The Mental Emotional Health Blog

Anger management is not hoping that you won’t be angry. So give yourself a good chance to diffuse anger by expecting that you will, in fact, get angry. I have worked with several clients, male and female, that have worked on their anger and then get surprised when they get angry again (For example: “I got mad again last night, so this stuff didn’t work!”). That is when I explain what might be obvious to some: Anger management is learning to manage the anger reactions you will have, not eliminating anger as an emotion.

The next time you feel stressed, frustrated, or annoyed in a specific situation, tell yourself that you are going to get angry, accept it, and then figure out how you want to handle it appropriately. Then you’ll have a better chance to manage your anger and will allow your rational brain to stay involved in the process.

In relationships, people want to be able to trust and generally prefer to avoid anger. In trust situations for couples, demonstrating and holding trust can be tricky when emotions are up. But there are times that a person will actually damage trust by using the excuse of avoiding anger.

Example: Person A finds a credit card receipt in Person B’s car. The receipt is for a hotel in the city where A & B live together. A fears the worst, that B met someone at the hotel. When A asks B about the receipt, B replies, “Oh, that. It’s my co-worker’s receipt from the other day.” A doubts B’s story, especially since A’s name is the one on the receipt. So A waits for B to tell A what was really going on. At this point, trust is already damaged of course. After some more concerned questions from A, B tells the truth. B admits that the friend used the credit card as a favor since the friend forgot to bring a credit card and had just run out of checks. B didn’t use the hotel for anything improper. When A asks B why B lied, the response is, “I didn’t want you to get mad”, or “I thought you would get mad”.

In this case, Person B was innocent of the worst, and basically just made a financial decision without informing or consulting the other. Person A did not know that at first, but could tell something was being hid and lied about. Deceit and dishonesty are much more harmful to trust than anger over a questionable financial decision. Anger can come and go relatively quickly compared to the time it takes to rebuild trust that was lost.

I’ve been asked to give a few short presentations in a couple weeks at my workplace about Diffusing Emotional Situations. So I decided to write out some ideas here first.

It can be really tough to deal with a emotional person in a workplace, or anywhere else. For the presentations I will focus most on diffusing anger, although intense sadness and fear can come into play in certain situations too.

When you are faced with an angry person, you do have options. And that is also one of the most important things to remember for diffusing emotions: providing an emotional person with options. When a person feels stuck in a situation (no options), emotions can often intensify to the point that reasoning is severly decreased.

So here are a few tips on diffusing anger:

• Speak somewhat slower than the other person.
• Talk with an even tone, which means keeping your volume and inflections in the average range.
• “Listen with your eyes”. Using good eye contact lets the person know you are listening.
• Focus more on either the situation or the person, depending on which seems better in bringing down the anger levels or intensity.
• Act matter-of-fact and boring. It’s tough to stay angry with a boring person in front of you.
• Provide options. You will probably be the more rational one in the situation, so you have the better chance at presenting an option the other person didn’t consider.
• Emphasize the fact that you want to help.
• General statements like, “That’s tough” , or “That’s no fun”.
• Try to get on the same side by using “we” instead of “I” or “you”. (Example: “Okay, how are we going to figure this one out?”)
• Take time afterward to de-stress, relax, do some deep breathing, or whatever works for you. Dealing with strong emotions isn’t easy, and your body and mind need time to come down from the experience and readjust.

Remember: there are always options. Take care everyone!

All of the anger management strategies and skills in the world are worthless unless you use them.