7 Anger Management Tools

My father always told me, if you put a D in front of anger you have DANGER! Anger is definitely the most toxic, destructive and dis empowering emotion we feel. Anger causes us to be reactive, to take things personally, to attack another, defend ourselves or possibly in our worst moments, embarrass and humiliate ourselves leaving us guilty or full of shame. Continuing to build behaviors which leave us feeling shameful chip away at our confidence and self-esteem.

When practiced over time and conditioned, we can reverse the emotion of anger into far more resourceful emotions like grace, calmness, patience or empathy which lead us feeling proud of ourselves and empowered.

So here are my top 7 Anger Management Strategies:

1.       Get to know your triggers

It is essential that you know what triggers you, because once you know what triggers you and have conscious awareness, then you can begin to plan your response or management system. Once you have awareness over the trigger and know your effective response it takes away the power the trigger had over you.  It is important to understand why you are being triggered and what specifically and emotionally it is bringing up for you.

2.       Define your ResponseAbility!

Your ResponseAbility is your ability to respond to a person or situation rather than react. This may include walking away or stopping to take a breath. Most importantly it means  to stop and ask yourself,  how best can I  respond right now?

3.       Flick the switch

This means to break the emotional state by catching hold of your thoughts and being able to turn them around. Some great ideas here are to visualize a Stop sign or say the work stop to yourself to break the thought cycle. Imagine flicking an internal switch to change channels and break your internal story. Find something to change your focus by distracting the mind

4.       Rate the necessity of your reaction

Before you react scale your reaction by asking yourself to rate the issue from 0-10. 0 being a low need for reaction and 10 being an extreme need to react. If you are rating yourself as a 10 begin to employ one of the other strategies to calm you. Ask yourself whether this situation will matter to you in 10 years and if it is really worth the anger.

5.       Recreate the event in your mind exactly how you want it to be

The subconscious mind does not know the difference between real or imagined so if you are playing out a situation in your mind, according to the subconscious, it is already happening.

So create the event in your mind exactly how you want it to be, have the conversations, see a person’s response and see your response in its perfection. Based on modern neuroscience doing this creates the neural pathways in your mind and will therefore change emotion.

6.       Cultivate Compassion

Compassion is the opposite emotion to anger because when we are compassionate we are detached and are not taking anything personally. We are looking at what is motivating or coming up for another person and managing our reaction internally. Firstly accept what you are feeling and acknowledge it, then accept another person’s perspective as it is their reality and try to gain greater clarity and understanding.

7.       Breathe and focus on the now

      The best self regulation tool we have is our breath as slowing down our breath will slow our heart rate and break a flight/fright/freeze mode and activate our relaxation response.
As we begin to feel more calm we start to think more clearly and are less reactive.

My favorite breathing exercise to do here is to focus on
 breathing through my heart center. Slow breaths in and out of my heart help bring me into my body, into my heart center and instantly quieten the mind and bring me into this present moment.

Scientists have also found by doing heart breathing can balance both hemispheres of the brain and bring you calmness and into the now.

What tools work best for you? I would love to hear your comments! 

To your truth and freedom with lots of love,

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