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Causes of Anger and Ways to Deal with It
17.09.2024 16:01
Updated: 27.09.2024 21:06
Anger can be caused by various circumstances and situations: a spoken word, physical impact, information about betrayal, treason or conflict of interest, violation of personal boundaries, and even negative unexpected news - you go out into the yard in the morning and all the tires on your car are flat.
And here it is important to remember that only you choose your reaction to random or someone-provoked events.
In order for the reaction to be as comfortable as possible for the psyche, it must be safe and fast, distracted and humorous, says psychologist Andrei Kashkarov .
Anger arises and therefore affects the emotional state of a person, which is unforeseen and unexpected.
Anger arises as an emotion with a desire to respond to it, to defend oneself. However, there is a difference not only between the responses, which are characteristically individual, but also between the prevailing features of emotional sensations.
And if readiness for negative emotions is completely and always impossible for everyone, then a calm response without the use of medications distinguishes a confident and harmoniously developed person, that is, ready for conscious actions and therefore, as a rule, correct, effective.
How to define anger
Based on one's own feelings and in connection with one's character traits, anger can be defined by excitement, when literally "everything makes me angry" or the desire to do something, to undertake something prevails: to speak out, to hit.
If you measure your blood pressure at this point, elevated blood pressure – relative to the individual norm – can be a marker for the situation. The same applies to increased heart rate and elevated levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline in the blood, hidden for detection by simple methods.
A person can experience a cumulative effect of exposure to different events. When accumulated emotions serve as a cause-and-effect relationship for a persistent passive-aggressive behavior pattern.
Such a representative of the human race seems to sparkle with tension. Even with silent aggression, he does not shout, does not insult, does not directly call for confrontation. And what can we say about more "open" or "straightforward" people?
Interested parties can be helped by knowledge of the characteristics and causes of anger. One of the reasons for the emergence of the emotion of anger is that a person experiencing discomfort stops, concentrates on his own feelings, perceiving the actions of another as a personal threat.
That's why you want to reflect it immediately. The longer the concentration lasts, the more difficult it is to cope with the consequences of the emotion quickly. Therefore, this is the direction in which you need to improve.
Another interconnected reason is the loss of self-confidence. There is a feeling that you are worse than the hypothetical aggressor. Of course, this is not true. No one is better than the other. Nevertheless, you want to prove or show that you are not worse.
While you are angry, time is wasted - the most precious resource today - and emotional, and sometimes physical strength and material resources. That is why, in order to return to a harmonious mental state, it is desirable to quickly eliminate the cause of insecurity.
Possible positive reactions
A conscious choice of actions to eliminate a threat to one's own sense of quality of life can be variable. But the best and safest reaction to feeling angry is humor. A person makes a choice of "answer" himself even in a very difficult situation.
Moreover, the brain has made a decision in advance, and previous similar situations are remembered well, especially when they helped a specific person. For example, you can be offended with all the ensuing consequences, or you can laugh, tell yourself "only the grave can straighten out a hunchback" and switch to other things.
To respond to a challenge, you can use humor to remember not only the story of a specific person, if he or she has behaved in a similar way before, and calm down on the fact that nothing “out of the ordinary” is happening.
Since the greatest concern is caused by the unpredictability of others, in this case a person consciously brings himself to “normal” by fully understanding the causes and consequences, as well as the prospects of someone’s behavioral reactions and characteristics.
If we are talking about a new experience or the emotion of anger is caused by the actions of a person who is still unknown, someone else's experience will help, for example, described in different stories - in books. This is based on the properties of extrapolation.
You recall a similar situation from someone else's experience and/or a hero of a work of art in any form of art (cinema, theater, etc.), you recall the features and characteristics of the hero and understand how funny he/she is, even though he/she does not see himself/herself from the outside.
Understanding the relative inferiority of such a “hero” and even what reactions he/she may cause in others, you gain confidence in your own abilities.
Proven recommendations
To quickly eliminate the cause of anger, remember your own achievements and compare them with the achievements of the one who dared to provoke your anger. Of course, people are not the same, which in this case is very good: everyone has their own unique achievements.
One may be physically strong enough to push a truck alone, but barely finished elementary school and is therefore tongue-tied or incapable of quick creative solutions. In comparison, you may be an academic.
Another may be outwardly attractive, but childless or with other problems of any kind. A third may be successful in the work collective, but at the same time take antidepressants. And so on with everything else.
Think about your real achievements in any field - there can't be none - and think about the statement attributed to Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill: "I'll sober up tomorrow, but your legs will remain crooked as they were before."
The effect of extrapolation is good because it is safe and quickly returns a person to a harmonious emotional state.
To avoid or minimize angry reactions to something annoying, one can also suggest a simple conclusion - do not connect your mood with other people's actions. In this sense, there is something to learn from emotionally stable people.
Almost all professions that involve responsible human-to-human interactions with others provide positive experience. For example, judges, police officers, firefighters, and medical workers, including pathologists, are relatively calm people.
Of course, there are exceptions. The profession itself, if you devote many years to it, leads to a conditional insensitivity. How else – if every third “communicator” threatens to take revenge or complain?
It's like "lowered (over the eyes) curtains", blinds. You see and hear only what is important to you. Consequently, there are relatively fewer reasons for anger in response to irritants. Yes, there is a danger in this sense - the psyche's response to suppressed anger can be delayed and compensated by other problems. But that's another topic.
Of course, there are situations when it is advisable to react harshly, quickly and adequately to aggression directed against you. So as not to accumulate negative emotions. But we are talking about simple, typical and non-critical things now.
The benefits of humor and imagination
For example, you, the driver of a car, were called a "ram" in a less than perfect traffic situation. You can start arguing, proving the opposite or blaming the opponent.
But if you are not a veterinarian, how can you accurately determine whether a person actually has some of the ram qualities of horned cattle? It is much better – as an example of extrapolation – to remember that somewhere in Baranovka, 2 thousand kilometers from you, a young animal is being sold for breeding for only a few thousand rubles. How to deliver it is a difficult question.
And then you can imagine that you went to the province, examined and paid for the ram, attached the instruction-"accompanying note" to its horns, so that the "doodle" would walk to your farm on its own. Of course, in reality this cannot happen. But you imagined it, got distracted, and the situation is saved for you.
The true measure of an outstanding person is not praise or material values, but positive changes in the psyche and in general in the prolongation of one’s own health – medical and emotional.
It is this conditionally calm state towards events and criticism that allows you to bring joy into the lives of other people, to lift their spirits, including with humor, inspiration, encouragement and support. And so too, you can make the world a better place thanks to even a small share of available efforts and good deeds.
In today's society, communication is indispensable, but other people can contribute to the fact that your choice - anger - becomes the dominant feeling in behavior, cognitive and physiological terms. And this can lead to mistakes.
It is important to remember that other people often deliberately provoke anger in order to achieve their own goals and/or to assert themselves by devaluing you. The recommendations given may also help in this regard.
