CONTROLLING ANGER STRATEGIES

CONTROLLING ANGER STRATEGIES
Using Humor
“Silly humor” can help defuse rage in a number of ways. For one thing, it can help you get a more balanced perspective. When you get angry and call someone a name or refer to them in some imaginative phrase, stop and picture what that world would literally look like. If you’re at work and think of a coworker as a “dirt bag” or a “single cell life form,” for example, picture a large bag full of dirt (or amoeba) sitting at your colleague’s desk, talking on the phone, going to meetings.
Angry people tend to feel that they are morally right, that any blocking or changing of their plans an unbearable indignity an that they should NOT have to suffer this way. Maybe other people do, but not them!
When you feel that urge, picture yourself as a god or goddess, a supreme ruler, who owns the streets and stores and office space, striding alone and having your way in all situations while others defer to you. The more detail you can get into your imaginary scenes, the more chances you have to realize that maybe you are being unreasonable; you’ll also realize how unimportant the things you’re about really are.
Changing Your Environment
Sometimes it’s our immediate surroundings that give us cause for irritation and fury.
Give yourself a break. Make sure you have some “personal time” scheduled for the times of the day that you know you are particularly stressful. One example is the working mother who has a standing rule that when she comes home from work, for the 15 minutes “nobody talks to Mom unless the house is on fire.” After this brief quiet time, she feels better prepared to handle demands from her kids without blowing up at them.