Anger is a natural emotion. Mild forms of anger include displeasure, irritation or dislike. Anger can come as a reaction to criticism, threat, or frustration. This is usually a healthy response. Anger may be a secondary response to feeling sad, lonely or frightened.
When anger turns into rage, it can impair judgment and thinking, making people more likely to do and say unreasonable and irrational things.


What is anger?
Anger is a normal human emotion, but when it gets out of control it can become destructive, leading to serious problems at work and in personal relationships. It can undermine a person's quality of life.
Anger is not just a state of mind. It triggers an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and adrenaline levels. Anger has survival benefits, and it forms part of the fight or flight response to a perceived threat or harm.
Humans and other animals often express angerby making loud sounds, baring teeth, staring and adopting postures as a warning to perceived aggressors, in an attempt to stop their threatening behaviors. It is rare for a physical attack to occur without these signs of anger appearing first.
Causes
Anger may happen instinctively in humans and other animals to protect territory, offspring and family members, secure mating privileges, prevent loss of possessions or food, and other perceived threats.
Factors that commonly make people angry are:
• Grief, on losing a loved one
• Sexual frustration
• Disappointment or failure
• Rudeness and injustice
• Tiredness
• Hunger
• Pain
• Use of or withdrawal from alcohol, drugs, medications, or other substances
• Physical conditions, such as pre-menstrual syndrome
• Physical or mental illness
• Being teased, bullied, or humiliated
• Embarrassment
• Stress, for example, over deadlines or financial problems
• Traffic jams
• Sloppy service
• Infidelity
• Burglary
• Being told you have a serious illness.
The Counseling Center at California State University in Bakersfield, CA, explains that underlying anger is caused by a "perceived loss of control over factors affecting important values." The values may be related to pride, love, money, justice, and so on.
Health risks
When a person is angry, the body releases stress hormones, such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol. The heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and breathing rate increase.
Regular anger can eventually make people ill, because recurrent, unmanaged anger can result in a constant flood of stress chemicals. This can lead to metabolic changes that eventually undermine the individual's health.
The following physical health problems may occur:
• Backache
• Headaches
• Hypertension, or high blood pressure
• Insomnia
• Irritable bowel syndrome, or other digestive disorders
• Skin disorders
• Stroke
• Heart attack
• Lower pain threshold
• Weakened immune system, resulting in more infections, colds, and influenza.
Emotional and mental consequences of frequent, uncontrolled anger include:
• Depression and moodiness
• Eating disorders
• Alcohol or drug abuse
• Self injury
• Low self-esteem.
Anger management
Anger management involves skills of recognizing the signs of anger, and taking action to deal with the situation in a positive way. It does not mean holding the anger in or avoiding angry feelings. Anger is a normal, healthy emotion when expressed appropriately.
Anger management teaches people how to recognize frustrations at an early stage, and to settle them in a way that allows the person to express their needs, while remaining calm and in control.
Coping with anger is an acquired skill.
Anger management helps a person to identify what triggers their emotions, and how to respond for a positive outcome.
A person whose anger is having negative consequences on a relationship, or is leading to violent or dangerous behavior may be advised to see a mental health counselor, or to take an anger management class.
Signs that a person needs help include:
• Being in trouble with the law
• Frequently feeling that they have to hold in their anger
• Having numerous arguments with people around you, especially family or colleagues
• Getting involved in fights
• Hitting a spouse or child
• Threatening violence to people or property
• Breaking things during an outburst
• Losing their temper when driving, and becoming reckless
Therapy
Anger management therapy may be in group sessions, or one-on-one with a counselor or psychotherapist.
If the person is diagnosed with a mental healthcondition, such as depression, anger management should take this into account.
In anger management training, a person learns to:
• Identify what makes them angry
• Respond in a non-aggressive way to anger triggers, before getting angry
• Handle the triggers
• Identify moments when thought processes are not leading to logical and rational conclusions, and to correct their thinking
• Return to a state of calm and peace when anger surges
• Express feelings and needs assertively in situations that normally lead to anger and frustration, without becoming aggressive
• Redirect energy and resources into problem solving rather than anger.
First, the person needs to learn to fully recognize their anger. The following questions may help:
• How do I know when I am angry?
• What type of people, situations, events, places, triggers make me angry?
• How do I respond when I am angry? What do I do?
• What impact does my angry reaction have on other people?
It can help to understand that anger and calmness are not clear-cut emotions. Anger can range from mild irritation to full rage. Knowing this can help people to understand when they are really angry and when they are just irritated.
Emotional symptoms that may develop as a person moves from irritation to rage include:
• A desire to escape from the situation
• Irritation
• Sadness or depression
• Guilt
• Resentment
• Anxiety
• Desire to lash out verbally
• Desire to lash out physically.
The following signs may also occur:
• Rubbing the face with the hand
• Fidgeting, or clasping one hand with the other
• Pacing around
• Becoming cynical or sarcastic
• Losing the sense of humor
• Becoming rude and abusive
• Crave substances that the persons thinks will relax them, such as alcohol, tobacco, or drugs
• Speaking louder
• Screaming or crying.
Physical symptoms that can occur include:
•
• Grinding teeth
• Clenching the jaw
• Upset stomach
• Elevated heart rate
• Sweating
• Rapid, shallow breathing
• Hot flashes in the face or neck
• Trembling hands, lips or jaw
• Dizziness
• Tingling at the back of the neck.
If a person can recognize whether they are irritated, angry or furious, they can use anger management techniques to control the situation.
Anger plans
The next step is to devise an anger plan, which may include:
• Taking time out, to have space to reflect and calm down
• Changing the subject, if a particular conversation includes an anger trigger
• Using relaxation techniques
• Delaying a response, for example, by counting to ten.
This slows down the process, and allows time to recover a logical thinking pattern.
Keep an anger diary
Recording the feelings during an episode, and what happened before, during, and after may help a person to anticipate anger triggers, and to cope when episodes occur.
Understanding what happened, what worked and what did not work can help to achieve a more effective anger management plan.
It is important not to repress the anger, but to express it when the person has calmed down, in an assertive, non-aggressive way.
It is helpful to change such thoughts as "Everything's ruined" to, for example, "This is frustrating, but it is not the end of the world."
Words like "always" or "never" can make an angry person think there is no solution, and they can humiliate and alienate other people.
Regular exercise can regulate levels of adrenaline and cortisol levels, as well as increasing levels of endorphins, the natural feel-good hormones. You will also sleep better; a crucial factor for good mental health.
If a person is bothered by something, planning what to say beforehand can help prevent the conversation from getting sidetracked.
Focusing on the solution, not just the problem is more likely to resolve the issue.
Letting go of the resentment helps, because bearing a grudge fuels the anger and makes it harder to control. Other people are the way they are, and accepting this can help.
It is better to avoid harsh, sarcastic humor, but good humor can help to dissolve anger and resentment.
Timing is important. If evening discussions tend to turn into rows, possibly due to tiredness, change the times when you talk about important matters.
Anger can increase breathing and heart rates and tense up the muscles, but this can be reversed this by deliberately slowing the breathing and systematically relaxing and loosening the muscles.
Getting at least 7 hours of good quality sleep every night contributes to good mental and physical health. Sleep deprivation has been linked to a number of health problems, including anger.

Psychology Tools: What is Anger? A Secondary Emotion
MIND
Kim Pratt, LCSW
February 3, 2014
This post explains how anger is a secondary emotion. By understanding the roots of anger – that is, the primary emotions fueling it – people can more effectively address its underlying causes. This is an important first step in addressing anger management problems.
What is Anger?
Everybody feels anger at different times, to varying degrees. It’s simply part of the human experience. Feelings of anger can arise in many different contexts. Experiencing unjust treatment; hearing a criticism; or simply not getting what you want are but a few of the potential triggers. The experience of anger can range from mild irritation, to frustration, all the way up to seething rage. As a matter of fact, even boredom is a mild version of anger in the form of dissatisfaction with what is happening.
While feeling anger is a natural part of being human, it’s helpful to think about skillful ways to work with it that result in healthy living, rather than feelings of regret about what you said or did.
Why is anger good sometimes? Without feelings of anger, we wouldn’t take a stand against unfairness or injustice. Anger is an internal alarm that tells us something is not quite right. Unfortunately, however, far too often, the anger humans feel is being triggered by far less consequential factors than serious wrongdoing.
Anger is a Secondary Emotion
What many people don’t realize is that anger is a secondary emotion. What does this mean? Typically, one of the primary emotions, like fear or sadness, can be found underneath the anger. Fear includes things like anxiety and worry, and sadness comes from the experience of loss, disappointment or discouragement.
Feeling fear and sadness is quite uncomfortable for most people; it makes you feel vulnerable and oftentimes not in control. Because of this, people tend to avoid these feelings in any way they can. One way to do this is by subconsciously shifting into anger mode. In contrast to fear and sadness, anger can provide a surge of energy and make you feel more in charge, rather than feeling vulnerable or helpless. Essentially, anger can be a means of creating a sense of control and power in the face of vulnerability and uncertainty.
Let’s look at a few examples. When anger arises between couples sometimes there’s a fear of abandonment underneath. In these instances, it’s a combination of fear and anticipatory loss that can fuel the anger. Uncertainty – when you lack ample information and things feel amorphous – can also trigger anger. Why? Because uncertainty touches upon the “unknown,” which tends to be scary for most people. Even boredom can generate anger or irritation because there can be a subtle sense of loss or fear associated with the experience of not engaging in something stimulating or productive.
While having some “sense of control” is correlated with greater emotional wellbeing, excessive desire for control only leads to suffering, as it’s impossible to always be in control, especially of other people’s behavior.
How to Work with Anger
So, next time you’re feeling anger – whether mild or strong – pause for a moment to check in with yourself and see if you can identify the primary emotion driving the anger. If it’s hard to notice anything but the anger, start by exploring your thoughts, as those are what fuel all emotions. Keep in mind that the shift from a primary emotion like fear or sadness into anger mode is typically quite fast and unconscious. Feeling anger may be an ingrained habit for you, which means that it can take more time to identify the deeper thoughts and feelings that lie underneath.
By working with the fear, sadness, or both, you will develop more skillful ways of relating to your anger. For example, you may find that you have some unresolved grief. Or, you may notice that you feel scared about a certain outcome. That’s good data for you to work with, as it involves addressing a deeper need than the anger.
By identifying the primary emotion, you can more easily determine the best course of action to resolve your problem. For example, you can figure out whether another’s actions are truly unjust or simply a blow to your ego. Standing up for injustice, like protecting yourself or another from being taken advantage of or harmed, is rational. But, choosing to argue with somebody over something trivial is more about ego. Putting attention on the latter is a waste of energy that could be spent more wisely.
In summary, working with the underlying primary emotions is a way of decreasing habitual anger, cultivating more inner peace, and facilitating thoughtful action.



What is Anger?
Are you angry? What does your anger feel like? Are you in control of it, or do you allow it to control you?
Or perhaps, a better question: What is anger?
Anger, simply put, is an emotion. It is something we feel that can result from an experience we find ourselves in, just as we feel happy at times, or sad, or excited. But feelings don’t hurt others, behaviors do.
Our angry feelings belong to us, not another, and therefore only we can detect them before others take note of our resulting behaviors. And because they are ours, we can take ownership of them — choosing how and when to express them.
But even beneath this, we are not angry people — we only may feel angry at times. Surely we don’t feel angry all the time, but only during certain circumstances or after various experiences. And because we are not inheritably angry people, we can recover from the unhealthy, angry behaviors we express.
In life, there are two general possibilities for change: we can control the situations in which we find ourselves or we can control the person we choose to exhibit therein. Too often, we find ourselves within situations we cannot control.
Perhaps we hit a rusty nail on the highway, puncture our tire and have to wait for what seems to be hours until the mechanic comes. Or perhaps we confuse the dates of our child’s dentist appointment and schlep him or her all the way there only to find out that the appointment was actually yesterday.
We don’t plan to get a flat tire each time we take the highway. Nor do we plan to confuse dates each time we schedule an appointment. So, the other option left for us to control is how we act or don’t act within each of these situations (or any other situation in which we experience aggravation, frustration and the like).
I am a fan of attempting to alter our emotions through meditation, mindfulness, and other cognitive practices and rituals, but for most of us in society, hours upon hours of meditation doesn’t sit well when forming a treatment plan. So, if we’re not going to change our emotions in the immediate future, why even bother with anger management?
After all, anger is an emotion and management is an attempt to control that emotion. The two don’t seem to jive.
Perhaps we ought to shift the healing paradigm and focus more on behavior-management. We’re going to feel what we feel, regardless of the situations we find ourselves in, but we don’t necessarily also need to behave the way we do.
Emotions don’t abuse people, behaviors do. (Abuse can take many forms.) And even if we utilize therapysessions to try uncovering the root of our angry selves, we still haven’t solved the issue of its resulting abuse onto others in the present.
When clients tell me that they’re angry. I usually puzzle them by responding, “So what?” That doesn’t mean that I don’t think they are faced with a challenge they need to overcome, or that I don’t want to work with them at all. But rather, I’m more interested in exploring with them: “What behaviors did you use?”; “What choices did you make to take ownership of those behaviors?”; and “Why did you choose to behave differently now as opposed to when you were elsewhere?”
In shifting the focal point of our anger sessions from emotional to behavioral, we begin seeing how the issue isn’t wholly about their emotional anger, but more so that they acted on their anger in a distasteful way — usually distasteful to themselves (if they’re the one coming for help) or distasteful to others they have abused (whether minor or more severe types of abuse).
So, the next time you find yourself angry, instead of taking the time to analyze your anger, try looking at whether you’re standing up to the behaviors you wish others to see you display. If your soon-to-be behaviorsdon’t correspond with what you value, choose not to act — or act in a different way.
Your anger will come and it will pass, but the abusive behaviors you exhibit will leave much more lasting impressions on the other than your internal emotions. And internal emotions are OK; we can all find moments here and there to meditate and work on our character as we develop throughout the lifespan.