Everyone experiences anger in their lives. Maybe you had a fight with your best friend, you didn’t get that promotion you expected or you wrangled through bad traffic and bad drivers to get somewhere in a rush.
While it’s normal to have a bad mood or be upset sometimes, it’s important to find the right balance between having a bad mood or feeling angry versus wallowing in it for too long — and letting those negative feelings take control of you.
[SEE: What Causes Mood Swings?]
The Effects of Prolonged or Extreme Anger
Unfortunately, anger can have severe consequences. According to Everytown research, road rage-related shootings are on the rise, with total shooting deaths and woundings doubling between 2018 and 2023. These incidents translate to a person being shot in a road rage incident in 2023 every 18 hours.
Anger can also create tensions in relationships, especially familial or intimate relationships.
Anger triggers your natural “fight or flight” response, which also causes other changes in the body, such as:
— An increased heart rate
— More adrenaline released in the body
This can make anger harder to control, especially if you have anxiety and depression that aren’t adequately treated, says Tammala Watkins, a licensed clinical social worker and an executive director at A Mission for Michael Treatment Centers. Changes to the political and social climate, economic stress and decreased social engagement have led to increased episodes of anger, she adds.
The health effects of poorly managed anger range from cardiovascular strain and digestive issues to mental health challenges like anxiety and depression. For example, if the anger is sustained and blood pressure and the heart rate are affected, that indirectly can lead to coronary disease or disease of the heart muscle. Chronic anger also leads to insomnia, brain fog and fatigue. And it can reduce the immune system’s ability to fend off threats, leading to an increased risk of infection.
While anger can have a positive purpose of motivating you to take action either individually or to address broader civic and social issues, it is unhealthy if it interferes with your relationships with others and your ability to function in everyday life.
[READ: 7 Types of Anxiety Disorders: What Type Do You Suffer From?]
10 Tips to Get Over a Bad Mood or Anger
It’s possible to overcome anger or a bad mood, but it takes a commitment to do it. Anger management is the process of learning to recognize when you’re becoming angry and finding skills to express the emotion in a positive, constructive way. Therapists can help people explore the roots of their anger, train them in anger-control techniques and teach them better ways to communicate and ultimately, to manage, reduce and prevent harmful anger.
“You can have control over your life or emotions. It just takes practice,” says Annette Nunez, psychotherapist and founder and director of Breakthrough Interventions, a Denver-based therapy practice that helps parents.
Here are 10 powerful ways you can overcome a bad mood or anger:
— Acknowledge what you’re feeling
— Step back and ask, “Why?”
— Practice assuming positive intent
— Exercise and smile
— Eat
— Practice mindfulness
— Use visual reminders
— Call a friend
— Let it go symbolically
— Seek help if needed
[READ: The Power of Meditation: A Beginner’s Guide to Mindfulness]
1. Acknowledge what you’re feeling
Some people may encourage you to ignore a bad mood or difficult feelings, but that’s actually not healthy in the long run.
“Burying and suppressing feelings is hard — so hard that it often doesn’t work,” says Amanda Fialk, a licensed clinical social worker and chief of clinical services for The Dorm, a treatment center with locations in New York City and Washington, D.C.
When you don’t process and acknowledge a bad mood or anger, you put yourself at higher risk for:
— Harmful and dangerous habits. It leads some people to turn to substances like drugs or alcohol to numb their pain.
— Loneliness. Emotions are a normal part of life, but if you constantly avoid negative feelings, you may build an emotional wall around you that keeps you from making a real connection with others. Over time, you might feel isolated and lonely, which can have other significant health effects.
— Physical pain. Overwhelming emotional stress puts stress on the body and can lead to headaches, digestive issues and other health problems.
Instead of trying to bury your negative emotion, realize what you’re feeling. Give the emotion or mood a name. It can be as simple as saying, “I’m in a bad mood” or “I’m angry right now.”
Also, take a minute to reflect on your physical feelings, Fialk advises. For instance:
— Is your stomach in knots?
— Is your heart beating fast?
— Are you feeling warm or sweaty?
The act of recognizing what you feel can help it pass more quickly, says Sophie Lazarus, a psychologist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and a clinical associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral health at the Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus.
2. Step back and ask, “Why?”
Bad moods and anger don’t come out of nowhere. Think about why you feel the way you do. For instance, are you tired, hungry or overwhelmed with life responsibilities?
Stepping back to ask yourself why you’re angry or in a bad mood can help you pinpoint what changes might need to be made in your life so you don’t repeat the same scenarios over and over.
“Emotions can give us important information, and we don’t want to ignore them or push them away,” Lazarus says.
If you find yourself feeling anger regularly, take a deeper look to track a few trends about your anger. When you feel calmer, write down or talk to someone you trust about:
— How often you feel angry
— How long it lasts
— What causes your anger
This can be the first step to breaking the anger pattern. Sometimes, talking with a trusted friend can be enough to work through the anger pattern. Other times, you may need to seek help from a mental health professional.
3. Practice assuming positive intent
“Positive intent is a belief that individuals typically act with good intentions. It’s a shift in our mindset that allows us to give others the benefit of the doubt,” Watkins says.
In turn, it may reduce your natural angry reaction to assume the worst of others. You may recall a time when you said or did something that made someone angry even if that wasn’t your intention. Assuming positive intent when appropriate can help interrupt the fight or flight response in negative or upsetting situations, Watkins says.
This is something you’ll have to actively commit to. In order to remind yourself of that commitment, you can write it down on a sticky note to attach to your desk, write it on your mirror with an erasable marker or save a phrase like “positive intent” as your phone background.
4. Exercise and smile
Something that gets your blood pumping more quickly can give you a physical outlet to express your emotions. Exercise also helps to release “happy” chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine, endorphins and serotonin — all of which help to reduce stress.
Even a short burst of intense exercise, such as a few minutes of push ups or jumping jacks, can be enough to put your mind and body in a more positive place, Lazarus says.
Smiling, like exercise, also triggers endorphins, or “happy” chemicals in your brain and can make you feel happier.
“It may seem fake or false, but your brain doesn’t know any different,” Nunez says.
5. Eat
Sometimes, your bad mood or anger may have a physical cause. Maybe you’re tired, or maybe you’re “hangry” (a combination of hungry and angry).
If you haven’t eaten recently, grab a healthy snack. In fact, certain foods and drinks can improve mental health.
6. Practice mindfulness
You’ve likely seen countless examples of how mindfulness practices, such as meditation and yoga, can improve your life. Devotees seem to effortlessly achieve a calmer state of mind. Practicing meditation, self-reflection or yoga are good to help let your emotions just be rather than fueling them further, Lazarus says. However, it takes practice to achieve this.
If you’re new to mindfulness, start with a simple goal, such as sitting quietly for five minutes after you wake up to set an intention for the day.
“I will remain calm if someone cuts me off on the street” or “I will give my coworkers the benefit of the doubt in tough situations” are examples of emotion-diffusing intentions that you can set. Aim to practice this regularly, and it’ll become a habit.
7. Use visual reminders to help
Nunez recommends to clients that they write down positive statements on notecards or sticky paper and place them around their house. Some statements they might write include:
— “Breathe”
— “You’ve got this”
— “Smile”
These positive statements work to get you to think differently about what seems to be a bad situation, she explains. When you’re upset, you’ll see the reminders and likely start to act differently.
8. Call a friend
Talking about your bad mood or anger with a trusted friend is a productive way to recognize and overcome what you’re feeling. That chat with a friend has a secondary effect.
“When we engage, we have the chance to have a new experience,” Lazarus says.
That new experience can help take your mind off your mood.
9. Let it go symbolically
Make a choice to not hold on to the emotion you’re feeling. It may take a few tries before you can fully release pain or anger, Fialk says. You may have to do something symbolic to achieve it, such as writing a letter to someone who’s made you angry and then ripping the letter to shreds, she says.
10. Seek help if needed
Having some anger or bad moods is normal. However, it’s time to seek help from a mental health professional if you:
— Find yourself feeling angry or in a bad mood over several weeks
— Find that your bad moods or anger interfere with your ability to get along with others
— Take your bad mood or anger out on others
— Simple irritations of everyday life cause you to feel angry or enraged
“Many of us have never received the scaffolding or support to manage difficult emotions effectively. In fact, we may have seen unhelpful or negative modeling around managing anger,” Lazarus says.
This is why working with a mental health professional can help to understand and learn skills to manage your emotions and reduce the toll that anger may have on you.
[READ: Types of Mental Health Professionals.]
What to Expect From an Anger Management Class or Anger Therapy
If you believe that you need anger management therapy, you may wonder what to expect. Anger therapy may take place individually with a therapist, or you may choose to take part in an anger management class.
A therapist can work with you to identify triggers, challenge dysfunctional thought patterns and help you develop more positive coping skills, Watkins says. One approach a therapist may use is called cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, to help identify negative or harmful thought patterns or distorted beliefs.
With anger management therapy, people can learn to unpack the anger they’ve carried for years. This is the type of anger that causes people have a much more intense reaction to something than is really warranted. Unprocessed anger, pain, stored grief and trauma from childhood or previous relationships can show up in the present. Anger management therapy can last as little as 12 weeks or much longer.
Similar information is part of an anger management class, although you’ll be part of a small group of other participants. You may have work toward anger control that you’ll be asked to do outside of the class.
Coping exercises that you’ll learn in anger therapy or anger management classes include:
— Physical activity
— Relaxation techniques
— Visualization
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How to Control Anger: 10 Powerful Ways to Stay Calm originally appeared on usnews.com
