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You finally make it to your job nearly half an hour late for a meeting.
As you rush in and you throw your folders onto the secretary's desk
nearly spilling her coffee. At the same time you shout at your secretary
“Have those typed for me before lunch".
Anger is one of the basic human emotions when we feel threated. Our
bodies automatically prepare to fight or flight in threatened
situations. Our heart races, our mouth become dry, our pupils constrict,
our breath becomes shorter, our speech becomes louder and our bodies
tend to become tense. Anger tends to escalate and becomes contagious for
a lot of people. If you become angry while speaking with someone, both
of you may end up talking louder and louder and now you start developing
a hostile posture.
Though anger is an instinctive reaction, the extent to which we express
our anger depends on your attitude. If you are generally hostile in
viewing the world, you are likely to perceive threats and feel like you
need to defend yourself in situations where others would remain calm.
You may tend to leap to conclusions and misinterpret the intentions of
others. You may feel that you are too easily taken advantage and much
more likely to become angry. Irritability is a term for the emotional
tone that's usually comes before your anger.
There are ways in which we can
deal with our anger. You may repress
anger and some therapists believe that once it is bottled up, anger
comes to the surface in the form of depression. You may deal with anger
passively for example, by refusing to talk or dragging your feet on an
important project. You may place anger on obviously easier targets. For
example, if your boss humiliates you, you may feel unable to respond to
the situation and when you get home, you scream at your wife instead.
Even if you are not normally an angry person, you may be prone to
becoming angry when you have too much to drink or taking drugs like
cocaine and amphetamines. These can cause increased irritability and
then your common sense diminishes and your irritability increases
leading to anger.
Hate is a chronic form of anger. Hate itself is not actually a mental
illness but in the medical field, professionals would probably agree
that is not healthy.
How to
cope with Anger
?
If you suffer from frequent bouts of anger, you may benefit from anger
management. This is the type of psychotherapy where you can identify
your tendency to perceive hostility on others when it really is not
intended. Thereby, you can then decrease your anger response.
You can learn what triggers your anger so that you can avoid them or
diffuse them first rather than just immediately react with anger.
You can learn relaxation techniques to decrease tension. This way you
can gain confidence in your ability to remain in control of your
feelings. You may still lose your temper from time to time, but you
regain control faster.
Let’s discuss parents with children. One thing a parent should not do is
hit out of anger. Before you lift your hand to strike a child, first
think “Why am I ready to hit him or her”. This way you have given
yourself a few seconds to calm down and take control. Are you hitting
because someone just made you angry and your child just happens to make
a remark that irritates you.
Hitting is not usually the answer. Punishment works much better. Take
away what the child really likes and stick with your punishment. Don’t
give in because then your child will know you are not serious with
punishments.
With the fast pace in life that we go through every day, especially when
two parents are working, we really need just to sit down even if it's
for 15 minutes, close your eyes and relax. Also, what is a great way to
relieve tension in the home is to have a family meeting once a week
because if anybody is feeling angry or something is bottled up inside,
tension can be relieved because anger outcomes occur.
by :
Fern Kuhn
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