I provide anger management coaching to people on a daily basis and we work on various anger management techniques, some of which I’d like to share with you in this free guide.
If you’re interested in getting professional help with your anger issues then click here to book a free consultation call with me today.
When most people think about anger management techniques they always think about the classic breathing techniques or counting to ten.
Sadly these anger management techniques have become so cliche over the years they have become almost completely ineffective.
Breathing techniques or counting to ten are more effective when dealing with things such as stress or anxiety but rarely work with anger.
The problem with anger is that it can be so unpredictable and explosive that most people don’t see it coming.
10 Anger Management Techniques that Work
Below you will find a list of anger management techniques that have worked for my clients. That doesn’t mean they will work for you, but it means they can be effective when used in the right situations.
The below list is in no particular order and some of the techniques can be used on their own or together with one of the others.
(1) Find Physical Space
Feeling like you’re trapped can either trigger an anger outburst or escalate your anger to dangerous levels when you don’t know how to deal with them.
I have many clients who simply cannot deal with overcrowded places like busy shopping centres, public transport or theme parks etc.
If you’re in any of these sorts of ‘open spaces’ you should try to seek fresh air and space if you feel an anger outburst coming on.
If you can’t get outside then try sitting in a cafe, retreating to the toilet cubicle or wherever you feel you can relax and process your thoughts.
You should make it part of your short-term solution to avoid any places that trigger your anger. That might not sound ideal, but it can certainly be better than what could happen if you completely lose it in public.
(2) Find Psychological Space
You might not always be able to retreat to a quiet space away from people so it’s important to also prepare for what to do in places like cars or stadiums.
If you know that you have the potential to lose your temper in a car or at a concert or something then you need to prepare in advance.
The trick very often is to distract yourself from the things that might potentially trigger your anger.
For example, if you’re the passenger in a car and other drivers or your partners bad driving are what trigger you then find something to avoid you focusing on them.
You might want to take a book with you, pop your headset on and listen to some music or stick your head into a game on your phone.
If you’re interested in getting professional help with your anger issues then click here to book a free consultation call with me today.
(3) Think of a time when you were really calm
Close your eyes and think of a time in the past when you were really calm and relaxed.
For this technique to be effective you need to get really specific.
Think about where you were, how it smelt, how you were feeling and how you were stood or sat and really take yourself back to that time.
The goal of this technique is to bring your mind and body into the calm and relaxed state you were in at that specific time.
One of the earliest warning signals of anger outbursts is your physiology so if you can change that, you have a great chance of controlling anger.
(4) Create your own code word
As well as thinking of a time in the past when you were calm, you can also think of something that makes you really calm in general.
For example, I once worked with a client on her anger and I asked her what she did to calm down after an anger outburst and one of those things was to play on a mobile game called ‘Candy Crush’.
When I asked her to describe to me why this made her feel calm, I could see the difference in her physiology as she visioned it.
So what we did was use the code word ‘Candy Crush’ for when she could feel some of the signs of anger before an outburst which would interrupt her normal thought process and break her anger strategy.
So think about what activities make you feel calm and try and come up with a code word that you can use to break your pattern of thought.
(5) See Pink
You’ve probably heard of and may have used the term ‘seeing red’. This is a common term used by angry people to describe what happens before they lose their temper.
But what if you saw pink, yellow or green instead of red?
Or what if you remembered to associate ‘seeing red’ as a stop sign just like on traffic lights?
Sometimes you can make the smallest changes to your thought processes or words that you use and it can have a massive effect on your response to them.
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Disclaimer: I am a professional coach with advanced training and experience in helping people in areas of mental health, but I am not a qualified medical professional.