Areas › Anger
Anger
Almost nobody wants to be the person who says the thing they cannot take back. The window between the surge and the words is short and it can be widened. That is most of what this area is about, along with the fear or hurt that anger is usually protecting.
What works for this
Anger control, with distress tolerance
Anger has a runway, and the earlier you step onto it the less force you need. The work is in the seconds before, not in the explosion, and it starts with the body rather than the thought.
One move, today
Name the first physical sign you get. Jaw, chest, hands, heat in the face. That sign is your only warning, and noticing it is the whole skill.
What matches
25 practicesTelling yourself to calm down asks the part of you that has just gone offline to do the work. Have something practised and physical ready instead, something your hands and lungs can do without instructions.
Relax is a wish, not a skill. A skill is: breathe out for longer than you breathe in, six times. Or: unclench, both feet flat on the floor, shoulders…
When your mouth opens to shout, let the air go out slowly through pursed lips instead. Same body part, different job.
It helps that you are not being asked to do nothing. The mouth is already open and the breath is already moving, so you are redirecting something…
If you feel yourself rising, sit down. It is the smallest instruction in the whole toolkit and often the one that works.
Standing tall with a raised voice tells your own body that a fight is on, and it tells the other person the same thing, so they brace and match you.…
Your hand is already halfway there. From a clenched fist, keep the thumb and index finger touching and let the other three fingers open out.
It is the same hand doing nearly the same thing, so there is nothing new to learn at the worst possible moment. People often describe a small opening…
Rest your fingertips against one another and let your attention go to the place where they meet. It is a small piece of contact that is always available to you.
Anger sharpens the line between you and everything outside your skin, and everything on the far side of that line starts looking like a threat or an…
Fear pulls the in breath long. Relief runs the other way and comes out as a sigh, which is your body's own signal that the danger has passed.
Knowing the direction you are aiming in helps. When you are frightened or furious the breath gets pulled in, fast and high in the chest, because the…
The usual advice to take a deep breath can work against you. A big pull of air in rouses the very system you are trying to quiet.
Leave the in breath alone and lengthen only the out breath. Breathe in normally through the nose, let the air out slowly, then repeat without ever…
To make an out breath last longer without a big gulp of air first, make the opening smaller. Purse your lips, or send the air out through your nose.
The same amount of air through a narrower gap takes longer to leave, so you get a long exhale without a dramatic inhale to set it up. It also gives…
Counting to ten asks you to keep track of numbers at the exact moment you cannot keep track of anything. Breathe out slowly instead and let the breath do the delaying.
The count was only ever a way of buying a few seconds, and a long out breath buys the same seconds without needing anything from a mind that has gone…
A sigh opens the chest and drops the guard for a second. That is part of why it feels like relief and part of why the other person softens too.
Anger holds the body braced: shoulders up, chest closed, everything protecting the middle. A sigh undoes some of that, and it is hard to keep the…
Hum. You cannot hum without a long out breath, so the technique makes you do it right whether you are concentrating or not.
Most breathing instructions leave you judging whether your exhale was really slow enough, which is a poor thing to be assessing while you are…
While you hum, put your attention on the tickle in your nose and lips. There is not much room left for the argument once you are following that.
Two things happen in the same breath. The exhale stretches out, which settles the body, and the buzzing gives your attention somewhere plain to sit,…
Take slow sips of water. You have to hold your breath for a moment to swallow, so your breathing slows down without you having to manage it.
This is why a glass of water helps more than it has any right to. Nobody has to tell you how to drink, and the slowing happens as a side effect of…
While you drink, follow the cold going down the back of your throat. It turns a sip into half a minute of attention resting somewhere other than the argument.
Telling yourself to observe your thoughts without judging them is a lot to ask mid conflict. Following a cold sensation is not. There is a real thing…
Keep a few purely physical moves in your kit: sip, hum, sit, look away. At the top of a flare, thinking your way out is the one thing that is not available.
The part of you that would weigh things up is exactly the part that anger has taken offline, which is why good arguments land so poorly at that…
The alarm system in you responds to what your body does more readily than to what you tell it. Sit down, unclench, breathe out slowly, and only then try to reason with yourself.
Reasoning does work, just not at the top of the curve. Wait until the arousal has come down a little, then think about what happened, and you will…
The urge to punch a wall is the body trying to dump a load of energy. Give it somewhere to go that will not cost you a hand or a door.
Telling yourself to stop rarely holds, because the urge is doing a job. Choose the substitute in advance and keep it dull and near to hand: press…
Press ups on clenched fists give the hands something close to striking, while the effort and the counting take the story out of it.
The shape of the movement is part of why it satisfies, and the breathing it forces is what stops it being a rehearsal. Count the reps, keep the…
If one sigh helps, take another. Nothing says you have to wait for the hard part to be over first.
Waiting makes the sigh a report on something already finished. Repeating it while you are still in the middle turns it into an intervention instead.…
If techniques and explanations are not for you, carry a bottle of water and drink it down whenever you feel yourself going up. That is the whole method.
Some people want something to do, not something to understand, and that is a perfectly reasonable way to be. A bottle in your bag or your van is a…
If the irritability came in alongside a low patch, or a spell of racing thoughts and hardly any sleep, have the mood looked at rather than treating the temper on its own.
Irritability is part of depression, and it belongs to the mixed and elevated states of bipolar disorder too. Anger skills are still worth having, and…
Shouting it out does not empty the tank. Going over it loudly, in your head or at somebody, tends to keep the anger topped up rather than draining it.
There is a difference between letting pressure out of the body and rehearsing the grievance. A walk, a swim, hard cleaning, prayer: all of that…
Anger leaves fuel in the body with nowhere to go. Spend it on something physical, without replaying the argument while you do.
This is not getting it off your chest. The target is the surplus energy, so stairs, a brisk walk, or a hard ten minutes of almost anything will do…
When you are already angry, imagining your way into someone else's head asks the tired part of you to do the heavy lifting. Start with your body instead: look at their face, let your breathing and your shoulders come closer to theirs.
Perspective taking is a fine skill on a calm day. In the middle of a row it tends to slide into arguing with a version of the other person you have…
If you have gone numb around other people's pain, the numbness almost certainly started as protection. It kept you upright at a time when feeling all of it would have flattened you.
The trouble is that it does not switch itself off when the danger passes. You find yourself unmoved in front of someone you love, and then you blame…