Over fifteen years of practice have taught me that anger management techniques need 4 things to in order to be effective.
1) Calm Your Threat Filter – Your brain has specific regions whose main job is to figure out if a situation is unsafe. Some people have an undersensitive risk assessor while those who struggle with anger management tend to have a oversensitive one.
To deal with an overly sensitive threat filter there are two anger management techniques that when used together are very efficient. Step one is to learn to listen to your body and thoughts so that you begin to recognize anger as its coming on and then put some very simple anger management techniques into practice to change your body state.This can involve jumping up and down to music, watching a funny video or acupressure skills that can not only calm one down in a matter of minutes but keep you in there for as long as several hours. My anger management class covers these techniques in greater detail and gives you many others to choose from so you can find the one that works best for you.
2) Your History: Why does one thing make one person mad but not another? Oftentimes it is related to your history. Things that have happened in your life have taught you to see certain situations, comments or people as a threat. The anger management course you take should break down how to deal with triggers into three steps: 1) discover your triggers; 2) understand why they are triggers by looking at your background to see where the seeds were first planted and; 3) practice new anger management techniques to better cope with your triggers. Simply reconciling that your triggers have more to do with your background than the present moment can be a great anger management technique all by itself.
3)Stinking Thinking Ever thought you knew what was going down only to find out after the fact that you were wrong? How does that happen? Its because we use mental shortcuts so you don’t have to use a lot of brainpower to figure out whats going on. While stinking thinking is usually a resourceful use of brain power it can be a problem when it comes to anger management because they may cause you to misinterpret a situation. One of the most powerful anger management techniques you can learn is to recognize your cognitive distortions and to learn how to avoid using them in the future.
4) Dealing with Others: We all have difficult people in our lives that we struggle to deal with. You can almost feel yourself starting to get angry when they walk in the room. How do you offer criticism without someone getting defensive or angry? How do you approach tense situations in a calm and assertive fashion? Anger management techniques are not just about learning to manage your own feelings, they are also about learning to manage other people.
Here’s some more free info on anger management techniques.
12 video lessons
