Why Anger Can Spiral Out of Control Fast
Anger is a healthy emotion that everyone experiences. It’s also healthy to express anger in productive ways because repressing it can cause it to manifest elsewhere. However, anger can get out of control if you don’t know how to deal with it.
For example, if you don’t distance yourself from the thing that’s making you angry, your anger will increase. Moreover, anger, like other emotions, affects how you view things.
Things that typically don’t make you angry may actually make you angry as a result. Continue reading to understand how anger works and how it can be managed.
Anger Mechanism
Emotions alter our perceptions in two ways. Firstly, they affect what we focus on or what draws our attention. For example, if we’re angry, we may focus on someone who spoke to us in a slightly rude tone. We’ll also disregard the dozens of people who talked to us nicely and respectfully.
Secondly, they affect how we interpret our perceptions. The person occupying our attention may have intended to be rude to us. However, that person may also have been speaking like that because they had to be somewhere, and we were taking up their time. Moreover, that may just be how that person speaks. When we’re angry, we ignore these possible explanations for the one that doesn’t challenge our extant emotions.
This is how anger operates. Firstly, it draws our attention to things that make us angrier. Secondly, it makes us interpret those things in ways that tally with our anger. Managing anger involves making a conscious attempt to counter these two inclinations.
How to Manage Anger
As suggested above, managing your anger requires you to counter what anger makes us do. Anger focuses our attention on a few aspects of a particular situation.
To counter that, pull back your focus and look at what else is going on in the case. If someone spoke rudely to you, look around to see if that person is in a hurry or maybe they were in an argument.
Moreover, question your angry interpretations of a situation. This is known as cognitive restructuring. If someone spoke rudely to you, you might assume that the person is just generally rude. However, you can scrutinize this interpretation. Ask other people if they think the same or if there’s some other reason for the person’s anger.
These aren’t the only methods of managing anger. For example, another way of handling anger is distancing yourself from the situation. This prevents your anger from compounding itself and gives you some time to cool off.
However, the most comprehensive way to manage anger is seeking anger management counseling. This involves the above, as well as many more, anger management techniques. Moreover, counseling is led by a professional who can guide you through the process and help you cross any hurdles you encounter.
Contact us, at Comprehensive Counseling Services, LLC., for anger management therapy Winder and general mental health evaluation Winder, Georgia. We’ll help you work through, question, and control your anger.
