5 Steps That Will Help You Control Your Anger

Things You Can Do to Better Manage Your Emotional State

5 min readMar 6, 2020

Learning to control your anger, especially when things don’t go your way, is crucial if you want to better manage your emotional state.

Everyone experiences anger, therefore knowing what you can do to control it, will influence your ability to get the outcomes you want.

What is Anger?

Anger is a way to express how you are feeling. It is an emotion that is generated when you believe someone or something has affected your ability to get what you want.

It is also generated if you believe someone has intentionally done something that goes against your values or expectations.

Anger is an emotion you generate as a way of protecting yourself from a perceived danger or threat. Even though it is often an unwanted emotion, feeling anger is a normal part of the human experience.

Anger is usually a sign of powerlessness. It means you have temporarily lost the ability to maintain your composure and behave as you normally would.

What Causes Anger?

The common causes of anger include:

Frustration with yourself or another person.
Inability to control a situation to get the outcome you want.
Not heard or understood by someone or others.
Witnessing an injustice you want to change.
Believing you are in danger or under threat.
Experiencing trigger emotions such as jealousy, guilt, embarrassment, disappointment, hurt or shame.
Inability to find a solution to a challenge you are facing.
Not changing a behaviour you know is unhealthy or toxic.

Your ability to control your anger will dictate how you deal with the situation you are facing and your ability to get what you want.

Common Signs You Need to Control Your Anger

Before you can control your anger, you have to learn to recognise the warning signs. These can include:

Your heart beating faster.
Your body getting tense.
You breathe faster or take shallower breaths.
You snap at others or become defensive or argumentative.
You feel anxious.
You raise your voice when speaking and you also speak faster.
You start to perspire.
Your chest feels tighter.

If you notice any of these signs, you know you need to manage your emotional state.

5 Things That Will Help You Control Your Anger

Here are five things that will help you control your anger so you can remain in a healthy emotional state and focus on what’s important to you.

Identify why you are getting triggered. Having greater self-awareness will help you recognise the signs and the reasons why you are angry. It may be because you have incorrectly interpreted the meaning of an event. This is where learning to use your perspective can help you shift your focus.
Add a pause before responding or take a time out. It is common to want to respond straight away, which most times, can make the issue bigger than it needs to be. Giving yourself extra time before responding will help you gather your thoughts and make a better choice.
Talk to someone. Sometimes when sharing what you are experiencing or what is going on for you, can help lower the intensity of your anger. You have to be mindful who you speak to because you don’t want to someone to trigger you even more and intensify your anger.
Practice releasing techniques. Using releasing techniques are effective ways to relax and let go of thoughts and emotions that are not serving you. Releasing techniques can also help you separate yourself from the emotion. If you train yourself to describe your anger as something you are experiencing rather becoming the emotion, it will be a lot easier to let it go.
Find an outlet to channel your emotion. Anger can be used as fuel or motivation to accomplish something, provided it is directed intelligently. A common way to release anger is to do something physical, such as exercising or going for a walk.

Final Thoughts

Your ability to control your anger will impact your life. Since everyone experiences anger, it is beneficial to channel it to a desired outcome.

If you know you are experiencing anger regularly, it is advisable to seek professional help to address the causes. If you don’t address your anger, your inability to manage your emotional state can hurt you or those around you.

As you learn to control your anger, you will feel a lot better about how you respond to circumstances or situations not within your control.

Action Step: Reflect on the last time you felt angry about something. Identify the reasons why you were triggered. Using the ideas suggested above, identify what you can do next time you experience a similar situation.

Question: What are other steps that will help you control your anger?