By Remez Sasson
Is it necessary to control anger? The answer is no! Controlling anger is not the best option.
Confused? I will make this clearer.
When you are angry, and you try to control the anger, one or more things might happen:
You will bottle up your anger, which is very unhealthy.
You will fight your anger, which means that you will focus your attention on it, trying to restrain it. However, what you focus on grows, so that though you try to control your anger, you get the opposite result. Focus your attention on controlling anger leads to inner fight, more attention paid to the anger, and consequently, more anger and frustration.
Anger is best controlled indirectly.
There are several things that you can do to avoid getting angry, or if you get angry, not let the anger grow. I have provided a few simple tips in my articles, but they don’t focus directly on controlling the anger. These tips can help you calm down, and they can help you prevent anger from culminating. You can use them in the various situations you encounter in your day-to-day life.
However, anger often rises again and again, and you will need to use these tips and methods over and again. Isn’t it better to be able to avoid anger altogether? Is there a way to stay calm, and not let people and external situations make you angry? Is it possible to stay calm and relaxed in your everyday life, and at the same time act with energy, inner strength and inner power? There is a way, but like all the good things in life you need to spend time and energy and train yourself. You can rise above anger and not be disturbed by it, no matter what happens, by developing some degree of emotional detachment and inner peace.
When you have emotional detachment and inner peace, you will not need to control anger. It would be natural, easy and simple. This is a gradual process, as the emotional detachment and inner peace grow, anger will lose its power over you. At first, you will begin to see that when anger arises, it does not get strong. Sometimes, you will feel, as if the anger does not belong to you. As you progress, you will be able to detach yourself from anger, and it will begin to lose its hold on you.
What is anger, and why do people get angry?
- It is an emotional response to situations and people.
- It is a feeling caused by the discrepancy between what happens and your expectations.
- It rises when you don’t get what you want.
- It is a feeling evoked by fear, jealousy and frustration.
- People feel angry when they are threatened.
- People feel angry when they feel they are being ridiculed, and when they are not treated fairly.
- Loud talking also often causes anger.
- There are many other causes, which you can find.
If anger causes you to be more assertive, and gives you the energy and motivation to make things right, it might be useful, to some extent. However, if it causes you to act irrationally, endanger yourself and others, and make you feel bad, then it is completely unnecessary. You need not control it to get rid of it. A better solution, as I wrote in this article, is to learn to be more peaceful and emotionally detached.
This is not an article that covers anger from the physical and psychological standpoint. The purpose of the article is just give some ideas and understanding, and point to certain working solutions that might not appeal to everyone, i.e, emotional detachment and inner peace.
Remez Sasson is an author and blogger. He is the founder of SuccessConsciousness.com, a website and blog about self improvement and spiritual growth.
Remez Sasson is the author of several life transforming books, containing a wealth of information, advice and guidance.
Anger is something that is a bit of a mystery to many. There are effective ways of managing anger and also releasing it.
Spiritual practices like forgiveness, letting go and reasonable expectations are a good place to start.
Great post. The best way I have found to control my anger is to keep things in perspective. Before I will allow myself to get angry over small things, I ask myself is this really important in the big scheme of life.
Emotional detachment and inner peace sounds wonderful to me. My husband suffers from anger outbursts for inconsequential things and learning emotional detachment would be very helpful to him.
Honestly, just about everyone feels anger – even if not in the form of outbursts or rage – and anyone could benefit from emotional detachment from everyday things.
Thank you for this post and the resources.
Very practical topic. This is not easy to control our anger.It require regular exercise and application in own mind to get result as suggested by the writer
I think it is very necessary to control one’s anger because no one likes angry people! Cool minded people are liked and often have huge circle of friends unlike those are angry and fussy about things every now and then.The tips to control anger looks good , thanks.I think we all need to understand those who get angry on us or on things by thinking little differently.If someone’s throwing angry words on you, you must never take it personally, just try hard to not get offended.
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Hey Remez,
A little tip that I use… if someone does something that makes you feel angry, just laugh at them (on the inside), and say to yourself… “isn’t that interesting”. This usually diffuses the situation very quickly.
Thank you Andrew for the tip.
I find that the trick is to feel it, recognise it for what it is ie anger, but don’t act on it. It’s the let it come, let it go approach. You need a bit of detachment or stability in your basic mind state to be able to do it, but it means you’re not suppressing it and you’re not stirring it up either.