Anger is a normal feeling and can be a positive emotion when it helps you work through issues or problems, whether that’s at work or at home.
However, anger can become problematic if it leads to aggression, outbursts, or even physical altercations.
Anger control is important for helping you avoid saying or doing something you may regret. Before anger escalates, you can use specific strategies for controlling anger.
Here are 25 ways you can control your anger:
1. Count down
Count down (or up) to 10. If you’re really mad, start at 100. In the time it takes you to count, your heart rate will slow, and your anger will likely subside.
2. Take a breather
Your breathing becomes shallower and speeds up as you grow angry. Reverse that trend (and your anger) by taking slow, deep breaths from your nose and exhaling out of your mouth for several moments.
3. Go walk around
Exercise can help calm your nerves and reduce anger. Go for a walk, ride your bike, or hit a few golf balls. Anything that gets your limbs pumping is good for your mind and body.
4. Relax your muscles
Progressive muscle relaxation calls on you to tense and slowly relax various muscle groups in your body, one at a time. As you tense and release, take slow, deliberate breaths.
5. Repeat a mantra
Find a word or phrase that helps you calm down and refocus. Repeat that word again and again to yourself when you’re upset. “Relax,” “Take it easy, and “You’ll be OK” are all good examples.
6. Stretch
Neck rolls and shoulder rolls are good examples of nonstrenuous yoga-like movements that can help you control your body and harness your emotions. No fancy equipment required.
7. Mentally escape
Slip into a quiet room, close your eyes, and practice visualizing yourself in a relaxing scene. Focus on details in the imaginary scene: What color is the water? How tall are the mountains? What do the chirping birds sound like? This practice can help you find calm amidst anger.
8. Play some tunes
Let music carry you away from your feelings. Put in earbuds or slip out to your car. Crank up your favorite music and hum, bop, or sashay your anger away.
9. Stop talking
When you’re steamed, you may be tempted to let the angry words fly, but you’re more likely to do harm than good. Pretend your lips are glued shut, just like you did as a kid. This moment without speaking will give you time to collect your thoughts.
10. Take a timeout
Give yourself a break. Sit away from others. In this quiet time, you can process events and return your emotions to neutral. You may even find this time away from others is so helpful you want to schedule it into your daily routine.
11. Take action
Harness your angry energy. Sign a petition. Write a note to an official. Do something good for someone else. Pour your energy and emotions into something that’s healthy and productive.
12. Write in your journal
What you can’t say, perhaps you can write. Jot down what you’re feeling and how you want to respond. Processing it through the written word can help you calm down and reassess the events leading up to your feelings.
13. Find the most immediate solution
You might be angry that your child has once again left their room a mess before going to visit a friend. Shut the door. You can temporarily end your anger by putting it out of your view. Look for similar resolutions in any situations.
14. Rehearse your response
Prevent an outburst by rehearsing what you’re going to say or how you’re going to approach the problem in the future. This rehearsal period gives you time to role-play several possible solutions, too.
15. Picture a stop sign
The universal symbol to stop can help you calm down when you’re angry. It’s a quick way to help you visualize the need to halt yourself, your actions, and walk away from the moment.
16. Change your routine
If your slow commute to work makes you angry before you’ve even had coffee, find a new route. Consider options that may take longer but leave you less upset in the end.
17. Talk to a friend
Don’t stew in the events that made you angry. Help yourself process what happened by talking with a trusted, supportive friend who can possibly provide a new perspective.
18. Laugh
Nothing upends a bad mood like a good one. Diffuse your anger by looking for ways to laugh, whether that’s playing with your kids, watching stand-up, or scrolling memes.
19. Practice gratitude
Take a moment to focus on what’s right when everything feels wrong. Realizing how many good things you have in your life can help you neutralize anger and turn around the situation.
20. Set a timer
The first thing that comes to mind when you’re angry likely isn’t the thing you should say. Give yourself a set time before you respond. This time will help you be calmer and more concise.
21. Write a letter
Write a letter or email to the person that made you angry. Then, delete it. Often, expressing your emotions in some form is all you want, even if it’s in something that will never be seen.
22. Imagine forgiving them
Finding the courage to forgive someone who has wronged you takes a lot of emotional skill. If you can’t go that far, you can at least pretend that you’re forgiving them, and you’ll feel your anger slip away.
23. Practice empathy
Try to walk in the other person’s shoes and see the situation from their perspective. When you tell the story or relive the events as they saw it, you may gain a new understanding and become less angry.
24. Express your anger
It’s OK to say how you feel, as long as you handle it in the right way. Ask a trusted friend to help you be accountable to a calm response. Outbursts solve no problems, but mature dialogue can help reduce your stress and ease your anger. It may also prevent future problems.
25. Find a creative channel
Turn your anger into a tangible production. Consider painting, gardening, or writing poetry when you’re upset. Emotions are powerful muses for creative individuals. Use yours to reduce anger.
The bottom line
Anger is a normal emotion that everyone experiences from time to time. However, if you find your anger turns to aggression or outbursts, you need to find healthy ways to deal with anger.
If these tips don’t help, consider talking with your doctor. A mental health specialist or therapist can help you work through underlying factors that may contribute to anger and other emotional issues.
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Vanish_Point
What can you do to tame your angry team members?
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. – Mark Twain, American writer.
How many times have you had to deal with an angry person?
Perhaps a customer was unhappy with a poor delivery, a colleague was annoyed because you were given a project they wanted, or a supplier was upset because of a late payment?
It's easy to get flustered or upset when you're confronted with an angry person – and, if you don't know how to respond, you can easily make the situation worse. However, when you respond calmly and with empathy, you can stay in control, and you can defuse the situation in a professional, courteous way.
In this article, we'll look at several strategies that you can use to deal with angry people.
Why "How to Deal With Angry People" Matters
It's important to know how to deal with angry people for a number of reasons.
Firstly, you can calm them down, so that they don't take any action that harms you or others – either physically or emotionally. In doing this, you can break the emotional "spirals of escalation" that can cause so much harm, and you can move toward solving the underlying problems that have caused the anger.
Secondly, if you respond angrily to someone else's anger, you can easily end up being seen as the aggressor yourself. This is disastrous in a customer-facing role.
Thirdly, by responding well to angry people, you can build positive relationships with them, and experience less stress and unhappiness as a result of dealing with them.
Finally, when you respond calmly to angry episodes, you set a good example for others. Your behavior can inspire the people around you, which can transform a team's ability to deal with anger.
Types of Anger
We all know what normal anger looks like.
However, people can sometimes suppress the visible signs of anger but seethe with fury under the surface. In these cases, anger can be expressed in quite subtle, "passive aggressive" ways.
Passive-aggressive anger is common in the workplace, and signs of it include the following:
- Pretending not to hear or understand requests.
- Avoiding involvement, or acting "distantly."
- Spreading gossip or rumors, or telling hurtful jokes to retaliate.
- Obsessing.
- Sulking or withdrawing.
- Engaging in self-defeating behaviors, or setting others up for failure.
- Behaving secretively.
- Ignoring others.
- Demonstrating an "angry smile."
Be alert to passive-aggressive behavior, and use these same strategies listed below to help deal with it.
Strategies for Dealing With Angry People
It's useful to know how to calm angry people down. When you can defuse someone's anger, it can enhance your professional reputation and help people who struggle to manage their emotions. Employ the strategies below.
Stay Safe, and Involve Others
If you feel threatened by an angry person, trust your judgment. Leave the room immediately if you feel unsafe, or if you're too upset to resolve the situation on your own.
Ask your boss or a trusted colleague to work with you to resolve the situation. It might also be appropriate to report the incident, especially if the person is completely out of control and you feel there is a risk of violence.
Don't Respond With Anger
It's very natural to get upset when angry people confront you, regardless of whether their anger is justified. You feel under attack, and your body floods with "fight or flight" hormones, which can lead you to become angry yourself.
Do your best to respond calmly and intelligently when you face angry people. Learn how to manage your emotions, and practice deep-breathing, so that you stay relaxed during tense interactions. If you feel yourself getting upset, politely take a break from the conversation and go for a walk to calm down.
Distance Yourself Emotionally
Sometimes, another person's anger has nothing to do with you. When you recognize this, it can have a major influence on how you cope with the situation. A 2012 study found that when people understood that they didn't cause another person's anger, they weren't upset by the situation.
Perhaps a team member received some bad news, and are taking their negative feelings out on you; perhaps they feel overwhelmed by their workload or personal life; or, perhaps, this person is subconsciously using anger to make themselves feel better. If you can recognize this, you can distance yourself from the anger emotionally, and you'll find it much easier to cope with.
(At times, however, you may be the cause of another person's anger. Here, it's important to take responsibility for your actions: don't distance yourself.)
Identify the Cause
Next, you need to determine why the person you're dealing with feels angry.
Use effective questioning techniques or the 5 Whys method to get to the root cause of their anger. Encourage them to explain why they feel angry, don't interrupt them while they speak, and keep on asking questions until they have fully explained themselves.
Try to see things from their perspective as they express their feelings. Use active listening, so that you really listen to what they say.
When it's your turn to talk, speak slowly and calmly, lower your vocal tone, and use non-threatening body language. This will often encourage others to calm down.
Try not to use generic statements, such as, "I understand how you feel," or, "That sounds really frustrating." Instead, use specific, clear statements that rephrase what the other person has said (don't overdo this, or do it in a thoughtless, formulaic way). It's also important to communicate with empathy.
For example, if your colleague says, "I needed that report last week and you've been ignoring me," you could say, "So, you feel that I neglected you when you needed information from me, is that right?"
Demonstrate an interest in resolving the situation, and try not to judge the other person's behavior – this shows respect. Think about the last time you felt angry, and remember how you wanted to be treated in that situation.
Pursue a Solution, and, Ideally, Apologize
Once you have understood the situation, try to avoid making excuses or defending your actions (or those of your team or organization). Defensiveness can make others feel even angrier than they are already.
Instead, ask what you can do to resolve the situation and make things right.
If you or your organization are at fault, think carefully about whether an apology would expose you to a significant risk of liability litigation. If it wouldn't (and people sometimes over-emphasize this risk), then apologize appropriately.
In many cases, this will calm the situation down and give you the opportunity to rebuild the relationship with the other person. (It will be much harder to rebuild a relationship if you don't apologize.)
Distract Them
One way to defuse a person's anger is to focus their attention on something else. One 1998 study found that rumination increased feelings of anger, while distraction can decrease them.
You can do this with laughter, if it's appropriate – it's impossible to laugh and be angry at the same time. A funny joke, an online video, or an amusing blog post can take someone's mind off their anger.
People who experience intense levels of anger might be unwilling or unable to change the subject, however, and you may annoy them further if you try to get them to focus on something else. This strategy will likely work best with people who are only moderately cross.
Help Them Control Their Anger
Angry outbursts from someone on your team can affect the whole group's productivity and morale.
Become a coach or mentor for these people, and encourage them to learn how to control their anger. Our articles "Coaching to Develop Self-Awareness" and "Helping Your People Develop Emotional Intelligence" can be useful here.
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