During Covid-19 many of us have
experienced an emotional shift from fear to anger as there are so many things
to be mad about. The world is full of uncertainty and instability, which makes
us anxious and depressed. Anger can be a way to regain control. With anger, we
don’t feel weak, we feel powerful. It’s addictive and intoxicating but it can
lead to some pretty serious problems for ourselves and others.
Living in a prolonged state of anger puts us at a higher risk of
suffering a heart attack or stroke. It also causes muscle tension that may lead
to insomnia or chronic pain. If our anger alienates us from family members and
friends, we can suffer from a lack of social support, which causes even more
issues over time. In mild cases, an angry person ruminating on negativity is
not pleasant to be around and at worst, an angry person displacing their rage
onto others is dangerous. It’s clear that anger is an emotion that needs to be
managed before it gets out of control.
Managing an emotion is different, however, from suppressing emotions. We don’t
want to deny that we’re angry or dismiss it as invalid (e.g. “I shouldn’t feel
this way). Instead, we need to lower our arousal state, process the emotion in
a healthy way and gaining insight into triggers. The goal isn’t to stop the
feeling from ever happening — that’s not very realistic. We’re humans and we
feel a wide range of emotions as we navigate life. What we want to work towards
is understanding and regulating anger so that it doesn’t hijack our life.
Pay Attention to Your Body
Anger is an emotion that usually comes with strong physiological signs. Some of
the common reactions are increased breathing rate, unconscious tensing of
muscles (especially neck and jaw), sweating, shaky hands, face turning red or
pale. Like any pressure, the build up of anger needs a release and that can end
up directed at someone else or turned inwards against yourself. To avoid
causing harm, there are strategies you can use to alleviate these reactions in
a healthy way.
The acronym “TIPP” is an easy way to remember four methods of distress
tolerance. It stands for:
- Temperature
- Intense exercise
- Paced breathing
- Paired muscle relaxation
Essentially you want to cool down your body with a
splash of cold water, do jumping jacks, breath slowly and relax individual
muscle groups. By attending to your body in this way, you’ll likely find that
your emotional intensity will begin to decrease.
Process the Emotion
When you’re in a lower arousal state, you have the ability to process the
emotion in a healthy way. Unhealthy ways of dealing with anger include
yelling at someone, kicking the wall or quietly stewing in negative thoughts.
Furthermore, numbing anger with alcohol, watching TV, or endless scrolling on
social media is also unhealthy. The emotion is important and it deserves some
uninterrupted moments of reflection.
Self-reflection doesn’t have to take too much time. Set a timer for five
minutes and sit with the feeling. Alternatively, you might prefer to write out
your feelings and have a dialogue with yourself. If possible, try to separate
yourself from the feeling. You are not your anger, you are a person who is
feeling anger in this moment. Don’t judge yourself for feeling
angry.
Anger can also be powerful as an emotion that spurs us to action. What positive
actions could be inspired by this anger? Maybe the answer is having a calm and
direct conversation with someone who has upset you, or maybe it’s getting
involved with activism. There’s so much fuel created by anger — it’s possible
that instead of becoming a runaway train, you can use this energy to direct the
train up a steep and difficult hill — using it for the power of good and to
your advantage.
Get to Know Your Triggers
Triggers are incredibly important in our quest to understand our thoughts,
feelings and behaviours. Something caused this anger and that “something” might
not be obvious. For example, if your physical symptoms begin to escalate when
you see someone not wearing a mask, the trigger is not simply, “people not
wearing masks.” It’s probably deeper than that.
Many emotional theorists believe that anger is a secondary emotion. This means
that there’s another emotion, or set of emotions, lurking behind it. You might
feel scared of getting coronavirus, or someone close to you getting it, and the
sight of a person without a mask causes fear before anger takes over.
Connecting to fear allows us to nurture that emotion rather than distract with
rage.
Our early childhood experiences can also impact our triggers. If we felt
helpless and controlled in the past, it’s not difficult to feel those emotions
again because of lockdown restrictions. That’s when we can take a step back and
think, “Okay, this is about something bigger.”