Stop technique for anger
S.T.O.P Is a Mindfulness Trick to Calm You Down
Maybe you’ve scored that prized interview you’ve been after for some time, or maybe your CEO chose you to deliver a presentation, or maybe you have a big networking event—whatever the case, you’re obviously excited, but you’re also really nervous.
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Here’s where mindfulness comes in. Regardless of if you’re a seasoned meditator or a newbie, you can test out S.T.O.P.—a powerful, yet surprisingly basic strategy that helps you to be focused, alert, relaxed, and at your emotional best when a big moment presents itself in your life.
Simply put, it’s a four-step mental checklist to use anytime you want to add a burst of fresh energy, creativity, or insight to whatever is going on. The whole idea behind it is that by taking a very brief break—even less than one minute—you can determine the very best action to take in the moment.
Let’s walk through it together:
S = Stop
Stop what you are doing: Press the pause button on your thoughts and actions.
T = Take
Take a few deep breaths to center yourself and bring yourself fully into the present moment.
O = Observe
Observe what is going on with your:
Body
What physical sensations are you aware of (touch, sight, hearing, taste, smell)?
Emotions
What are you feeling right now?
Mind
What assumptions are your making about your feelings? What is the story you’re telling yourself about why you are having them?
P = Proceed
Proceed with whatever you were doing, making a conscious, intentional choice to incorporate what you just learned.
Putting it Into Action
Let’s say you have a big interview coming up and you are practicing your answers to questions with a friend.
He asks, “What direct experience do you have working in our industry?” You stress out because you’re changing careers and you don’t have any direct experience. But, instead of panicking and telling your friend the mock interview’s over and you can’t do this, S.T.O.P.
Stop
Write the question down, then pause.
Take
Very intentionally take a few deep breaths
Observe
Body: You might notice a tightening in your stomach or that your breath gets shallower.
Emotions: Did the question make you feel nervous? Unsure of yourself?
Mind: What are you thinking? Maybe: “I always feel this way when I try something new, and it always seems to turn out OK…” or “Wow, I’ve always talked about changing to a new industry, and here I am actually doing it!”
Proceed
As you think about your answer, consider what you’ve just observed about yourself, and what you want to do with what you just learned.
You might say to yourself: “I’m going to remember when I notice my stomach tightening that I’m excited to be taking steps to change careers.”
So now, instead of panicking, your inner monologue says to you:
“I have a lot of relevant experience I can bring from my previous work, so I’ll be genuinely positive and focus on my excitement and my transferable skills when this question comes up.”
Now, when you get asked this for real, you’ll be able to put your S.T.O.P. lessons to good use and answer without missing a beat. And remember, this doesn’t just apply to interviews, but to any situation that’s causing you anxiety. The more mindful you are of what’s going on in your own body and brain beforehand, the easier it will be to shine when it counts.
Stressing Out? S.T.O.P. - Mindful
Two-thirds of Americans say they need help for stress. But stress itself is not the problem. It’s how we relate to stress. The stress response is critical to our survival.
It can save our lives or enable a firefighter to carry a 300-pound man down 20 flights of stairs. Of course, most of us don’t encounter a life-or-death threat all that often. We usually experience stress reactions in response to thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations. If we’re actively worried about whether we can put food on the table or get the perfect exam score, presto: the stress reaction activates. And if the bodily systems involved in stress don’t slow down and normalize, the effects can be severe. Over time, we can succumb to, among other things, high blood pressure, muscle tension, anxiety, insomnia, gastrodigestive complaints, and a suppressed immune system.
Creating space in the day to stop, come down from the worried mind, and get back into the present moment has been shown to be enormously helpful in mitigating the negative effects of our stress response. When we drop into the present, we’re more likely to gain perspective and see that we have the power to regulate our response to pressure.
Here’s a short practice you can weave into your day to step into that space between stimulus and response.
Stop what you’re doing; put things down for a minute.
Take a few deep breaths. If you’d like to extend this, you can take a minute to breathe normally and naturally and follow your breath coming in and out of your nose. You can even say to yourself “in” as you’re breathing in and “out” as you’re breathing out if that helps with concentration.
Observe your experience just as it is—including thoughts, feelings, and emotions. You can reflect about what is on your mind and also notice that thoughts are not facts, and they are not permanent. Notice any emotions present and how they’re being expressed in the body. Research shows that just naming your emotions can turn the volume down on the fear circuit in the brain and have a calming effect. Then notice your body.
Are you standing or sitting? How is your posture? Any aches or pains?
Proceed with something that will support you in the moment: talk to a friend, rub your shoulders, have a cup of tea.
Treat this whole exercise as an experiment: Get curious about where there are opportunities in the day for you to just STOP—waking up in the morning, taking a shower, before eating a meal, at a stop light, before sitting down at work and checking email.
You can even use your smartphone’s message indicator as a reminder to STOP, cultivating more mindfulness with technology.
What would it be like in the days, weeks, and months ahead if you started stopping more often?
This article also appeared in the August 2013 issue of Mindful magazine.
Anger Management: Guide - Reminder
Health
8/11/2022
Tactics and strategies for controlling the most dangerous emotion
Photo by Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash
What you will learn from this guide:
Anger is often a normal and natural expression of dissatisfaction.
In difficult situations, he helps us stand up for ourselves, protect our needs, interests and values. But sometimes anger becomes dangerous and out of control. In this case, it is useful to have in stock at least a few techniques for managing this emotion. Together with the online school of psychological professions "Psychodemia" Reminder tells how to determine if you have anger problems and learn how to solve them.
When can anger become a problem?
Too intense. In strong anger, a person can injure others and himself not only verbally, but also physically, as well as break things and break dishes. This can lead to broken relationships, job loss, and even administrative and criminal offenses.
Makes you feel worse. Strong anger affects emotional and physical health: increases blood pressure and increases the likelihood of a heart attack, increases anxiety, worsens depressive states, problems with alcohol and psychoactive substances.
Interferes with work and study. Anger can prevent a person from communicating normally with colleagues, teachers, fellow students. Because of it, working capacity decreases, it becomes difficult to concentrate on work or educational tasks.
How do you know if you have an anger problem?
Problems are usually not related to anger itself, but to internal and external reactions to what caused it. When reactions become uncontrollable, a person can harm himself and others, ruin relationships with loved ones, and ruin his career.
Attempts to control one's reactions to anger lead to strong tension, which also affects health: it affects sleep, increases fatigue, and disrupts eating behavior. Bottom line: dissatisfaction with oneself, less pleasure from life and relationships with people.
Signs of "problematic anger" can be divided into four groups: thoughts, actions, feelings, physical sensations.
Check the boxes that match your reactions.
The presence of signs from all four groups means that you most likely have serious problems with anger. The more matches, the higher the risk. Another important indicator is frequency of outbursts of anger. To evaluate it, you can use the simplest criterion: if any more or less non-standard everyday situation causes you irritation or anger, your reaction can be regarded as an outburst of anger. If this happens at least once a week, we are talking about recurrent anger.
How anger works
The cycle of anger
Outbursts of anger are like waypoints on a route. Everything that feeds and generates anger happens on the way between them. Imagine that you are driving a car and you are “cut off” at the turn. What does a typical angry reaction look like?
Cycle of anger. Retrieved from: https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-worksheet/cycle-of-anger- Triggering Event - An anger-producing situation. You were cut off on the road.
- Negative Thoughts. You think: “What an idiot! How did they give him the right to do so!
- Emotional Response. Negative thoughts lead to negative emotions. You feel rage directed at the offender - the bad driver.
- Physical Symptoms. The body automatically responds to anger. Your blood pressure rises, sweat comes out, trembling appears, fists clench involuntarily.
- Behavioral Response - an action dictated by a combination of thoughts, feelings and physical symptoms. You open the window and yell at the driver, shaking your fist at him. The cycle of anger is complete.
How to solve problems with anger
In reverse order, as if starting a cycle of anger from the end to the beginning. First you take control of the behavioral response - that's a tactical decision. And then, gradually deepening, move on to strategic work with the causes of anger.
1. Controlling Physical Symptoms and Behavioral Response
Tactics to stop the anger cycle before it reaches the dangerous stage of behavioral response are deep breathing, shifting focus, releasing tension through muscle activity, and self-massage.
Deep breathing
A simple technique to help you deal with emotions. Once you learn how to do it in a quiet environment, such as at home, you can practice anywhere and anytime. It will take 3-5 minutes to practice. Sit comfortably, put your hand on your stomach. Inhale deeply through your nose, fill your chest and stomach with air. Hold your breath for a few seconds and exhale slowly through your mouth, slightly puffing out your lips, as if blowing on a straw. The secret is to do it slowly: inhale for 4 seconds, pause for 4 seconds, exhale for 6 seconds.
Change of focus
Choose something to focus on: a physical object (a lit candle, a mug of tea), a sound (the sound of rain or passing cars), or a smell (perfume, flowers). Try different options for objects and stop at the one you like best. Concentrate on the chosen object and simply observe it. Various thoughts will come to your mind; do not scold yourself, but simply mark in your head “this is a thought”, “another thought” and each time return your attention to the object. Three to five minutes of such observation helps to return to the present moment and shift attention from the trigger that caused the anger.
Relaxation through tension
First tighten the muscles strongly for a few seconds in the following sequence:
- clench your fingers into a fist, spread your arms to the sides at shoulder level and bend them at the elbows;
- bring the shoulder blades together and from this position pull down, bending at the waist;
- furrow your brows, close your eyes as if soap has got in them, wrinkle your nose as if you smelled an unpleasant smell, clench your jaws, tense your neck;
- imagine that you are tilting your head forward, but you are unable to do so because there are obstacles in your way;
- draw in the stomach as much as possible, tighten the buttocks;
- sit on a hard surface, rock from side to side;
- from a sitting position, stretch your legs forward at a right angle, point your feet towards yourself and towards the center, depicting a clubfoot, bend your toes;
- Now relax your muscles and feel the tension leaving your body.
After a session for additional relaxation, you can do several cycles of breathing exercises, inhaling as deeply as possible and exhaling loudly.
Self-massage
Surely you have noticed that in stress people often rub their hands, clench and unclench their fists, spread their fingers. What if in this way the body itself tells us how to help it? Pay attention to your hands: massage your palms with light pressure movements - this way you will relieve tension and switch your attention to the sensations of the body. Then listen to the sensations throughout the body and also massage the places where you feel tension. The good thing about this exercise is that you can use it whenever you want: sitting at your desk, in a meeting, or at home.
2. Managing the emotional response
Anger is always a reaction to a threat here and now. But what exactly seems like a threat to you depends on your emotional vulnerabilities. To stop the anger cycle at the emotional response stage, you need to identify the hidden feelings that fuel it.
Tactics: take time out
The main problem with the emotional response to anger is speed. The acceleration is related to the evolutionary role of anger: initially it should save your life, forcing you to act quickly and decisively against someone who has crossed your personal boundaries. Your brain starts working so fast that you simply do not have time to realize what is happening to you. Try pressing the brakes - literally imagine that you are driving a car and gradually slowing down. And then try to switch to some pleasant activity: take a walk, watch a movie, cook a delicious meal - it's always calming. A half-hour time-out is usually enough to extinguish an emotional reaction.
Tactic: Name Your Feelings
Strong emotional responses operate at the level of the limbic system, which processes sensory signals without involving consciousness. Without the participation of the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for conscious control, it is impossible to cope with feelings. An effective way to activate your prefrontal cortex is to name your emotions. Speech is one of the most important conscious functions. By activating it, you force the brain to turn on consciousness. Tell yourself (you can do it out loud) what exactly you feel: “I'm angry, I'm furious, I'm ready to tear everyone apart!”.
Strategy: Iceberg of Anger
For all its primal power, anger is actually a secondary emotion. He always hides something else behind him: resentment, disappointment, fears. To identify the hidden emotional motives of anger, you can use a technique developed by psychologist Ashley Lipman. Imagine that your anger is the tip of an iceberg that rises above the water. And deep beneath it is a huge mass of unidentified feelings that feed it. Mentally dive into the water and, sinking lower and lower, study everything that you find there.
Here are some ways to explore your hidden emotions.
- Imagine that your friend is facing a situation that makes them angry.
What other emotions do you think he can experience besides anger?
- What emotions are freely expressed in your family and culture, and which are usually hidden?
- Imagine a person dealing effectively with difficult emotions such as sadness, fear, or pain. How does he show these emotions? What does he do to deal with them?
- Sometimes we get angry to mask emotions that make us feel vulnerable, such as pain or shame. Can you remember a time when you expressed anger to hide another emotion?
By examining the emotions at the base of your anger iceberg, you can develop a personalized self-control strategy. For example, regular self-care will help those whose anger is caused by stress, and developing communication skills will help those who express jealousy through anger.
3. Dealing with negative thoughts
We get angry when our expectations don't match reality. By changing our attitude towards our expectations, we learn to manage anger. The most common case: you expect the other person to behave in a certain way and get angry if he behaves differently.
Tactic: Ask Yourself Some Questions
- What is my expectation based on? Does it correspond to reality?
- Does the person understand exactly what I expect from him?
- Are my expectations aligned with the interests of the other person?
- Would it be helpful for the person to know how their behavior affected me?
Anger can be directed not at someone specific, but at some system in which it is not possible to satisfy one's needs. In this case, the questions are more focused on understanding how effective anger is in these circumstances. It's one thing to influence a person, it's another thing to change the rules or the accepted order. Anger rarely helps in such cases. You can ask yourself:
- What can I do to get out of the situation with the least loss or the greatest gain?
- Is there any information that I do not have and therefore cannot resolve the issue?
- Is there anyone who can help me deal with the situation?
Strategy: Test your expectations for realism
If you have anger issues, it is helpful to analyze your expectations and test them for realism. So we learn not only to weed out those expectations that do not correspond to reality, to adjust our attitude towards people and the world as a whole, but also take responsibility for our emotions. When our expectations are not met, often the problem is in them, and not in reality itself.
4. Learning about anger triggers
Anger triggers are stimuli (events, people, and situations) that piss you off and provoke an emotional response. In addition to typical situational triggers (threats, harsh criticism, injustice, deceit, insults), each of us has individual irritants. Knowing them, you can stop the cycle of anger at the very beginning - even at the stage of the trigger event.
Tactics: Prepare for a Trigger
Some triggers are easy to eliminate from your life. If you are angry because of the news in Telegram channels, just unsubscribe from them and get information from other sources. But there are triggers that cannot be excluded. Make a list of such situations and develop a reaction in advance that will help you not succumb to provocation. For example: when my boss criticizes me, I will take a deep breath and exhale slowly, and then calmly ask not to criticize me, but my work.
Strategy: Anger Diary
The Anger Diary is a simple practice that helps you identify your triggers, patterns, signs of anger and help you structure your thoughts and work on a problem. After an episode of anger, it is helpful to take a couple of minutes and write down what happened. Answer the questions:
- What happened before the episode? Describe how you felt and what you thought. Were you hungry, were you tired, did you feel stressed?
- List the facts. What happened to you? What events were your trigger? How did you react and how did your reaction change as the situation unfolded further?
- What were your thoughts and feelings during the episode of anger? Do you see the situation differently now than you did at the time of the outbreak?
Strategy: consider the context
In some states, we become especially sensitive to both typical and individual triggers of anger. Along with chronic stress, hunger and fatigue, one of the most powerful enhancers of the anger response is physical pain. This is quite natural. First, anger is a response to a real or perceived threat to our well-being. And physical pain is perceived precisely as a threat. Psychological processing of pain signals, as studies show, involves the same parts of the brain that respond to social triggers of anger. Secondly, anger in pain can be felt as a release of tension, providing an analgesic effect. Although in fact, an outburst of anger does not relieve physical pain, but can only create the illusion of emotional relief, temporarily distracting the brain from pain.
Uncontrollable anger in pain syndromes is a complex problem, for which you need to contact a specialist. If you have increased anger outbursts due to chronic or recurrent pain, correcting your perception of sensations using cognitive behavioral therapy methods can help.
What to read and listen to about dealing with anger
- Audio Techniques for Relaxing When Stressed
- Repositioning Practice to Keep Your Mind Up
- Books to help you get through tough times
- Self Support Tools Telegram channel
- NHS Anger Self Help Guide
5 Anger Management Techniques
No good or bad emotions or feelings, thought about it ? As soon as we stop dividing everything into “good-bad, remove-leave”, it will become easier for us to manage our states.
In the management of emotions, one can be guided by the “principle of consequences”. Think about what actions follow emotions? How do your emotional outbursts end? What do you and the people around you gain from the manifestation of emotions, and what do you lose?
Are you satisfied with the consequences of emotions and feelings that are vividly manifested at important moments in your life? Do I need to change something in their manifestation in order to get different, more environmentally friendly results?
Any of our emotions can have both positive and negative results. So joy can be too big and devastating to make important decisions. And sadness is “bright”, motivating us, for example, to take timely actions.
Anger is most often destructive, because we do not know how to control its energy and use it for good. Such a blessing can be obtaining the results we need.
Do you remember what kind of power turns on inside when we experience anger? Just a wave that almost instantly pours out on those around you, who may not have anything to do with your emotions. We can do things that we will later regret for a long time.
What if we notice and realize in time that we are starting to get angry? And to direct the energy that appears to useful actions, you can get positive consequences from your anger. So, five ideas and techniques for managing anger.
1. Asking questions to become aware
When you're angry, it's important to be aware of what's happening to you. To do this, learn to ask yourself questions, to conduct a kind of internal dialogue.
- Ask yourself what information does this emotion convey?
- What does your anger say?
- What actually happens in this situation?
- What exactly "turns you on" in another person's behavior?
Yes, it's not easy, having got into an emotional wave, to slow down and remember the questions. The method that we are taught from childhood - "count to 10" can help here. As soon as you start to emotionally turn on, count, and then ask yourself a question.
2. Understand to manage
Examine your anger, and it is best when you are not feeling it. This will help you understand that there is a reason for everything and that almost everything can be changed.
- Think about what provokes your anger. What factors trigger anger most often?
- What needs are not met and you get emotionally turned on?
- What fears are behind your anger? Are they real? If yes, how to deal with them?
3. Reduce the emotional degree
Imagine a scale on which our emotional states are located. Anger is its extreme manifestation, and what stands before it? Irritation, indignation, annoyance, anger?
Learn to notice your emotional temperature when it has not yet jumped to the "anger" mark. Feel annoyance - do not suppress, but show it. Outraged - say so! Someone's actions cause annoyance - react.
It is very correct to verbalize your state, then your interlocutor will be aware of what is happening:
- "I'm getting irritated, so.
.."
- "Such words revolt me, come on..."
Most likely, the conflict will be avoided, as well as your outburst of anger.
4. Give vent to anger without suppressing it
Express your emotions using safe means.
- Speak up. Retreat and tell yourself everything you think about the situation or the people who caused the anger. Record your words on the recorder, when you listen to the recording in a calm state, you will find a lot of useful things.
- Run, dance or jump. Release energy through the body - this is one of the best ways to release anger.
- Hit a pillow, or better a punching bag. The accumulated blows have not interfered with anyone in life.
5. Exercise resilience
Anger can be habituated, reacted to or dealt with. And if you reduce your sensitivity to them? What can help with this?
- Diary of emotions. Constantly keep a record of what makes you angry (anger, annoyance).
