Pep Talk!> Tips To Express Your Anger

Text by: Tanya Munshi
Anger is a form of venting out our frustrations and pent up feelings. Anger can get the worst of us if we don’t know how to control it. Just like happy and not so happy thoughts, it is very important to figure out our anger. Remember, anger can make us react impulsively which we may tend to regret later. So knowing our anger definitely helps.

Healthy Anger
~ Anger is a perfectly normal human emotion, just like happiness, sadness, fear etc.
~ Anger is more of a response to people, situations and events beyond our control.
~ Anger can be caused by external stimuli, such as being hurt by a friend or external stimuli such as missing a bus to work.
~ It’s best to vent out anger by standing up for oneself if ill-treated or by defending oneself on being attacked etc.
~ Anger is essential for our survival as it catalyses us to do something about a situation/ event.

Expressing Anger
We manifest anger in three ways, –

Expressing –
o We need to be assertive; it’s the best way to vent our anger.
o For this, we need to be very clear in our head and heart as to how we can resolve a situation. This is the first step before confrontation.

Suppressing –
o Helps to block out negative emotions and concentrate on something positive.
o It gives us time to think about the stimuli clearly, before taking a call.
o Suppression does not mean that we don’t tackle a situation.
o Talking to a friend, confronting a person who caused that anger is important, but with dignity. We need not berate ourselves.
o Firmly, yet politely we should put our point across to the person.
o Using humor helps.

Calming –
o It allows the negative emotions to subside.
o This works especially when we are in a no-win situation.
o Sometimes it’s best to keep quite in anger triggering situations.

Unhealthy Anger
~ Anger becomes unhealthy when we brood over an unhappy event/ memory for too long and it sours our overall thinking.
~ When anger manifests into destructive behavior, i.e. when we hurt ourselves or others.
~ When anger makes us aggressive in behavior, we become pushy and disrespectful of others and hurt their feelings.
~ When we throw tantrums and refuse to understand and accept situations.
~ Especially when we start suppressing anger for too long and too often.