Anger Can Take Control Of Your Thoughts

Anger is a powerful emotion that can bring your thoughts, words, and actions under its control. It is a weapon of defense that, if used inappropriately, can turn against you and cause a lot of damage.

We have all experienced many times that we cannot prevent this emotional state. Anger has grown with us like armor that we use as soon as we perceive injustices. For example, if a child complains strongly and insists that their sibling has stolen their toys, this is a great way to assert the importance of the incident and prevent their position from being undermined. The problem arises when the child gets lost in the tantrum and cannot move beyond that.

In other words, if you get stuck thinking, “he took my toys away from me,”  your cognitive system becomes trapped in a spiral of negative thoughts and feelings. As a result, you can no longer move forward.

The vulnerability hidden behind anger

We avoid showing our anger in public because that would throw a bad image of us as a person. We are careful not to reveal our anger in front of others. Hence, we tend to show our anger only at home and with those people we know well. Because we believe that they will not judge us.

Inappropriately dealing with anger is not approved or accepted by society. However, as noted earlier, expressing your feelings can help clarify what is bothering you. He grants you to analyze yourself and find a balance.

The primary reason we discipline the expression of anger is because we mistake it for rage and anger, or excessive and uncontrolled behavior to express what is upsetting. In other words, we equate exploding and screaming behavior with discontent.

Anger is not the same as anger. The latter is a response to an unsuccessful handling of anger. You create an entire beach from a single grain of sand if you persist in your anger for too long. And that’s when it happens that you lose your composure.

If you do not acknowledge and express the things that annoy you and cause you displeasure, they will turn into a powerful mix of emotions that take control of your mind, mind and body.

Why? Because you give a single incident your full focus of attention until it clumps into a snowball of emotions that grows bigger and faster, until it becomes independent and uncontrollable.

Understanding and expressing are the first steps to calming yourself down

Becoming aware of your feelings and emotions is a first step in getting to grips with your states of mind and making use of them rather than harm. You can put an end to anger by releasing much of the emotional burden that drives your negative mood and compromises your balance.

Returning to our example of the child whose toys were taken away, it is perfectly legitimate and beneficial to use normal and adaptive ways to obtain justice through protest and petition and to regain freedom that has been threatened. However, when anger arises from a physiological or psychological threat, it is important to use those feelings and emotions and act accordingly . Otherwise, those thoughts and actions that primarily fuel negativity instead of solving the problem will prevail.

The anatomy of an emotionally angry brain

When you perceive an injustice being directed against you or something that matters to you, the limbic system (the amygdala and adjacent structures) receives a kind of spark that sets the gears in motion. In other words, it activates the nervous system to prepare the mind and body for action. The neocortex is responsible for calculating and preparing a response appropriate to the situation.

The limbic system releases catecholamines, which help us react quickly and decisively. In these moments, at a high activation, you feel like you are caught on fire. Your cheeks get warm, your ankles go white, and your mind is racing incredibly fast.

In the meantime, the adrenal gland releases adrenaline – also a catecholamine – which prepares us for long-term activities. The resulting hypersensitivity can lead the mind to feed the spiral of negative thoughts.

Because of this, you can hit the ceiling for just one little thing. This behavior results in further cognitive impairment or in inability because you cannot judge sensibly. Ultimately, this leads to you underestimating those thoughts that could slow down the escalation of anger.

Emotional distance is necessary to calm the anger

The key to managing anger appropriately is to mitigate the excitement. This can be done in two ways:

• Distance yourself emotionally and physically from the situation to prevent adrenaline from taking control of you and further fueling your irritability.
• Cut off your internal dialogue, or in other words, distract yourself so as to take priority over the thoughts that control your mind.

This is why we say that anger is an emotion that seduces our thoughts; it convinces you that what makes you angry is the source of all evil.

A string of hostile thoughts leads to a chain of anger that grows and ultimately transforms into anger and rage. But if you question some of these chains of categorical trains of thought, you can calm those images in your head that encourage such an exaggerated dilemma.

Little by little, when you stop throwing wood into the burning fire, it will gradually fade and you can see the situation without those chains that controlled you before. This is the first step towards emotional wellbeing.

Goleman, D. and Griese, F.  EQ. Emotional intelligence. 1997.