ANGER

Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – this is not so easy.
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

Traffic jams ... yelling … a computer glitch … criticism … lies … couples conflicts …… rude people….. people who do not listen ….. arrogance…. prejudice…. waiting … taxes ….. and so many other things and situations that can make this list endless are some of the issues that we face every day and can trigger us in becoming angry.
Anger is a feeling that everybody knows and everybody has experienced but before we talk about that feeling which many times is considered or labelled as “bad” or “wrong” let us see what it is. According to Charles Spielberger a psychologist who specializes in the study of anger; anger is “an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage”. Like other emotions anger has some physiological and some biological changes. Let us think of an example and explain it through. I have an interview at 12 0’ clock and I left home 30 minutes earlier to go to the interview which should normally take me about 10 minutes. A huge traffic jam was caused because of a car accident and instead of going to the interview 20 minutes earlier I am in danger of running late. What happens during that time?
Think about it for a moment. How does your body reacts? What is breathing like? What is your heart doing? Usually some of the symptoms that we come across are increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, sweating, breathing becomes faster, vigilance increases. During this stage we are at the fight or flight response. This response is very well developed to help us firstly to adapt to a hostile world and to ensure our physical survival. During this response the levels of our energy increases and the hormones “adrenaline” and “noradrenaline” are also increased. So apart from the physiological response that we have we also have a biological response.
As I have said before anger is usually perceived as “bad” but is it anger which is bad or is it the way that we are handle it? Anger is necessary for our survival as it help us defend ourselves when we are attacked. According to the American Psychological Association people use three main approaches with their anger: expressing, suppressing and calming.
The first one is expressing anger. To do this in the correct way we need to know what we are angry at, what our needs are and how we are going to satisfy them. We must not be pushy and demanding to other people. We are assertive but not aggressive.
The second way is suppression and then converted or redirected. By suppressing our anger it means that we are holding on to it. Sometimes we even manage not to think or convert it into something positive by asking ourselves what we have learned out of it and redirect it into something positive. The danger with that response is that the anger remains unexpressed and as a result we can suffer inward anger. Anger turned inward may cause hypertension (i.e. high blood pressure), and/or depression. Finally, unexpressed anger can lead to sudden reactions of an aggressive, cynical and hostile way.
The third way is to calm down inside. This means controlling our inner as well as our outward behavior. This can become successful by taking steps to relax our inside as well as our outside emotions until the feelings settle.

Relaxation
One way to calm down is to try to calm the body. As I mentioned before anger triggers the fight or flight response which is the stress response. So, everything, the body, the biology, the way of thinking starts to change. One way to break this is to change the way we breathe and to start relaxing. Below there are some simple steps which can help you to relax:

1. Take a deep breath; hold it to the count of three.
2. Slowly let it out while mentally thinking the word “relax”
3. Take another deep breath and hold it again.
4. Slowly let it out while thinking the word “relax”
5. Now start thinking of your body muscles go through them mentally and try to relax them.
6. Continue deep breathing until you feel that you are relaxed.