Activity . Do not ascribe intentions and ulterior motives to others. Resist having irrational beliefs about people and events. Try to find constructive ways of expressing your anger.
Have control on the degree and duration of anger that you choose to express. Look inward not outward for anger control. Give yourself time to change. It takes time and effort to change a habit.
E NHANCING P OSITIVE E MOTIONS Our emotions have a purpose. They help us adapt to the ever-changing environment and are important for our survival and well-being. Negative emotions like fear, anger or disgust prepare us mentally and physically for taking immediate action towards the stimulus that is threatening. For example, if there was no fear we would have caught a poisonous snake in our hand.
Though negative emotions protect us in such situations but excessive or inappropriate use of these emotions can become life threatening to us, as it can harm our immune system and have serious consequences for our health. Positive emotions such as hope, joy, optimism, contentment, and gratitude energise us and enhance our sense of Managing your Anger Anger is a negative emotion. It carries the mind away or in other words, the person looses control on behavioural functions during the state of anger. The major source of anger is the frustration of motives.
However, anger is not a reflex, rather it is a result of our thinking. Neither is it automatic nor uncontrollable and caused by others but it is a self-induced choice that the individual makes. Anger is a result of your thinking and hence is controllable by your own thoughts only. Certain key points in anger management are as follows: Recognise the power of your thoughts.
Realise you alone can control it. Do not engage in ‘self-talk that burns’. Do not magnify negative feelings. Expressions of emotion depend on regulation of emotion for self or others.
Persons who are capable of having awareness of emotions for self or others and regulate accordingly are called emotionally intelligent. Persons who fail to do so, deviate and thereby develop abreaction of emotion, resulting in psychopathology of certain kinds. By emotional intelligence, we understand ‘the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s emotions, to discriminate among them and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions’ (Mayer & Salovey, ). The concept .