Understand Your Anger—A Self-Reflection Technique (Part 1)

Mindwork

Oct 21

Use this self-reflection technique to accurately perceive, identify, process, and control one of the strongest human emotions—anger. The technique will help you understand what your anger is, what causes it, and find ways to manage or overcome it.

On your path to emotional mastery, you need to learn to accurately perceive, identify, process, and control one of the strongest human emotions—anger. This process aims to help you to understand what your anger is, what causes it, and find ways to manage or overcome your anger. In doing so, you will avoid any damage that anger can cause to you, your relationships, your career, and the environment in which you live.

Through a series of questions and reflections, you can give your anger appropriate attention and learn how to claim agency over your response to anger triggers. As a result, rather than letting anger control your behavior, you will be able to decide when and how to respond to the situation, in a way that is most beneficial to you.

It is important not to rush through the following set of exercises. Dedicate time to this practice, and choose a quiet place where you will not be disturbed.

Step 1: DEFINE ANGER

Describe “anger” and “angry” in your terms:

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Step 2: IDENTIFY YOUR TRIGGERS

1. Anger is an emotional response to internal or external stimuli (triggers). It is important to identify what triggers anger in you.

Identify your triggers:

Family
Relatives
Friends
Co-workers
Strangers
Events
Others

2. What made you angry in recent times:

Internal Events:

Feeling angry with yourself
Remembering something or someone who made you angry
Things don’t happen as you desire (incomplete work, struck in traffic, etc.)
Unappreciated efforts
Personal problems
Memories of trauma
The need to be perfect
Feeling disowned or avoided
Feeling misunderstood
Feeling helpless
Hurt by criticism
Treated unfairly
Mental and physical exhaustion
Stress
_______________________

Step 3: IDENTIFY THE FREQUENCY OF ANGER EPISODES

How often do you face anger?

Daily
Weekly
Number of times (day/ week) ______________ (approximately).

Step 4: MEASURE THE INTENSITY OF YOUR ANGER

ANGER INTENSITY SCALE – A measure of your anger

Write down all general events or situations that triggered angry thoughts without stopping. This will help you evaluate your thoughts and rate the intensity of your emotion for each anger variation.

Examples:

“She doesn’t care about me when I am speaking!!” (7)

“What have you done? Everything is ruined because of you!” (9)

“I feel neglected when he disobeys me.” (8)

Event no. 1): __________________________________________________________________