Mindfulness for Anger: 3 Mindfulness Exercises for Anger Management

There’s nothing flawed with anger. It’s our response to it that may potentially be deadly. After we practice mindfulness for anger, we see anger as a useful human emotion that can assist us set healthy boundaries, protect family members from danger, or act pro-socially within the face of injustice. Chiefly, mindfulness for anger helps us remain present because the energy of anger arises. By softening the impulsivity with which we react to anger, mindfulness anger management techniques make us less more likely to harm ourselves and others.

To cite Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh from his book Taming the Tiger Inside

There’s healthy anger, after which there’s afflicted anger. The primary is a useful human emotion that can assist us set protective boundaries. Dr. Gabor Maté has likened healthy anger to the human immune system. It helps us keep the bad stuff out. For instance, shouting ‘No!’ to someone who’s attacking us is a protective act.

But anger is as complicated as we’re. For instance, we may direct anger toward ourselves, we may feel anger out of proportion to its trigger, or we feature anger with us long after the triggering event has passed. An immune system turned against itself, overactive or overworked is unhealthy and malfunctioning. 

What causes anger is different for every of us. As a Buddhist practitioner, I understand the reason for my unhealthy anger as ignorance or misunderstanding. That is supported by science, which assigns the reason for anger, partly, to ‘irrational perceptions of reality.’ The anger that becomes misapplied rage, hatred, ill-will or avoidance is rooted in delusion. 

When anger comes on, if I can mindfully catch it, there’s at all times a lesson to be learned. Essentially the most helpful query shouldn’t be, ‘What triggered me and the way can I modify or avoid it?’ But ‘What, inside me, is asking to be felt, acknowledged and healed?’

Anger negatively impacts our well-being after we attach to it or avoid it, thus holding the energy of anger in place. We may mistakenly feel we’ve overcome anger because we simply don’t allow it, we repress or avoid what we feel. We may hold on to anger because we associate it with a sense of righteousness, or since it gives us a (false) sense of power.

Long-held anger, nonetheless, has very real physical and mental health consequences. It puts us in danger for heart disease, hormonal imbalances, weight gain and stress-related illnesses that result from a chronically inflamed immune system. 

Anger elevates our heart rate, blood pressure and rate of respiration. It prompts our muscles by triggering the discharge of adrenaline and upregulates the stress hormone, cortisol. Anger brings our sympathetic nervous system online, throwing us into fight, flight or freeze mode. 

In emotional maps of the body, most individuals describe anger as a rise in heat in the top, shoulders and upper chest. It might feel like a tightening sensation within the stomach or chest. Anger can even feel like clarity, as if if you’re indignant, the whole lot comes into sharp focus.

But studies find holding on to anger compromises cognitive functioning. Anger can render us unable to finish easy tasks and liable to misinformation. In this manner, afflicted anger and mindfulness mitigate one another. When one is high, the opposite is low.

Those with a problematic relationship to anger complain more about health problems, anxiety and depression. Anger-related psychological distress is correlated with poorer physical health. Heal your relationship to anger, and your body will begin to heal, too.

Anger is usually a useful and vital emotion, nonetheless, left unchecked it will probably get the most effective of us and takes us out of the current moment. Anger can spoil relationships, leading to unnecessary suffering. At its core, anger is about conflict: conflict with others, ourselves, or situations.

Not only does anger create conflict, but it surely takes us out of the current moment. We completely turn out to be the anger; it consumes us. We are able to use anger mindfulness exercises to return to the current moment. When you are feeling indignant, try the easy techniques below to assist you to stay calm. Practicing mindfulness for anger allows us to regain control over our emotions and reactions, promoting a way of calm and clarity amidst tumultuous feelings.

From lionsroar.com:

After I feel anger beginning to fire up inside myself, I find it helpful to count my respirations as much as ten after which back all the way down to one. For instance, I inhale and think “one” and proceed considering “one” for the exhale, all the way in which as much as ten. If anger continues to stir, then I simply recognize it: “Hello, anger. I see you.” Step one towards recognition is a deep, mindful breath to be able to reconnect the mind and body.

Conflict is an inevitable a part of the human experience. When you concentrate on the complexity of the environment that we inhabit, it’s easy to see how conflict comes about. Lots of us are under significant amounts of pressure to perform. Whether it’s at home, at work, in school, in our relationships, or in other areas of our lives, we feel compelled to realize: we’re driven to achieve certain goals, sometimes by forces that lie completely outside of ourselves. The stress that results from attempting to carry ourselves to such high (often unattainable) standards, combined with the opposite stresses of recent life (like those related to modern technology, work/life balance, and so forth), lead us into situations that always feature significant amounts of conflict.

After we experience conflict inside ourselves or with others, that conflict is usually accompanied by anger. Practicing mindfulness may be incredibly difficult after we’re in an anger-driven, clouded emotional state. Indeed, anger may be quite blinding. After we speak of somebody going right into a “blind rage,” this does a fairly good job of capturing just how damaging anger may be for ourselves and for our relationships. After we’re indignant, it’s easy to turn out to be fixated on the anger itself: it consumes us and begins to take us over. We lose sight of ourselves. We lose sight of the current.

With this in mind, working to know and overcome anger is a very important a part of maintaining a mindfulness practice. While experiencing conflict and anger is totally normal, allowing ourselves to turn out to be completely consumed and overrun with indignant feelings is deleterious to our well-being. With the free mindfulness exercises offered here, you may begin your journey down the trail of mindfulness. Along the way in which, you’ll have the chance to work to beat feelings of anger, with the goal of recognizing those feelings for what they’re–somewhat than allowing them to regulate you.