Recover from Anger Blog

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

If there is a time when practical jokes are carried out to varying degree of friends, colleagues, enemies and neighbors, that would be April Fools’ Day.  However this month may also elicit negative reactions though it is meant to be taken in stride. The feeling of shame and embarrassment can cause other people to have anger explosions.

So what can you do to avoid coming unglued as the result of an embarrassing April Fools’ Day prank? As the saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Anger Management Tip #1

Do not wait for a prank to occur, give yourself a stress inoculation before April Fools’ Day. Prepare yourself for a potential stressor or anger trigger, you will then be ready to handle whatever comes your way.

Imagine some worst- case scenarios regarding pranks and practice your response. Look at yourself and see how you appear. Ask yourself if you are comfortable with your reaction. Do you feel what you react will be accepted by the people around you? Will it result in greater understanding and empathy or might it make matters worse? If in doubt, it is time to modify your response. Use this moment, while calm and relaxed, to prepare and practice how you will respond to the pranks. Rehearsing and critically examining your own reaction until it feels right is the thing that you have to do.

Stress Inoculation should be performed correctly. It should prepare you well as there is always a time that you get the chance of getting caught off-guard by an embarrassing practical joke. In such a case, the emotional part of your brain will be the first to activate before the thinking part does put you at risk of overreacting and lashing out inappropriately. Thus, in the heat of the moment, you will have a tendency to act on impulse than to think things through about the consequences of your actions. Although you may be completely justified in how you feel, it is imperative that you find a way to allow the thinking part of your brain to catch up to the emotional part. Otherwise you risk acting upon your aggressive impulses and possibly saying or doing something that you will later regret.

Anger Management Tip #2

One of the first things that you must do is to avoid the situation and take a personal time-out. It is so great even just for a few minutes to help clear your mind. Use your time wisely by working on your breathing and trying to modify your thoughts. Breathe deeply into your abdomen and then pause before exhaling. Repeat this step several times and as your breathing slows, you will notice your mind and body beginning to relax.

Anger Management Tip #3

Replacing your angry thoughts or images with those that are tranquil and peace is a great way to achieve relaxation. Think of happy positive thoughts and let it take you to a happier time of your life or to a more peaceful setting. Perhaps a proud moment from your childhood or a grand vacation of your dreams. Maybe sailing on a cruise or lying in a hammock with a cold beverage. It would be difficult to feel angry with this kind of mind-set. Try stopping anger this way and you will see inner peace within you.

Anger Management Tip #4

There is another very powerful anger management technique and that is to change the inner conversation that you have with yourself (also known as self-talk). It is a very normal occurrence for people to have an inner dialogue that can either get them more worked up (e.g., “If he even looks at me the wrong way, I’m going to explode”) or put them in a calmer frame of mind (e.g., “Relax, stay calm, I can get through this”). The words we say to ourselves are very powerful and can definitely influence how we feel and how we subsequently behave.

Even saying a phrase like “Serenity Now,” popularized by Frank Costanza on the classic sitcom Seinfeld, can actually have a positive effect on how you feel. Emotions are influenced by our thoughts, any words that can conjure up peaceful images can put us in a better emotional frame of mind. Thus by repeating a pleasant phrase or mantra, we can shift from feeling angry to feeling relaxed. The key is that relaxation and anger are incompatible emotions.

So whether you are planning to get together with your prankster buddies or April Fool’s Day, give yourself a stress inoculation and don’t forget to bring with you some anger control tools. After all, you never know when you get off-guard. You must consider controlling anger or else it will control you.

Some anger is a normal and healthy part of being human. But when anger affects your quality of life, check into how to better manage this emotion before it manages you. Learn to recover from anger effectively.

Control your anger using assertive behavior