Is Uncontrollable Anger Ruining Your Life? Top Causes for Anger and 10 Tips to Control the Emotion!

Is Uncontrollable Anger Ruining Your Life? Top Causes for Anger and 10 Tips to Control the Emotion!

Anger is a normal emotion but what makes it something to worry about is when you cannot control it. Uncontrollable anger can cause problems in family life and professional life. And might also affect the quality of life. Here are 10 tips from our experts to help you control your anger.

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Top Causes of Anger

Depression and Anxiety

Various studies have found that frustration and anger can become common habits of people who are stressed. When a person has been facing excessive unacknowledged and unspoken depression for a long time, there comes a point where he does not know how to handle it anymore. It causes his stress and depression to turn into anger.

When depression changes into anger, it is because an individual who shows anger will have an underlying anxiety about something in their life. Studies have found a link between emotions of anger and depression, and usually, long-term anger is a sign of depression.

Your Upbringing or Past Experiences

Yelling at children is not a good thing, and the screaming that comes with put-downs and abuses can be lead to emotional abuse. It has been shown to have long-term side-effects, like anxiety, low self-esteem, and increased aggression, and anger. Kids of angry parents have poor overall behaviour and less social connections.

There is a powerful connection between parental anger and violence. The results of parental anger can proceed to affect the adult child, including growing levels of depression, social isolation, spouse abuse, and decreased career and economic performance. Moreover, many people also experience anger when they're hurt. For instance, unheard and unappreciated feelings, lack of acceptance of a situation, and unmet needs, also results in anger.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Various studies have found that OCD is a common symptom of rage and anxiety. A person with OCD can appear extremely frustrated, angry, and unyielding. This feeling can lead to conflict, resulting in excessive anger issues and irritability. A person with OCD faces obsessive feelings and a driving attitude.

In addition to all that, researchers have discovered that people with OCD experience anger attacks, resulting from disappointment with your failure to fight off obsessive feelings and compelling actions. It can also occur due to your inability to perform a particular task or a job.

The Manifold Effects of Anger

Effects of Anger on Your Body

Anger and negative thoughts are not good for health. Negative emotions and perceptions of failure and hopelessness can generate prolonged stress, which disturbs the body's hormonal balance, stop producing the brain chemicals essential for happiness, and weakens the immune system. Moreover, it increases your heart rate, blood pressure, and causes anxiety.

In addition to all that, anger produces an outpouring of stress hormones such as adrenaline, which affects your heart health. It also causes your blood more likely to clot, arteries to get narrowed by cholesterol-laden plaque, resulting in heart attack and stroke.

Effects of Anger on Your Mind

From an increased anxiety level to raised blood pressure, anger is known to affect the brain process and functioning. Various studies have shown that excessive anger has the ability to alter the structure of the brain itself, resulting in the production of nerve cells in the hippocampus. Also, anger triggers the hormones and releases too much cortisol that decreases the level of the serotonin hormone, a happy hormone.

A drop in serotonin can cause you to feel frustrated and hurt more easily, as well as increase violent behavior that leads to depression. Raised level of cortisol also causes a loss of neurons in the prefrontal cortex. Long-term anger has been associated with health issues such as headaches, migraine, and memory problems.

Effects of Anger on Your Health

Unmanaged anger has been linked to various long and short-term health issues. One minute of anger has been shown to weaken the immune system for about 4-5 hours. Also, anger weakens our immune system and causes cardiovascular damage, gastrointestinal problems such as ulcers, nausea and vomiting, irritable bowel syndrome, and reduced fertility. Additionally, it can lead to accelerated ageing and even premature death.

Furthermore, it has diverse effects on the digestive system. This is so, because, our digestive system is receptive to sentiments, including anger, stress, and sorrow. Anger disturbs the digestion process by significantly raising the colon motor and spike potential activity in the body linked. It also causes abdominal pain and slows down the food digestion.

Ten Tips to Help You to Control Your Temper

Understand Anger and Embrace it

To get on to the path towards anger management, the very first thing that you will need to do is understand what anger actually is. Now, anger is just a feeling, like happiness, sadness, frustration, and excitement, etc. This is just a way of your brain telling you that you have been mistreated or wronged and sending a message that you are to prevent this from happening again.

However, if you do not treat it as such and react to it badly by shouting and hitting others, this will not be of any use to you. So, instead of exploring every time that you feel threatened, try and understand the message that your brain is trying to convey. Then, you may be able to do better in the future, and will surely improve your anger management.

Know the Risks

If you are prone to lashing out, be careful. Some of the short and long-term health issues that have been associated with excessive anger include headache, high blood pressure, digestion problems, such as abdominal pain, increased heart rate, insomnia, raised anxiety, stress, depression, skin problems, such as eczema, and heart attack stroke. Additionally, the brain flows blood away from the gut and towards the muscles, resulting in physical exertion and, causes the body temperature to rise.

Furthermore, it also affects your relationships and destroys and them. It can have an extremely negative effect on your partner's wellbeing. Resolving disputes with anger, screaming and physical violence also set a toxic precedent in a relationship, overlooking the need for open, trusting connection.

Know the Things That Trigger Your Anger

The most important that you will need to do in order to prevent anger is to know the things that trigger it. By doing this, you will be able to avoid getting in those situations or meeting those people, and, therefore, will be able to avoid getting angry. Now, even though these triggers vary from person to person, some of them are pretty common.

For instance, you may be angry around some particular people, maybe even for no reason. Other than that, you may face anger at a particular time of day or at a particular place. You may even feel angry and frustrated by doing a specific task. Once you have figured out your triggers, you can either avoid them or, for better anger management, you can face them and resolve the issues.

Stop Talking and Write Down Your Thoughts

As you might have already noticed, talking does not help much, but, instead makes it worse further. By staying quiet, on the other hand, you will be able to calm yourself down, and, therefore, move a step forward towards better anger management.

Another important way to cope with anger is by writing down your thoughts. It can help you gain control of your sentiments and improve your mental health. When you hold in your anger, it is likely to build. Expressing your emotions is an essential first step for coping with them, and writing is a great way to do that. Moreover, you will be able to recognize your triggers and discover various ways to control them better.

Try Doing Exercise

Physical exercise is known to lessen the psychological signs of anger, provide positive energy, and at the same time, raise relax- action. Various researches have shown that exercise aids in overcoming anger by producing endorphins in the body. Endorphins are natural hormones that improve the mood and improve the sense of well-being. Exercise results in overall betterment in psychological well-being, enhance the mood, raises your self-esteem, eases the tension, improves your brain activity, and also improves overall self-control ability.

Cardio and aerobic exercises like brisk walking, running, and jumping, etc, help with getting rid of anger and lifting your mood. Running, in particular, can be a very effective exercise for managing the anger by releasing your emotions. Physical activity can help reduce the stress that causes you to become angry. You are suggested to do some exercise every day to keep stress and anger at bay.

Try Counting and Take Deep Breaths

The best solution to managing anger is taking deep breaths. It calms the body, eases the muscles, and releases the pressure and stress. For deep-breathing, you are suggested to sit down, with your eyes closed, and focus on your breathing. Try to breathe with your nostrils naturally instead of the mouth. For this, place one hand on your abdomen, and one on your chest. Now, for almost four seconds, take a deep breath before holding your breath in for three seconds. Next, breathe out for four seconds and repeat.

Make sure that the hand you have put on your belly goes in when you breathe in and move out as you breathe out. Concentrate on your breathing and do not try to control it. Furthermore, you are also suggested to count till 100 as the time you will take for counting will slow down your heart rate and blood pressure, and will provide you with a soothing effect.

Try Developing Empathy

Another thing that you can try to control your anger is to encourage empathy within yourself. A stronger sense of empathy can also help the person acquire anger management. This is so, because, by developing the virtue of empathy within oneself, he can better understand other person's viewpoints, and, hence, control his anger.

In addition to all that, empathy provides a higher level of understanding of how others feel. This also requires us to accept other people's' flaws and mistakes. Acceptance of others’ emotions is not easy when people act differently than we do. We all have trouble with those who are different. By acquiring the skill of empathy, we will be better able to comprehend ourselves and others, resulting in decreased anger.

Listen to Music

Listening to music is another way of drifting off your anger. Various studies have proven that listening to music when you are angry helps to match the beat to your anger and make you release pressure and lower your temperament by increasing the production of the antibody immunoglobulin which decreases the production of the testosterone and cortisol hormone. Additionally, it builds a link to the sentiments, and, hence, assist you to comprehend the emotions better.

In addition to all that, we get angry, the heart rate increases and the brain becomes more stimulated. In this situation, upbeat music helps our physiological functions by reducing the pulse and heart rate. It also helps lower down the blood pressure level and relaxes the muscles and mind. Music, sometimes, also serves as a diversion, and, for all these reasons, it is found to be extremely helpful against anger.

Try Relaxing and Change Your Thoughts

Your body is mostly controlled by your thoughts and emotions. So, when you become angry and get negative, you start feeling anxious and frustrated. Hence, you are suggested to think positively, concentrate on your words and language, challenge your anxious thoughts, and see the situations more positively and empathetically. All these things will aid you to drain out negative thoughts and opinions, helping you with the anger management recovery process.

In addition to all that, you should try diverting your thoughts by doing some activity. Engage yourself in breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation. Another way to relax your body and mind is to get a massage. This way not you will not be able to improve your health but also release all the tension within, and, hence, move a step closer to anger management.

Talk to Someone or Use Professional Help

Another thing that you can try doing to defeat your anger is finding someone to talk to. Talking to someone whom you are close to will be much comforting. It will help you to calm down and instead of getting angry, that person will help you to resolve the issue. Moreover, by talking to people about what is making you angry will help release the pressure within and improve your mental health too.

You are suggested to speak to someone who is not connected to the situation. It could be a friend or family member, who understands you and the situation well. You can also pay a visit to the psychologist. Psychologists are professional and will know of several ways to help manage your anger by finding out the core problem and help you get rid of it easily. Additionally, he will also help you find ways to prevent excessive anger in the future.

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From our editorial team

Consult a Doctor!

Though anger is a normal emotion, an uncontrollable show of the feeling should be a matter of concern. And when it affects the relationship and work, you should consult a doctor. When your anger causes you have disruptive behaviour, or if you feel anger more than often you should understand that it has become a problem.

In addition to following the above steps, get a consultation from a doctor or a therapist who can help you handle the issues.