Anger is an emotion that arises in many of us without notice. Don’t let it win.

Doctors prescribe antidepressants to treat Anger issues. Not because antidepressants help anger’s root causes but because antidepressants help to calm. Along with antidepressants, doctors often prescribe talk therapy. As you can imagine, a person with an anger disorder might not be keen on seeing a psychotherapist. For our most common anger issues, including minor fits of rage, counseling and antidepressants don’t make sense. Even though minor fits of rage don’t require medical intervention, these fits can result in actions that hurt someone or something.

What is anger?

Anger is not so different from anxiety. Anger brings out our fight-or-flight response and triggers adrenaline and cortisol. Where anger differs is that it also pulls blood away from the stomach and gut and moves it into the muscles, preparing the Angry person for physical exertion. These physical manifestations also increase body temperature and can cause sweating. While anxiety floods the mind with negativity, anger sharpens and focuses the mind.

An angry person is laser-focused and pumped up. We all have a little Hulk in us. In times of constant political and economic strife, we may have a little too much Hulk in us, and we have been letting it out more than enough.

Why are we angry?

Eighty-four percent of Americans surveyed by NPR in 2019 stated that people today are angrier than the previous generation. This 2015 academic study suggests that angrier people have the following characteristics: lower-income, never married/separated/divorced/widowed, men, younger, and un- or underemployed. None of this should surprise anyone.

What is surprising is why we are angry. We can choose whether to be angry. Anger is a reaction, which often arises because we feel like we don’t have a choice. It’s both a physiological and psychological response to life. Most of our life is completely outside of our control. We can’t choose where we are born, who our parents are, whether we earned a promotion, whether we matriculated into that school or the circumstances in which we meet people who are in our lives. When it feels like our lives are out of control, we justify using anger as a reaction.

We become angry for all sorts of reasons. When our bosses fire us, our children break things, our dogs pee on the furniture, or our favorite teams lose, we turn angry. Sometimes, our angry reactions are violent. We hit someone. We yell at someone else. These are all “accidents.” Legislators created heat-of-passion second-degree murder because of our uncontrollable rage. It sounds hopeless; what can we do?

Convert anger into action

I hiked Mount Baldy’s Register Ridge a few months ago. I hike wearing trail running shoes, and I have almost elastic tendons in my ankles. Unfortunately, I rolled my ankle very hard a half-mile from the summit. And, I lost it. In a fit of rage, I took my trekking poles, screamed, and smashed them into the ground over and over.

It was about 7:30 am, so there weren’t very many people around, and my partner wasn’t thrilled with my reaction. Rolling my ankle was equal parts painful and annoying. It was painful for obvious reasons and annoying because I still had to summit and trek down. Was my reaction to scream and smash my trekking poles going to help me summit and make it back down without further injuries? No. After my brief fit, I converted my anger into action, summited, and made it back down in one piece.

Anger disorders are serious, and I encourage anyone with severe anger issues to seek out further resources.

For the rest of this post, let’s reframe anger into preparation for action. But first, please pause and take a deep breath.

Anger’s manifestation

Anger manifests both verbally and nonverbally. The verbal form can come out as shouting or piercing negative talk. While some angry folks may yell, others are just mean. If you feel yourself becoming angry and your reaction is verbal, take deep breaths. Close your eyes, even just briefly, pause, and take a breath. Effective breathing can quickly decrease our heart rates and calm down our nervous system. A breath, four seconds in, held for seven seconds, and eight seconds out is incredibly effective at calming our body.

If your anger is going to manifest physically, breathing is effective, but so is pushing the anger out in non-destructive ways. Effective breathing for physical anger involves taking many quick, shallow breaths, slowing the breath down over a short period, resulting in the breathing exercise mentioned above. If breathing doesn’t sound appealing, stomping a foot on the ground, punching something soft, or breaking something like a stick results in the same physiological release. Take chronic anger issues seriously. We cannot fix rage with simple breathing exercises. What we can do is practice mindful breathing and to lessen our larger anger issues.

Are you ready to take action?

Anger prepares us for action. Our physiological responses prepare us to jump. Far too often, we jump to yelling or hitting. What if we were able to do something else? Instead of yelling, we can record an intense voice memo or write an aggressive email that stays in draft form. Instead of hitting, we can hit the pavement and go for a run or hit a punching bag in our garage.

Anger is biologically driven. Without it, homo sapiens wouldn’t have survived this long. We use our anger to defend our children, families, and countries. Using anger as an outlet in these ways helps us remain safe. Springing into rage has its place, but its places are few and far between. Take the hyper-alert state that results from anger and use it for something else.

What a different world we would live in if angry writing sat in draft forms in our inboxes and unsent social media posts and responses. How little violence would there be if we increased how often we used punching bags and running shoes. Allowing anger to manifest into a rage is ineffective, so let us reframe our anger into more effective action.