ATTACKS OF ANGER: 12 TIPS TO CONTROL THEM - DUDAS - 2025

The attack of anger is a response that people make when they experience anger, which is an emotion that appears when the person is angry or feels provoked by something that they perceive as an offense.

Outbursts of anger can include yelling, name calling, jerking movements, and even violent acts. Likewise, it causes a series of physical changes such as muscle tension, redness of the skin, sweating or an increase in the heart and respiratory rate.

It is very important to know how to control anger attacks, in order to ensure that the angry emotion does not always translate into unwanted behaviors. Obviously, having outbursts of anger can be a highly damaging situation for the person. Faced with these types of attacks, behaviors are guided by the emotion of anger and not by rationing or thinking.

In fact, attacks of anger often result in a series of unwanted behaviors, which very often cause regret or shame when the emotion disappears.

Anger is a normal emotion that all people experience. Normally it appears in specific situations in which an injustice, an attack or any situation that acts against personal interests is perceived.

Do you want to know what steps must be followed to achieve it? Here are 12 tips that psychologists point out as essential to control anger attacks.

Tips for managing anger attacks

1- Acquire awareness about anger

The first step in learning to control anger attacks is to become aware that you have a problem. Not all people experience outbursts of anger with the same ease. In fact, there may be people who have a hard time experiencing them and other individuals who develop them frequently.

If you want to solve your anger attacks, you must bear in mind that you are a person prone to experiencing these types of reactions. This awareness will be essential so that you pay more attention to the situations that can provoke attacks of anger, as well as the emotional responses that you develop throughout the day.

In the same way that a person who does not know how to swim enters the pool with caution when he wants to take a bath, you will have to be more attentive when you expose yourself to irritating situations.

2- Identify dangerous situations

Another important aspect to take into account to control anger attacks is to identify dangerous situations. By dangerous situation we mean all those circumstances that can provoke a fit of anger.

If you analyze where, how, when, with whom and why you have had your last attacks of anger, you will surely identify specific situations to which you are especially vulnerable.

Faced with discussions with your partner, when problems arise at work, during a sports competition… All people have their weak points and if you want to control your anger attacks you should know yours.

By having well identified which are your most dangerous situations, you will have a greater capacity to face them and control your attacks of anger.

3- Avoid irritating situations

On the other hand, it is convenient that you try to avoid, whenever possible, situations that can provoke an attack of anger. Identifying dangerous circumstances should help you not only to be more prepared when they happen, but also to try to avoid them.

The simplest way you can avoid anger attacks is not to expose yourself to situations that make you angry.

Obviously, this is not always possible, but many times there is room for maneuver to avoid getting into a situation that you already know will make you feel angry.

4- Do not accumulate anger

Anger attacks are usually much more common in those people who are not able to channel their anger or anger.

Individuals accumulate small amounts of anger through different situations. By not channeling it and not expressing it in any way, you can cause excess tension in the body, making it more susceptible to the attack of anger.

If this happens to you, it is necessary that you do not keep things away and manage to channel your emotions when they are not very intense.

Expressing an opinion, expressing what you feel, verbalizing a thought… These are strategies that can help you channel your emotions as you experience them.

If you do, negative emotions will not accumulate and your emotional state will remain very calm. In this way, in an angry situation, it will be easier for you to control the attack of anger.

5- Stop on time

If you suffer attacks of anger, you will know perfectly well that during the seconds before "exploding" you clearly notice how anger begins to rise through your body.

It is a brief but usually unmistakable sensation. When you feel that emotional charge you know perfectly well that it will end in a fit of anger.

Well, if you want to stop the emotion and avoid the attack of anger, you have to take advantage of those seconds in the best way you can.

In fact, when you find yourself emotionally overwhelmed, only during that period of time will you have room for maneuver. If they don't act before your first expression of anger, you will no longer be able to control your attack and reason will not have time to intervene.

At such times, it is often convenient to mentally repeat the word "STOP" or escape from the situation. The goal is to take an action that takes you away from the emotion and allows you to find a situation in which you can calm down.

6- Avoid frustration

Most of the time, outbursts of anger appear in response to a clear feeling of frustration. For this reason, you have to be aware that experiencing frustration can be your worst enemy and can easily generate anger.

In this sense, it is convenient that you always analyze all situations with the greatest calm and rationality possible. Many of the elements that generate frustration can be narrowed down and interpreted differently. More calmly and with a broader vision that causes less emotional intensity.

Avoiding thinking in terms of all or nothing is one of the principles that allows one to get away from frustration and get tailored responses. In any situation, try to rationalize and look for alternatives. You will quickly see how avoiding frustration is easier than you thought.

7- Analyze the causes and consequences

If you analyze the causes and consequences of anger attacks, you will surely see that they are not good value for money.

I mean that in most cases the causes that generate an attack of anger are not so important as to justify your response. And even less to explain the negative consequences of an anger attack.

The bad image you give of yourself, the feelings of self-reproach you feel after having acted in a way that you did not want, the concern about the harm you may have done to others…

All of these consequences are too high, so they show that you don't want to experience outbursts of anger.

A very useful task is to make a list of all the negative consequences of anger attacks. When you have it, read it carefully, study it thoroughly and memorize each of the aspects noted.

The goal is for you to be very aware of what happens when you have a fit of anger and what your personal reasons are for avoiding them. Performing this task will generate motivation to control the attacks of anger and, at the same time, it will raise awareness to work to achieve it.

Inserting some of these aspects into your thinking in the moments that you notice that you may have an attack of anger can also be very useful to help you stop in time.

8- Learn to express anger

Learning to control anger outbursts does not mean pretending that you never want to experience this emotion. In fact, it also does not imply never wanting to express feelings of anger.

Anger is a normal emotion that all people have and that very often plays an important adaptive role. For this reason, wanting to live without this emotion can be harmful.

Also, in many moments in life it can be impossible not to experience anger, so we have to be prepared to experience it without it becoming an attack.

On the other hand, like all emotions, it is important that you can express your feelings of anger. In this sense, learning to express anger is essential. Obviously channeling this emotion is more complex than expressing other less negative and intense emotions.

However, just because anger is an aversive emotion doesn't mean it has to come out explosively. You can also express these feelings with serenity, good words and self-control.

9- Improve your self-control

In order to properly experience and express anger, it is necessary to possess a high degree of self-control. Self-control involves knowing yourself well, knowing how things can affect things, and having in mind what kinds of responses appear impulsively.

Through extensive introspection and analysis of what one is like and how it works, self-control can be greatly increased. What you must do to control your anger attacks is precisely this. Study how you work and what you should do to control yourself in those situations that cost you more.

Think about what acts are useful for you to avoid impulsivity. It can be going out for a breath, practicing a relaxation exercise, looking for a distraction…

Each one has their activities that work best for them, so you must find which ones are yours.

10- Reduce your stress

Having a high level of stress is one of the worst enemies of self-control and, therefore, often makes it very difficult to control anger attacks. If you are anxious, stressed and continuously doing things all day, when an irritating stimulus occurs you will be less prepared to deal with it.

The emotional overload that stress implies can be combined with anger and become an attack automatically. For this reason, it is important that you reduce your stress level. Analyze what activities you do, and which of them are dispensable and which are not.

Also analyze how many hours a day you dedicate to your personal well-being, to loosen up and relax. All people need to release tension and have time for oneself.

11- Train your problem solving skills

Situations that can produce anger and rage require a way to handle it. If someone criticizes you unfairly, you must have sufficient mechanisms to manage that situation without involving a fit of anger.

Properly communicating that you do not tolerate this type of comments towards oneself can be a good solution, although there can be many more.

In this case, the objective is to eradicate those sources that can provoke attacks of anger, solving those problems that generate irritating situations.

12- learn to relax

Finally, the worst enemy of anger is relaxation. In fact, when one is calm, it is very difficult to experience emotions of anger and anger.

Practicing relaxation can be a very effective technique to apply also in those in which the attack of anger appears. An exercise that you can practice is the following.

1. Breathe slowly and deeply into your diaphragm, noticing how the air moves in and out of your belly.
2. When you take inspiration, mentally repeat a word that conveys tranquility such as "calm" or "calm."
3. At the same time imagine a landscape that transmits serenity to you and focuses all your attention on that mental image and on your breathing.

References

1. Averill, JR (1983). Studies on anger and aggression. Implications for theories of emotion. American Psychologist, 38, 1145-1160.
2. Digiuseppe, R. & Tafrate, RC (2001). A comprehensive treatment model for anger disorders. Psychotherapy, 38, 262-271.
3. Moscoso, MS and Pérez-Nieto, MA (2003). Anger, hostility and aggression assessment. In R. FernándezBallesteros (Ed. In chief), Encyclopedia of psycholigical assessment (pp. 22-27). San Francisco, CA: Sage Publications.
4. Novaco, RW (1978). Anger and coping with stress: Cognitive behavioral interventions. In JP Foreyt & DP Rathjen (Eds.), Cognitive behavior therapy: Research and application (pp. 163-173). New York, USA: Plenum Press.
5. Pérez Nieto, MA, and González Ordi, H. (2005). The affective structure of emotions: a comparative study on Anger and Fear. Anxiety and Stress, 11 (2-3), 141-155.