Anger (2024)

FAQs

How do you respond to anger? ›

Stay calm, speak slowly, and use non-threatening body language. A calm, rational response can go a long way toward calming angry people down.

We can suppress anger and aggression or act it out, either way making things worse for ourselves and others. Or we can practice patience. Pema Chödrön takes us step by step through this powerful practice.

The three main approaches are expressing, suppressing, and calming. Expressing your angry feelings in an assertive—not aggressive—manner is the healthiest way to express anger. To do this, you have to learn how to make clear what your needs are, and how to get them met, without hurting others.

Anger is a normal emotion experienced by everyone at different times. It is, in fact, a natural response to a threat, helping prime ourselves for protection or stand up for ourselves. It can also be useful to motivate people to meet challenges or make changes.

When someone is caught in a lie, their initial reaction may be one of anger and embarrassment. This feeling can arise from the sense of being exposed to something that was meant to remain hidden. In this situation, the individual's knee-jerk response is to lash out to regain power or control.

Blind Rage: The highest level of anger intensity, often characterized by a complete loss of self-control and the potential for dangerous and irrational actions.

The six-second solution

“That is, to become a witness rather than a participant in an angry situation. Take six seconds to step back from an angry scene, six seconds to observe it and six seconds to gain a new perspective on what is happening.”

Some mental health professionals refer to anger as a secondary emotion. According to Dr. Harry Mills, anger is the emotion we are most aware we are experiencing. However, anger usually just hides the presence of deeper and less comfortable emotions like sadness, guilt, embarrassment, hurt, fear, etc.

Anger can stem from intense emotions like fear, frustration, or pain. But it can also result from stress, unresolved grief, trauma, adverse childhood experiences, ongoing struggles like ancestral trauma or oppression, feelings of helplessness, or a mental illness.

Our anger may tell us that we are not addressing an important emotional issue in our lives, or that too much of our self — our beliefs, values, desires, or ambitions — is being compromised in a relationship. Our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give.

What are five anger cues? ›

Emotional cues

For example, we may become angry when we feel abandoned, afraid, discounted, disrespected, guilty, humiliated, impatient, insecure, jealous, or rejected.

There are four types of anger that can help people understand how the emotion works in their lives: long, short, hot, and cold. Short-hot anger is a knee-jerk reaction, whereas long-cold anger is a productive space in which people make meaning and justice through action.

Beneath the surface of anger lie primary emotions that drive this secondary reaction. These underlying emotions can include hurt, fear, frustration, sadness, or vulnerability. It's often challenging to tap into these emotions because society often encourages us to suppress or deny them.