In the heat of the moment, one way to bring your temperature down is practice mindfulness for anger.
Experiencing anger is normal – it is not good or bad – it is what you do with it that matters. Short term anger can help you maintain fairness, and channel energy to correct injustice.
But persistent, unexamined anger, can cause you to act aggressively, or develop the chronic elevated stress response that can damage your physical and psychological health. Never mind your home, social and work relationships.
Anger takes many different forms, from sarcastic comments to irritability to passive aggressive communication. And it often masks more uncomfortable emotions, including fear, grief, betrayal, pain, sadness, and confusion. For midlife women in particular, anger can show up very strongly through peri- and menopause. Those mornings when you are angry at everything/everyone from the moment you wake up. This is because oestrogen is involved in how much serotonin your brain produces. Fluctuating levels of serotonin contribute to mood swings.
Mindfulness for anger: how it helps
Mindfulness helps you learn to watch yourself thinking, and to develop an insight into your own mind, that helps you be a better friend to yourself. There are three main ways you can benefit from mindfulness when you are angry:
- With mindfulness, you can learn to accept your anger and not berate yourself for feeling it.
- Mindfulness can help you understand into what triggers your anger, and help you create a space between the stimulus and your response, so you can choose a more compassionate way forward. A STOP meditation practice can help you cultivate this skill.
- Research with married couples has shown that those who are more mindful have better scores relating to emotional regulation – lower blood pressure, better heart rate variability (an indirect measure of how primed your stress response is). So with mindfulness, you are less likely to get angry in the first place.
10 ways to keep your cool
Here are some ideas for how you can bring mindfulness for anger into your daily life.
- Balanced diet – the Mediterranean Diet, with its emphasis on whole grains, vegetables, and fruit. Daily small acts of self-care quickly accumulate to improving self-esteem, which helps reduce irritability and encourages you to want to do more to care for yourself.
- Reduce/cut out alcohol – particularly as you get older. Alcohol can make mood swings and extremes of mood more likely.
- Go for a walk – particularly if you can get outside. Walk away from a triggering situation, giving yourself time to process how you want to respond, is a powerful way to retrain your brain for less anger.
- Move – whatever works for you. Run, yoga, Pilates, weights, walking, dancing, swimming. Choose something you like doing and you are more likely to stick at it. Movement raises endorphins (feel good chemicals), which help balance out emotions.
- Get writing – a regular habit of journaling can help get the thoughts out of your head and onto paper. On its own this can be helpful in reducing anger. It gives you chance to pause, understand your feelings and motivations, and choose alternatives to getting angry. .
- Practice meditation – often regarded as synonymous with mindfulness, meditation is a practice on its own. Use an app, or a guided practice from a teacher, or join a group. The act of meditating help you connect with your breath, a useful anchor to have with you any time. See the guided meditation specifically on anger at the end of this article.
- Be creative – channel your energy into something you love. It could be doodling, gardening, stitching, knitting, painting, colouring, sculpting, writing. Something you love and find absorbing will help bring calm to mind and body.
- Connect with your present moment – look around at what you can see, touch, hear, smell and taste. Giving your brain something else to focus on helps diffuse the anger reaction, and the more often you do this, the more you help wire your brain for calm.
- Make sure your own needs are met. One of the common triggers for anger is resentment that other peoples’ needs get met but not yours. Learning to listen to, respect and stand up for your own wants and needs, while respecting others, can diffuse this trigger. Start by scheduling some non-negotiable time every day, to do things just for you. .
- One step at a time – when in doubt, just breathe. Sometimes the biggest step we can take is to refrain from doing what we habitually do. You do not necessarily need to know what to do instead – the act of stopping your normal reaction is a mindful act in itself..
There is no one size fits all. Be patient with yourself. Mindfulness for anger is not a magic wand, but small steps taken consistently over time can yield big outcomes. Take care of yourself and always seek medical or professional advice if you are unsure what is right for you.
