Losing your temper is rarely the best way to solve a problem, whether it is in your personal life, at school, or at work, but anger is something that we all experience from time to time, so learning how to deal with it is important. Letting your anger get out of control will only end up causing you difficulties, but many of the more common methods of anger management may not really work. Check out these common anger management fails and see if you could deal with a situation better…
Some people find that the best way to deal with their anger and issues is to just brush them off and make out that everything is just fine. However, beneath the surface this may be far from the case and issues can bubble away for weeks, months, or even years without being properly resolved. This failure to address a problem can cause it to blow up in the future – often unexpectedly. Your feelings of anger at your boss’ controlling nature may actually have more to do with feeling out of control or under pressure in the past. Don’t let your past carry through into your present, but instead work to address any underlying issues so you can move forward. Problems rarely go away by being ignored.
Some people may advice you to just let something go – arguing that there is nothing you can do to change a situation. It is true that there are some things that you can’t always change – such as the actions and opinions of others. But this doesn’t mean that you should just ignore the impact that they may have on you. You will still need to work on dealing with any anger you may have felt. Perhaps your boss has been rude to you. Of course, losing your temper and having a go back at them won’t help, but nor will completely ignoring the situation. This sort of advice is usually given when someone can’t think of a good solution to your problem, yet doesn’t solve anything.
Telling someone that they shouldn’t really be upset about something is no help either. Anger is triggered as an emotional response to a threatening situation and this happens whether the threat was real or not. There may be little real logic behind your feelings, but emotions don’t rely on reasoning and logic. It is hard to use facts to overcome feelings when they are riding high, and everyone has felt angry at some point. Irrational or not, the angry emotional feelings still need to be dealt with before they fester and become a deep-seated issue.
Dealing with anger requires an emotional response – which might mean looking at any underlying issues behind your feelings. You may find that certain things tend to trigger your anger and decide that you can avoid these type of situations.
However, anger management isn’t just an internal, emotional task, as you may also do well to look at what is going on around you. Is your boss usually in a bad mood or have they been under a lot of pressure themselves, is your tutor right in questioning your work-ethic in class, or have you acted in a selfish manner towards your boy or girlfriend?
Perhaps you could take a more mindful approach to something that is stressing you out and decide that karma will help solve issues at work. Alternatively you may realise that you are actually placing too much stress on yourself in a bid to be ‘happy’, when actually you may want to look for a more realistic goal. Of course, you may even just realise when it comes to your career, there are things outside of your control and come up with coping mechanisms to deal with them.
Understanding outside factors may help you understand and deal with your feelings of anger – but one thing is for sure, pretending that everything is fine seldom solves the situation!
