“A Lot of People Are Angry These Days,” says Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor at Northeastern University who studied the phycology of emotion. Anger is an extremely powerful emotion. If you display it constantly, others will avoid you like the epidemic. On the other hand, keep it bottled up inside and you become a pressure cooker that will inevitably blow it up which leads to actions that you later regret.
A Balanced view
The truth is that there are plenty of instances when you’re right to get angry. For example, let’s say a certain colleague of yours really gets on your nerves. You know, leaving unwashed dishes in the sink, constantly complaining, often disrespectful. You endure this behavior for a while but one day you move to do something about it. In contrast, if you take time to think of your actions and their consequences through, your strategy will be much effective.
The Anger Syndrome
How does one fight anger syndrome? There are many ways that have been listed elsewhere, from taking a deep breath to counting till ten to meditation. All of them have their virtues, but the problems still persist. So what does one do? Let us tackle this subject scientifically. Check your breath when you are in a normal state. Now you will notice that your breath is steady and rhythmic. Now observe yourself when you start losing your cool, you will notice that your breathing gets shallow and your breath comes in short gasps. So, one obvious key to fight the oncoming anger is to resort to deep breathing. There is another solution, which we need to tweak a bit to fight anger. Don’t count till ten but count backward from fifty. It makes the rational part of your brain override the irrational as you are forced to break your stream of anger and concentrate on the numbers.
So, the correct way is to overcome your anger is to keep counting backward and taking a deep breath.
Anchal Kapoor