“Anybody can become angry – that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

-Aristotle

In certain circumstances anger is a healthy emotion but sometimes certain triggers can cause some people to fly into a rage that is disproportional. Some people get angry and repression, injustice, lack of human rights whilst others can lose their rag because the toothpaste tube has been crushed in the middle.

Anger management is a good idea because apart from the fact that rage is emotionally upsetting for those involved, there are physiological changes to the body that are bad for your health long term. Anger makes a large amount of adrenaline flow and that raises your blood pressure when the danger is past. The mismanagement of anger in the long term has been linked to sleep disorders, chronic digestive ailments, high blood pressure, chronic headaches and heart attacks.

There is a commonly held belief that suppressing anger is in fact anger management. However from the bodies’ point of view suppressing anger is just pushing the long term problems down the line. The ultimate aim of anger management is to allow you to show your feelings and resolve the issues that made you mad in the first place. If you must expend your excessive anger find a place to do it whilst you are alone because it prevents others from being caught in the emotional backlash. Do something physical hit a punch bag, run jump up and down until the anger is spent.

A fairly effective and often underused anger management technique is just to breathe in slowly, hold the breathe, and also expel the air slowly. All three of these actions should take eight seconds. This break allows you to take stock of the situation. If you are having an argument with one person and they are angry walk off and leave them screaming at themselves. This is my favorite technique because they run out of steam and often come back for a sensible discussion.

Anger itself solves nothing it is the resolution of the issue that caused the anger that makes people feel better. Actually walking away or counting to ten or even a hundred if you are very angry allows you to take stock and attempt a rationale rather than an emotional response. The issues will be solved by an action and anger is a reaction.

It is beneficial to know your trigger points what is it that makes your blood boil and can you avoid these situations. Children are extremely adept at pushing the buttons to stretch the boundaries with their parents. Most of human behavior is thought to be adaptive which means that it had a distinct benefit to Stone Age man and laughter was no exception. When men were hunting large mammals and slipped and fell then got up safely laughter was probably the fastest way to communicate to the group of hunters that all was well. Certainly laughter releases tension and it does so in the situation of anger, if you can try a laugh it will be very difficult to be angry after laughing heartily.