You might need to calm down…
Anger is a normal emotion and is not necessarily a problem in itself. Feeling angry about injustices or getting angry when you’re under threat helps you to take decisive action or keep yourself safe. But sometimes it’s the slow build up of stress or having a lot of unexpressed frustrations that eventually causes you to have an angry over-reaction. When you suppress emotions, they often travel underground and then explode in a way that’s completely out of proportion to the situation.
You’re a person who has a quick temper and sometimes the people around you are wary of your moods, not knowing if they’re going to be on the receiving end of one of your outbursts. You’re emotionally reactive and tend to shoot first, ask questions later which can cause problems in your relationships.
You might also...
Be someone who tends to keep walls up, not letting people to get too emotionally close. Whether consciously or not, you might have adopted an idea that vulnerability is weakness. Often it’s the case that a fiery temper works as a safeguard against letting someone see your more vulnerable feelings, like fear or sadness. Rather than letting someone know they’ve hurt you or that you feel unappreciated, you lash out in anger.
When you’re not able to express how you really feel, you never really resolve the issue. Your anger causes other people to be defensive and you end up locked into a battle that never fully addresses the root cause of your unhappiness.
No-one really wants to...
Be that cranky person who everyone has to tippy-toe around, and when your partner or your children are on the receiving end of your outbursts, it hurts them and makes you feel even worse. Even when you feel justified in your frustration, it’s important to learn to express it in ways that are healthy and appropriate rather than lashing out at people care about or blaming others for your mood.
Managing your anger
Means learning to press the pause button between your emotion and your reaction.
Taking a few deep breaths and counting to 10 is helpful because it gives you some space before you do something you might regret, and the counting brings online a part of your brain that is logical and linear, as a way of countering the highly reactive and emotive part of your brain that is...
not concerned with logic
at all.
Learning to tap into an inner state of calm is the first step towards learning to be more responsive rather than reactive. This requires making a regular investment of time into managing your stress before it boils over.
Taking just a few minutes out of your day, every few hours, to check in with yourself - ‘How am I feeling? Is there tension in my body? What stories am I telling myself?’ - then taking some slow deep breaths to calm down your body’s stress response, can go a long way to keeping that rising tension and irritability at bay.