Anger Management: Appropriate Control - Essay Example

The first technique is a short-term method designed to diffuse a specific situation, and the others are more enduring approaches to modify habitual outbursts and prevent long-term emotional damage. Through a combination of location change, emotional validation and desensitization, as well as employing the principles of forgiveness and release, you can control your anger and ultimately resolve it constructively. The first and most obvious anger management tool is to escape the immediate environment.

When confronted with a situation that incurs passionate, negative, or violent responses, you should simply leave. This method is used to ensure the safety of all persons involved. As Fein points out, "[a]nger should not be ventilated indiscriminately, lest it create pain either for the person who expresses it or for those at whom it is aimed" (Fein 12). The fastest way to diffuse an intense situation is to depart. Whether the incident occurs in a home between spouses or at a bar between patrons, if you act out on angry emotions in the heat of the moment, you are at risk of facing severely negative consequences. . Once the situation has been diffused by a change of environment, take the opportunity to analyze the facts and feelings involved.

Your anger can be validated as authentic or justified, and then constructively addressed by identifying ways to desensitize yourself and your responses. For example, in the case of road rage, it would be improper (and illegal) to stop the car and physically attack the person who cut you off in traffic. Rather, after arriving at your destination, validate the emotion by realizing that it was careless, wrong, or even stupid for him to have done that. You have the right to be angry about it.

Then, a strategy of desensitizing yourself to that particular situation can be employed. Remind yourself that people can be careless drivers. Remember that when you are on the road, you are likely to encounter this behavior and mentally prepare for it. Decide, before you get into the vehicle, that you are not going to allow yourself to get angry at any other drivers on the road. As you have opportunity to encounter rude drivers over the course of your trip, remind yourself of your decision.

This framework will provide a gradual desensitization to the problem, and reinforce positive decisions. Finally, you should recognize the need for forgiveness and release. Holding on to the anger is psychologically destructive to you, and accomplishes no helpful purpose. Make another positive decision to forgive the individual, and release the event from your thought processes. These are calculated tactics to prevent the anger from resurfacing at every remembrance of the event. One of the most damaging things you can do to yourself is to obsessively reenact the situation that provoked you and allow those thoughts to continually