Mindfulness for Anger: 3 Mindfulness Exercises for Anger Management

There’s nothing fallacious with anger. It’s our response to it that may potentially be deadly. When we practice mindfulness for anger, we see anger as a useful human emotion that might help us set healthy boundaries, protect family members from danger, or act pro-socially within the face of injustice. Chiefly, mindfulness for anger helps us remain present because the energy of anger arises. By softening the impulsivity with which we react to anger, mindfulness anger management techniques make us less prone to harm ourselves and others.

To quote Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh from his book Taming the Tiger Within

There’s healthy anger, after which there’s afflicted anger. The first is a useful human emotion that might help us set protective boundaries. Dr. Gabor Maté has likened healthy anger to the human immune system. It helps us keep the bad stuff out. For example, shouting ‘No!’ to someone who’s attacking us is a protective act.

But anger is as complicated as we’re. For example, we may direct anger toward ourselves, we may feel anger out of proportion to its trigger, or we feature anger with us long after the triggering event has passed. An immune system turned against itself, overactive or overworked is unhealthy and malfunctioning.

What causes anger is different for every of us. As a Buddhist practitioner, I understand the explanation for my unhealthy anger as ignorance or misunderstanding. This is supported by science, which assigns the explanation for anger, partially, to ‘irrational perceptions of reality.’ The anger that becomes misapplied rage, hatred, ill-will or avoidance is rooted in delusion.

When anger comes on, if I can mindfully catch it, there’s at all times a lesson to be learned. The most helpful query just isn’t, ‘What triggered me and the way can I modify or avoid it?’ But ‘What, inside me, is asking to be felt, acknowledged and healed?’

Anger negatively impacts our well-being once we attach to it or avoid it, thus holding the energy of anger in place. We may mistakenly feel we’ve overcome anger because we simply don’t allow it, we repress or avoid what we feel. We may hold on to anger because we associate it with a sense of righteousness, or since it gives us a (false) sense of power.

Long-held anger, nonetheless, has very real physical and mental health consequences. It puts us in danger for heart disease, hormonal imbalances, weight gain and stress-related illnesses that result from a chronically inflamed immune system.

Anger elevates our heart rate, blood pressure and rate of respiration. It prompts our muscles by triggering the discharge of adrenaline and upregulates the stress hormone, cortisol. Anger brings our sympathetic nervous system online, throwing us into fight, flight or freeze mode.

In emotional maps of the body, most individuals describe anger as a rise in heat in the pinnacle, shoulders and upper chest. It may feel like a tightening sensation within the stomach or chest. Anger may feel like clarity, as if whenever you’re indignant, all the pieces comes into sharp focus.

But studies find holding on to anger compromises cognitive functioning. Anger can render us unable to finish easy tasks and liable to misinformation. In this manner, afflicted anger and mindfulness mitigate one another. When one is high, the opposite is low.

Those with a problematic relationship to anger complain more about health problems, anxiety and depression. Anger-related psychological distress is correlated with poorer physical health. Heal your relationship to anger, and your body will begin to healtoo.

Anger is commonly a useful and necessary emotion, nonetheless, left unchecked it will probably get the most effective of us and takes us out of the current moment. Anger can destroy relationships, leading to unnecessary suffering. At its core, anger is about conflict: conflict with others, ourselves, or situations.

Not only does anger create conflict, but it surely takes us out of the current moment. We completely change into the anger; it consumes us. We can use anger mindfulness exercises to return to the current moment. If you’re feeling indignant, try the straightforward techniques below to make it easier to stay calm. Practicing mindfulness for anger allows us to regain control over our emotions and reactions, promoting a way of calm and clarity amidst tumultuous feelings.

From lionsroar.com:

When I feel anger beginning to fire up inside myself, I find it helpful to count my respirations as much as ten after which back all the way down to one. For example, I inhale and think “one” and proceed considering “one” for the exhale, all the best way as much as ten. If anger continues to stir, then I simply recognize it: “Hello, anger. I see you.” The first step towards recognition is a deep, mindful breath as a way to reconnect the mind and body.

Conflict is an inevitable a part of the human experience. When you concentrate on the complexity of the environment that we inhabit, it’s easy to see how conflict comes about. Many of us are under significant amounts of pressure to perform. Whether it’s at home, at work, at college, in our relationships, or in other areas of our lives, we feel compelled to realize: we’re driven to succeed in certain goals, sometimes by forces that lie completely outside of ourselves. The stress that results from attempting to carry ourselves to such high (often unattainable) standards, combined with the opposite stresses of contemporary life (like those related to modern technology, work/life balance, and so forth), lead us into situations that usually feature significant amounts of conflict.

When we experience conflict inside ourselves or with others, that conflict is commonly accompanied by anger. Practicing mindfulness will be incredibly difficult once we’re in an anger-driven, clouded emotional state. Indeed, anger will be quite blinding. When we speak of somebody going right into a “blind rage,” this does a fairly good job of capturing just how damaging anger will be for ourselves and for our relationships. When we’re indignant, it’s easy to change into fixated on the anger itself: it consumes us and begins to take us over. We lose sight of ourselves. We lose sight of the current.

With this in mind, working to grasp and overcome anger is a vital a part of maintaining a mindfulness practice. While experiencing conflict and anger is totally normal, allowing ourselves to change into completely consumed and overrun with indignant feelings is deleterious to our well-being. With the free mindfulness exercises offered here, you possibly can begin your journey down the trail of mindfulness. Along the best way, you’ll have the chance to work to beat feelings of anger, with the goal of recognizing those feelings for what they’re–reasonably than allowing them to manage you.