3 simple steps to control your anger before sh*t hits the fan
By Orit Krug | August 20th, 2019
“If ONE more person tells me to ‘just breathe’ when I’m angry, I’m going to f^&%ng punch someone in the face!”
Does this kind of inability to control your anger sound familiar?
Maybe it’s your partner who tells you to breathe or “relax” when you get mad and it makes you even more frustrated. If it was THAT easy, you would already be doing it, right?
The strategy I’m about to share with you is a game changer. Check it out:
You can read the steps below, but I encourage you to watch the video to see how it works.
1. Control your anger by visualizing it
Visualize your anger moving down your body as you feel your emotions bubbling up.
To help with visualizing your anger, you can put a color and motion on the emotion. So you can visualize a red heated energy rising up in your body. Or a black, thick heavy liquid that’s expanding from the center of your body, up to your chest and throat.
It doesn’t matter what the image is as long as you use your imagination. There’s no right or wrong, so don’t think about it too much.
This initial step helps you gain control early on as you grasp an image of anger in your mind’s eye and change the direction of the emotional energy.
2. Control your anger by using your feet
Once you’ve visualized your anger moving down your body, you can FEEL that same energy moving down your legs and reaching your feet.
As you feel your anger in your feet, connect to it by walking away and out of the room where you’re having a conflict or argument.
This helps you do something physically productive with your anger AND saves you from draining a lot of energy and feeling hurt. Because when you’re unable to control your anger in an argument, you’ll probably say things you’ll later regret and the fight escalates more than necessary. Therefore, it is BEST to walk away.
Now, a lot of people will challenge me at first and say “I can’t just walk away.” And I say, “Why not?” Why can’t you just walk away? Why can’t you be in your power instead and make that choice to step away? Because it’s going to be SO much worse and WAY more stressful on your emotions, your body, and your relationship if you keep trying to yell over each other.
So use your angry heated energy from your feet to walk out of the room, into a space where you feel more safe and have a fair chance at calming down. You and your partner can always resolve your issue later, when it’ll be MUCH more productive and easy.
3. Slow down your anger and let it dissolve
Once you charge into a private space, gently slow down your pace. People will often get to this step and completely stop as they collapse onto a bed (freeze) or ramp up their energy by throwing things or yelling into a pillow (fight) to “release” their anger.
Going into a fight, flight, or freeze response at this step defeats the purpose of steps 1 and 2 because these impulsive nervous system reactions take over your brain and body and kick you out of control anyway.
So as you enter this new room, use your angry energy to keep walking through the room. Then, slow down your pace VERY gradually. Picture yourself driving a car and then taking your foot off the gas pedal until the car completely stops. Your body is like the vehicle that reaches zero miles per hour without ever touching the brakes.
This strategy prevents you from forcing yourself to shut off or exacerbate your very real feelings of anger in your body. With the gradual deceleration, you allow yourself to feel ALL the spaces in between, from getting to really, really angry to finally feeling calm. You don’t fake feeling calm – you allow yourself to fully move through the emotion so that you can truly dissolve it.
Uncontrollable anger usually stems from unresolved trauma trapped in the body.
You can use this anger exercise as a coping skill, which may help you stop an outburst before it happens.
However, if you are constantly irritable, frustrated, and feeling the urge to snap– then you probably have unresolved trauma lingering in your body and nervous system.
You’ll need to rewire your nervous system and release trauma from your body in order to reach a new baseline of calm and compassionate in your relationships, instead of anxious and resentful.
Get on the right path to healing trauma from your body and nervous system.
Many people spend decades and thousands of dollars in traditional therapies trying to heal their trauma. Unfortunately, even the most popular therapies are scientifically shown to be limited in accessing trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body.
Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal from the physical body or the nervous system.
This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for so many people. They often blame themselves for being “un-healable” and decide that they’re broken.
This is NOT true!
Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing from the past, because we all have wiring and neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection, to love and openness.
My unique, scientific-backed process via Dance Therapy has helped hundreds of clients finally heal from past trauma and transform their relationship (even after decades of trying in other therapies).
You can heal too, but you need the right methodology.
Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:
- Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
- Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
- An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.
