation are worth a try.

Don't pretend you aren't angry. Naming the feeling matters, because shoving it down or denying it tends to produce bigger blowups later, sometimes as verbal or physical aggression, which only piles more pain on top of what you already felt. Rick Pond's study, published in 2011 in the journal Emotion, found that people who can sort their feelings into specific categories stay more in tune with those feelings. They think harder about what they're experiencing and pay closer attention to where it came from and where it might lead. Because of that, they cope with negative emotion faster and lean less on poor substitutes like venting, binge drinking, or substance abuse.

Writing it out is one of the best outlets around. A journal gives your emotions somewhere to go, clears your head, and often surfaces possible solutions you couldn't see while stewing. It relieves stress and loosens the grip of that endless mental replay. Once the words are on the page, the feeling has somewhere to rest outside your own mind.

Yelling, screaming, slamming doors, or stomping off gets you nowhere. Stepping away to cool down accomplishes more, and it shows the people around you that you have self-control. You lose that control the moment you let explosive behavior take over. Taking the time to walk off and settle down helps you manage the anger and keeps the respect of the people you're dealing with.

Move your body. Exercise brings on the same physical sensations as anger, with adrenaline pumping, sweat, and heavy breathing, but it hands all of that a destination. Pauline Wallin, PhD, a psychologist in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania and author of How To Tame Your Inner Brat, describes it as a way to label those bodily signals without attaching them to anger. Exercise also raises endorphins, the brain chemicals that make you feel good.

Do something kind for another person, and let the whole reward be knowing you added something to their life. Compassion and anger don't easily sit together. Bushman notes that it's hard to feel angry and compassionate at once, so there's nothing strange about being nice to the very person who's getting under your skin. A compassionate act can lift your sense of self-worth and ease anger, anxiety, even depression, and research suggests it can take the edge off the other person's anger as well.

Keep your thumb off the send button. When you're upset, steer clear of email, text, and social media as ways to get your point across. Written words stick around, and in the heat of the moment you can put down things you'll regret or can't take back. If you still feel you have to say something in writing, sit on it for a full 24 hours. If the feeling is still there the next day, aim for constructive wording. Better yet, say it face to face.

Lean into gratitude. A growing body of research shows that the plain act of feeling grateful can make us happier, and happiness sits about as far from anger as you can get. Gratitude works a lot like compassion here. You don't have to be grateful toward the person who wronged you; you can be grateful for other parts of your life, the large things and the small ones alike, and watch the anger shrink.

We came with two ears and one mouth, the old line goes, so the aim is to listen and understand about twice as much as we talk. That holds especially when emotions are running high. If you're angry, work through the first nine ideas first, and once you've cooled off, try to understand the other person better.

If prayer or religion isn't part of your life, this one may not fit, but if it is, prayer can build a sense of hope and goodness in your heart and mind. It gives your feelings a safe, non-judgmental place to land. And if you don't pray, spend a couple of minutes thinking about whoever you're angry with and see whether you can give them the benefit of the doubt.