Thursday, April 12, 2012

How to Restrain Yourself from an Outburst

How to Restrain Yourself from an Outburst:


Everybody gets angry at times. Yet, there is an awful lot of anger going around––it is estimated that one in five Americans has an anger management problem.[1] As for having an outburst, a time when a person melts down in front everyone present and yells, screams, hits out or abuses others, this is destructive anger at its most potent. It hurts you and it hurts others, in physical, emotional and social ways.
Having an outburst is nothing but negative––it's something to expect in toddlers, who have very limited in ways to express themselves. But if you're old enough to read this article with no problems, you're too old to be having such outbursts, regardless of your temper, pride or sense of being "in the right". Learning to restrain yourself and to retrain your approach to challenging situations is the mature way forward to a calmer life.


Edit Steps


Immediate self-restraint

  1. Realize when you're about to burst. A lot of times, people can feel themselves "flaring up" or getting ready to have an outburst. The quicker you realize this, the more time you have to prevent it. Physical signs can include:
    • Tensed muscles, especially around your face and neck; tightening fists
    • Teeth grinding and jaw clenching
    • Sweating
    • Skin color changes, such as reddening or going totally pale
    • Shaking ("shaking in anger" is a well known term)
    • Goosebumps
    • You can feel your heart racing, your thoughts going blank
    • The pitch of your voice changes
    • Dizziness or light headed
    • Stomach aches or a sudden feeling of diarrhea
    • Feeling temperature extremes.[2][3]
  2. Notice your emotional reactions and your actions. There are more giveaway signs of anger and a potential outburst shown in feelings and reactions. If you can learn to spot these, you can learn to quell your anger faster. Some of these may include:
    • Feeling upset, anxious, wanting to get away, sad, resentful, guilty, terrified, wanting to hurt someone or something and wanting a habitual relaxant such as a cigarette or alcoholic drink; and
    • Actions such as pacing, rubbing your head, sarcasm, losing your sense of humor, becoming abusive or abrasive, yelling or crying, making a fist.[4]
  3. Physically restrain yourself. If you're speaking to someone and ready to burst, don't say anything. Hold your breath or bite your tongue if you have to.
    • If your anger is directed toward an object (like the above picture of a woman screaming at her cell phone) and you feel yourself about to throw it, hold your hand down with your other one. Make a fist (don't let go of the object) and slam it against your chest or stomach if you have to (try not to be too hard, as you may hurt yourself).
    • If you're ready to kick someone or something, stomp on your foot and hold it there.
  4. Sit down and breathe. It doesn't matter where you are. Just sit down. In a chair, on the floor, on a desk. Wherever. Just sit and take a deep breath. It's an old tactic, but it tends to work very well. Those who meditate know that as soon as you begin to focus on your breath, all else begins to fall away. Think about your breathing, notice it, and slow it down.
  5. Don't move and think. Stay where you are for a few minutes and think about why you're so upset. If you're around other people, walk out and sit back down to think. Consider whether what you're ready to burst about is really something worth getting so upset over.
  6. Tell yourself that you cannot think clearly while upset. Angry people do bad things because it is impossible to think clearly when fogged by fury. As such, you're liable to jump to conclusions, see offense in every word and action around you and assume that others are out to get you. All of these assumptions are wrong and potentially seriously dangerous if you act on them, whether to your physical health, your reputation or your chances of getting what you want.
  7. Get out of the situation by going home. If home feels safe, it's the best place to be if you're unable to control your anger. If you're at school or work, and you're in a really bad mood, at your wits' end, and you don't mind dealing with the penalty (if there is one), go home early.
    • If you're in school, you may just be able to walk out without having to explain to anyone (though it's best to ask your parents first).
    • If you're at work, check with your boss. Once you get the okay to go home, grab your stuff and go. Don't feel bad about this. It's better to go home early than to risk another outburst that could get you into serious trouble.
  8. If you can't go home, take a short break or go somewhere away from a crowd or from those people feeding into your anger. Depending on where you are, you may be limited in this but even finding a public bathroom or a cleaner's space can be better than remaining on-the-spot and boiling up. Try to take at least 10 minutes to calm down and to get away from the trigger area or people.
    • Do a little something, even if it's just playing a game on your phone or playing with your fingers. It sounds silly, but such methodical actions can relieve your mood a bit.
  9. Let everyone know that you're okay. Some people may notice you almost had an outburst and they might be concerned. If someone asks, just say you're alright and thank them for their concern. You don't have to tell them anything or talk about it. Just say you need to be alone for a minute.
    • One exception to not saying much is where you have actually harmed or abused someone. You must apologize. This wasn't their fault––you are completely in control of yourself and provocation is not an excuse. Be mature and be responsible. The more you force yourself to acknowledge your responsibility, the less you will find yourself getting into these situations in future.
  10. The next day, forget about the actual incident. Don't hold onto whatever almost made you explode. It's over and done with. The outburst is through. If it's something that still needs sorting out (like an argument), wait until you're sure you can handle it without anger. If it's something unavoidable (such as if it took place at school or work), try to put yourself in a good mood first. Don't think along the lines of, "What's the point? My mood will just be ruined later." Think of it as alleviating the anger before you feel it.

Future, ongoing self-restraint

  1. Learn from your experience. What worked for you in trying to constrain your angry response and what didn't? By noting what calmed you most and helped you to overcome the feelings that led to being so upset, you can begin to address these feelings and issues directly.
  2. Find the real reason you're upset. Sometimes, outbursts are the result of something completely unrelated to what caused it. This can especially be true if outbursts are uncommon for you. For example, if you've had a hard day, chances are you're exhausted and don't have enough patience to deal with any more stress, not even tiny. In this case, your outburst would've been the result of your exhaustion, not your cell phone battery dying on you. Commonplace reasons behind anger for many people include:
    • Fear and a sense of threat: Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, has suggested that a fearful experience in the past that threatened life, security or your self-esteem can serve as a continued future trigger for anger. This involves a limbic surge in your neural pathways as hormones are released that can keep you on edge for days.
    • Irritability as a result of not attending to your eating and drinking requirements adequately can increase to anger. Remembering to eat on time and to stay hydrated can sometimes prevent angry outbursts in sensitive people.
    • Lack of sleep or sleep deprivation over time: Some people don't even realize that they're sleep-deprived as it has occurred to them gradually as a result of working or studying too hard. For others, last night's poor sleep is all it takes. Getting more sleep can be crucial to calming future angry outbursts.
  3. Once you've identified the real reason or feelings that lead you being upset, express that feeling or reason instead of expressing the anger. Do you have hurt feelings? Are you afraid? Are you tired or hungry? Or perhaps you're frightened of being humiliated. Identifying these reasons is crucial to directing your energies at them rather than resorting to the anger.
  4. Change your thoughts. You are always in a position to change how you're thinking. Through recognizing your primary reason that leads to secondary anger, you can be gentler on yourself and the world and interrupt the process of building up anger.
    • Bad thinking habits can cause you to stay angry. If you have a problem with accepting that life has its downs as much as its ups, you may have fallen into a negative pattern of assuming that when things don't go right (as invariably will happen) and wanting it always to be someone else's fault. Learn to accept that "stuff happens" and that it's very often nobody's fault but a case of many things culminating in situations that aren't so ideal.
    • How you react is what matters––seeking to blame another, to have constant battles of the will or to aim your anger at others won't change reality. Acknowledging that your negative thoughts and feelings are influencing your perceptions of and responses to everyone and every situation you encounter is a powerful realization that can free you.
    • If you have used anger as a source of power, stop. It's not powerful; it's threatening and hurtful and anyone who does as you demand when angry is doing so from fear, not respect.
  5. Turn to asserting your needs instead of fuming, yelling, cursing or screaming. Assertion is sometimes confused with aggression––it's anything but. By asserting yourself, you can express your needs clearly without getting steamed up.
    • For example, imagine yourself queued up for ages to board a plane. The flight is canceled. You've been patient but now you're hungry, tired and terrified of not seeing your loved ones on time for a special event. You could yell at the booking agent or you could go up calmly and say something like:
      • "Gee, I'm really bummed that this flight has been canceled. This weekend is my sister's fortieth birthday and I'd promised I'd see her again for the first time in five years. I know everyone is in the same situation and that this must be such a hard job for you when it happens. It's just that I'm really afraid I won't make the event in time and she'll be disappointed. Is there any chance at all I can make the next flight without fail? I did pay full fare to try and avoid being bumped like this and it'd mean a great deal to me if you could see what you can do for me." Compare this with:
      • "You @*^&^%! I %$6@&% paid for this #&*^% flight and I hate this @*${body}amp;%$^ company, you're all a bunch of *@&%*& losers and I'm going to tweet my displeasure and let the whole world know that your airline @&%$*%*@& sucks!"
      • In these two examples, who would you rather help out?
    • For more help, read How to be assertive and How to communicate in an assertive manner.
    • Above all, stay calm and realize that everyone wants to be treated nicely.
  6. Learn to relax. People who anger easily tend to not know how to stay or be relaxed. And anger itself is a physically arousing state that can leave you buzzing for hours or even days afterward, depending on how badly you've raged. If you haven't let yourself relax in years, not only are you a candidate for an early heart attack but you're likely to stay in the anger spiral. Finding pathways to relax yourself on-the-spot and generally are a key to reducing anger outbursts and to seeing things much more clearly.
  7. Read about emotional intelligence and the ways in which you can enhance yours. Emotional intelligence is social intelligence. It enables you to monitor your own feelings of anger and emotions and to guide your actions toward others accordingly. If you often feel victimized, now is a good time to assess why this is so and to find positive ways forward instead of letting fear dominate your entire life.

Edit Tips

  • If you end up having an outburst and hurt someone, apologize, no matter how justified you think you were. Your anger might be justifiable, but your harmful actions are not, ever.
  • Be aware that while some people are easily annoyed when things don't go their own way, other people are more sensitive than others to noise, crowds, fatigue, hunger, etc., which can mean they get upset or angry more quickly. Sometimes, these sensitive people are called hot-headed, hot-tempered or ill-tempered, but there is a difference between them and the explosive control freak. Someone who is sensitive just gets upset or angry. Someone who is hot-headed explodes, sometimes at the slightest provocation. Either way, the anger needs to be managed.
  • If you cannot seem to get a hold of your temper and outbursts, consider checking yourself into therapy. Sometimes, professional help is needed and there's no shame in getting it.
  • Anger isn't all bad. It has a purpose, for good reason, such as alerting us to danger and real injustice (not just selfishly perceived injustice or imagined danger). It'd be silly to stick around and be dominated or eaten, so anger formed to protect us like that. It's where anger doesn't inspire courage or strength but becomes a way of controlling others through fear or expressing discontent or displeasure in a destructive way that it loses its protective use and becomes unhealthy. Using anger to get your own way or to express yourself poorly becomes a habit; like any bad habit, you have the power to break it.

Edit Warnings

  • If you feel dizzy or have a headache after an outburst, go lay down. That could be a sign of illness, as extreme stress can hurt the immune system. If you this happens frequently, see a doctor.
  • Are you aware that you might be carrying around deep-seated anger? A lot of people are not and tend to find it easier to blame the world or to hurt themselves instead of facing the real reasons deep down. Anger is not protective when all it does is hide the real hurt. Seek help to rid yourself of the real hurt and to start really living a full life at last.

Edit Things You'll Need

  • Some people find it helpful to have a reminder talisman to stay calm, such as a worry dolls, a pet pebble, something to dig their fingers into to prevent them from forming a fist, etc. Find your talisman to hold onto or guide you through
  • Anger management classes (optional but perhaps needed if you're experiencing deep-seated anger regularly)
  • Positive, calming and energizing experiences––lots more of them
  • Regular meals and snacks if you're prone to melting down when your blood sugar levels are low; same for water and staying hydrated
  • Relaxation techniques and practices for the rest of your calm life

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