Managing Anger

When you feel anger, the best advice is not to open your mouth and not to send an email or call on the phone or send a WhatsApp, because that is literally a time bomb.

Imagine that you are very angry with someone, and you want to send an email to express your anger. I recommend sending it to yourself and reading it the next day. If you read it in the moment, you will believe that it is perfectly justified, but when you read it the next day, after all the tension has reduced, you will be grateful for not having sent it.

Unfortunately, sometimes because we don’t know how to hold our tongue, we make the speech that we are going to regret the most.

Try this 3-step strategy against anger:

1) Don’t get carried away by the fury of the moment. Without denying its existence (trying to block it will only make it come out later), recognize that you have anger, even if it is towards your most loved ones.

2) Don’t act out of anger. You can have anger, but you have the ability not to respond, not to react according to it. Or at least not doing it at the heat of the moment. Take three deep breaths and ask yourself “what is most important in this situation?”

3) Try to detach yourself from the anger, take a distance and observe how it is affecting your body, you feel hot, perhaps your jaw will contract, you will notice more thoracic and accelerated breathing. This simple distancing to place yourself in an observer role will reduce the power of that emotion, helping you not to respond in a way you may regret.