Control Your Anger; Don't Allow Your Anger to Control You

Anger is normal. It is an essential feeling and in today's world you can't help but feel it occasionally. You may feel it in traffic when someone pulls out in front of you or at work when your boss is being a jerk for no apparent reason. You can even feel it towards the people you love the most, when they are doing something that you disagree with or are not doing something you think they should be doing. In these types of situations anger is normal and possibly essential for our mental health.

Yet, anger can be a dangerous feeling, if we let it completely control us. Sometimes people will allow their anger to control them. Then this anger will cause them to do some dangerous things. But there are ways you can help to calm yourself.

First, you must allow yourself to feel the anger. By completely suppressing your anger you are doing harm to yourself. Pent up anger can led to many health problems from headaches to heart problems. There is also the problem where the anger just keeps building and building inside you until one day you blow, like a volcano. This is not good for you or the person at the center of your anger. Yet, by the same token, it is not good for you or others to blow up over the smallest of things, to start yelling, to become red in the face, to clench your fists, to tighten every muscle in your body. That is equally bad for your body. Being angry often is not good for your blood pressure. There needs to be a happy medium.

When we are angry our body releases hormones called catecholoamines. These hormones generate energy. That is why we suddenly feel like we have a burst of renewed strength. Then in turn our adrenal organs begin to work overtime which is why we feel on edge. These adrenal organs will continue working overtime as long as we are thinking about the situation that made us angry in the first place. This is why we can stay angry and on edge from hours to days.

So what can you do to calm our angry so it doesn't last for days? Here are some coping steps to take to try to calm your anger.