I've been so angry lately, how do I cool down?

October 30, 2016 6:14 PM

I wouldn't normally think of myself as an angry person or a person with a big temper, but lately my temper has been out of control. I can't act like this anymore, it's completely unacceptable... how exactly do I calm down?

I guess my anger is probably due to grief or something, I don't know. Just stress in general I guess. I'm sort of dissatisfied with a few things about my life and on top of that one of my parents has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer, so who knows how much time is left.

For the past few months I've had this rage simmering under the surface, I guess I'm just angry about everything. I get upset over such minor things and I lash out at people for doing things I perceive as stupid or illogical. I used to just go with the flow and not really care about things so much, but it feels like *everything* has been bothering me lately. I KNOW the way I'm acting is foolish and immature and awful, but I just don't know HOW to control this underlying anger that's ready to lash out at anytime. Tonight I got sooo angry about something so minor that I ended up throwing my phone against a wall, which subsequently broke it. Obviously, now, I regret that, but in the moment I just... couldn't stop myself. I don't seem to have the ability to catch myself before I lash out like that. I can't go on being so angry about everything and do destructive things and lash out at people.

What the hell can I do to calm the fuck down? I've been seeing a therapist about everything, so I will definitely mention this to her when I see her next.

posted by modesty.blaise to Health & Fitness (25 answers total)

Anger is definitely a symptom of grief.

It often helps to be gentle with yourself, including not getting angry about getting angry. Following general stress-relieving tips can also help -- e.g., get enough sleep, limit caffeine, limit stress as much as possible, eat healthy foods, exercise regularly. It's great that you have a therapist. Reaching out to supportive friends and journaling can also be helpful. Meditation, yoga, tai chi, or another breath-based practice can sometimes help quiet the emotional storm, too.

I like to think of it as figuring out how to turn the burner down under the boiling tea kettle, rather than trying to catch the steam once it's whistling through the spout.
posted by lazuli at 6:30 PM on October 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

Are you getting daily exercise? 45 to 60 minutes of aerobic exercise first thing in the morning before work helps a lot. I walk, it's kind of a meditation a lot of the time: I look at the trees, listen to the birds. Other times it's more clearly de-stressing, I bitch and moan, make up things I want to say to people I'm pissed off at. I feel cranky on the rare days when I don't walk.

How much coffee are you drinking? If you're drinking more than a couple of cups a day try to cut down.
posted by mareli at 6:32 PM on October 30, 2016

(To clarify: Anger can arise from all sorts of places, and certainly doesn't always indicate grief. But if you're dealing with grief, anger is a normal part of the range of responses.)
posted by lazuli at 6:32 PM on October 30, 2016

I get very irritable sometimes when I'm feeling down about my own situation in life.

I find that trying to just calm myself down and tell myself it isn't a big deal usually doesn't help much, because then I just end up getting frustrated that my anger doesn't have an outlet.

So humor helps a lot. Instead of just trying to... force the anger to dissipate into nothing, just transform it into laughter. Watching part of a sitcom that I like often helps for me.
posted by mekily at 6:33 PM on October 30, 2016

Sleep, nutrition, exercise, meditation, relaxation, yoga... Seeing a therapist wouldn't hurt, either.

Is there a pattern to what sets you off? Or do you just randomly get pissed? If there is, avoiding those triggers would be a good start.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:37 PM on October 30, 2016

For me, general agitation, irritability, and being quick to hit high levels of anger, is/was a major symptom of anxiety and depression. Honestly, the only thing in my entire life that has ever helped has been medication, which I sincerely regret waiting until my late 30s to try.
posted by erst at 6:39 PM on October 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

I talked to a counselor about this too, as I am not an angry person, but I had a period in which I felt angry at just about everything. His opinion was that everyone has their breaking point, and it just so happened that my life had gotten unmanageable such that it brought me to the edge of frustration, and I felt angry a lot. (For me, it was due to a stressful time in general, including an upcoming surgery, and then my family taking an unruly pet into a small living environment.)

He told me a story about a friend of his who was in unresolved pain most of the time, and everyone perceived him as being a very angry person. He found relief for his pain, and this one issue changed everyone's perception of him. Point being, we don't have to be an "angry person" to have life circumstances deal us a hand in which we feel frustrated and angry.

I wish this was a story that had a definite a resolution for you, and it might be that counseling advice will be pretty helpful (it sounds like you are going through some tough things). At the very least, just know that you are alone, and there's nothing wrong with you for having limits. Sometimes just knowing this, and having someone to talk to and affirm this as well, can be a comforting thing. It was for me when I talked to my therapist about it. I thought it was a moral issue and I had a major character flaw, but found out that it's more about being human with limitations than anything else.
posted by SpacemanStix at 6:41 PM on October 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Another mefite gave me this tip when i was going through grief after my father died and felt irrationally angry at EVERYTHING. Carry a smooth stone or other similar object in your pocket at all times. When you start to feel angry or tense put your hand in your pocket and rub the stone. Force yourself to think about the feeling of the stone in your hand. If you're able to (ie you are in a place it is possible) also take the time to close your eyes and listen to the sounds going on around you. Get out of your head so to speak and immerse yourself in the sensations around you. What do you hear? What do you smell? Open your eyes and what do you see?

This centering exercise saved me countless episodes of melting down in public during that very difficult time. It works, it really works.
posted by TestamentToGrace at 7:23 PM on October 30, 2016 [27 favorites]

I don't know your gender, but in addition to grief or other life stresses, hormones can cause this kind of thing. They did for me, both in the form of birth control pills and my own hormones as I got into my 40s and became perimenopausal. I've also experienced it when on steroids, and recently went off a medication because it made me so twitchy and irritable. It might be worth looking into possible physical causes as well as psychological ones.
posted by Orlop at 7:31 PM on October 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

So much of this can be chemical.

I find that during periods of external stress, I need to eliminate caffeine (even though on during normal times, I drink plenty of coffee and eat chocolate and don't even feel it.) When my baseline stress is higher I need to be very careful with additional stimulants.

If you aren't taking in stimulants, then consider an anti anxiety medication. (Ask your doctor, but know that some anti-depressants can stimulate hellacious anger. When I tried Celexa when I was feeling sad, it sent me into near-homicidal rage.)

Also, high intensity exercise helps a lot (like, run til you are gasping.)
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:45 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I KNOW the way I'm acting is foolish and immature and awful

Step one is to give yourself a break. You are not foolish and immature; the effects of your anger may not be terrific, but that still doesn't make you a bad person.

Grief, stress, and helplessness are a pretty great direct path to rage, and it's not irrational. The year in which my dad died, my lover broke up with me, and my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer (I was her sole caretaker for those six months) - well, I'm pretty sure it was only exhaustion that kept me from doing something that might've gotten me locked up.

So, give yourself permission to have the feelings (that does not mean you have to act on them): they are totally legit and understandable. Make a space in your life to deal with them: in therapy; in a support group; or even just a daily(ish) punching of pillows while crying (this was pretty much what I did when I Just Could Not for one more second). The pillow-punching really helped, actually. I felt a little silly doing it, but it totally wore me out and took the edge off.

Try to keep your sleep schedule regular. Get some exercise. Eat as well as you can, but don't deny yourself the occasional cupcake/bunch of candy/fried chicken/booze. Really important: Tell your friends that you are going through as shit time and do your best to let them help you (this can be really hard, I know). Some of them will be clumsy with it, and some may disappear for a bit. Let them go for now, and let the helpful friends help.

I'm sorry you're going through this. You are not a bad person, nor are you behaving irrationally.
posted by rtha at 7:51 PM on October 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

I found tai chi to be a very powerful tool to reduce my own anger. As you move, all you can think about is the movement, and you find all the energy expended on anger flows into that movement (I don't mean that in a mystic-woo-woo way, just that the focus required to do the thing is pretty intense!)

For a variety of reasons I had to drop out of my regular class, but I still try and move, and I have recently been trying a sitting meditation, too: the advantage of a really good sit is you can do it pretty much anywhere, and it doesn't require anything more than sitting and not dwelling on the negative and angry thoughts. When they arise, set them aside.

You can't sit wrong, see? You just... sit. Anything that isn't sitting, you can just mentally say "That's not for now. I am sitting now."

In addition to TestamentToGrace's comment above, kombolói or 'Greek worry beads' can be a soothing touch-toy.

Things in your life sound very difficult, and as others have said, being angry and full of grief is actually the natural and even correct reaction: you don't know you hurt unless you hurt. So give yourself permission to feel grief-ful and sad, because that's OK. What you can give yourself is acceptance, and space, and time to comprehend and deal with these things. We spend a lot of time avoiding and hiding from negative feelings, but learning to recognise the feelings that are destructive or unhelpful and seeing their cause and their effect in ourselves can be really helpful.

It's a good step to see a therapist, and you should absolutely talk to them about this. Talk to them about crisis support services in your area, too - there's certain to be a phone number you can call when it gets overwhelming and you are worried about the extremity of your feelings. Don't think that you have to be 'strong' and deny, hide or avoid negative feelings.
posted by prismatic7 at 8:21 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

This was totally my situation after my dad was diagnosed with cancer and again after he died, I was constantly conscious of this rage simmering just beneath the surface and the slightest thing could set me off. It's good you're seeing a therapist. If you can allocate one afternoon a week to you-time and doing things only for you, during which the phone is off and you don't have to speak to anyone if you don't want to, or do things you don't want to, that may help. I am a regular exerciser but didn't notice any great improvements in mood during those difficult times as a result, although maybe it stopped it from getting worse, who knows?

I think we worry too much about fixing things, when actually anger in the face of grief and stress is very natural and doesn't need, perhaps, to be fixed. This is very natural. You're very normal. Just accepting that this is the way you're feeling, and owning it, may help. Also, if you've gotta destroy something, an inanimate object is the way to go!
posted by Ziggy500 at 3:45 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry things are so tough right now.

One thing that might help you debug things a bit is to think about anger as having a protective aspect to it. It's the spiny, hard shell that covers the tender stuff inside. It gives you energy and momentum to change things that need to be changed. Anger can be problematic if channeled in unproductive ways, but it's an adaptive response to being emotionally overwhelmed for a reason. It's like the emotional equivalent of the reflex that yanks your hand away when you're getting burned on a hot stove, that flare up of protective action that's so fast and so consuming that it blocks out your attention to anything else--which is sometimes such a huge relief, to have all the other painful stuff blocked out, when anger takes over your focus.

I think this reframe can be helpful in a few ways. One, to keep yourself from judging yourself too harshly. You're human and this is part of how you're wired to cope. Two, to take your anger as a signal that the very tender, vulnerable parts of yourself need care and nurturing. It sounds like you have some of those support mechanisms in place--maybe getting some more really tender care from a trusted friend or a support group would be good. Three, find something else that grabs all your attention and just crowds out the rest of the world, and get breathing room from your stress in other ways than anger. If you can lose yourself in something else, hopefully something healthier than booze, then find space to get that distraction into your life. Dumb movies? Exercising to exhaustion? Throwing pottery on the wheel?

Take care. One day at a time...
posted by Sublimity at 4:36 AM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's been mentioned above, but are you getting enough sleep? Lack of sleep and poor quality sleep can cause/contribute to mood swings and anger. Try making getting good sleep, both in quantity and quality, a priority. Hope you feel better soon.
posted by fourpotatoes at 4:48 AM on October 31, 2016

Vitamin D deficiency is what caused this kind of behavior for me. You can get a prescription from your doctor for 10000 (or thereabouts) recommended daily dose. Maybe it was a placebo effect, but I remember feeling calmer and thinking more clearly pretty much immediately.
posted by Dotty at 7:12 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Anger is definitely a symptom of grief.

Anger can also be a symptom of feeling a lack of control about things, and a parent with an incurable cancer can be part of this. People can have a difficult time finding useful outlets when they are busy supporting another person, especially someone who is close who may have been supportive to you when you were having bad feelings, and this is challenging.

I am a very angry person. I have limited control over this. However, I've had a lot of luck detatching my angry feelings from angry actions which I have significantly more control over. Once I'm not stuck in a shame spiral (I totally know the feeling of sitting there with a broken phone/whatever and being like 'man I am losing it') it's easier to then get some space to work on angry feelings.

So, people have given you good advice. This is what works for me.

- Trying to work on stress generally. This means all the normal things--getting sleep, limiting caffeine, getting exercise, getting sunshine, eating decently--but also being kind to yourself as you do this because it's a process and will take a while. I got good results from Vitamin D as well.
- along those lines, having some pep talk phrases "Wow I am really angry right now, I'm going to count to ten" "If I am having this angry thought right now I should take special care not to yell at my partner/kick the dog, act impulsively..."
- do the things that bring you comfort even if right now they are not giving you comfort. Pet a cat, go for a walk, read a book you like, etc. Don't hide from the world but do pleasure-seeking activities even if they seem like they're not "working
- likewise try to be around people, even in small doses because that can help adjust us to act 'normally' and work on anger impulses, obviously don't do this if you think you can't be decent around people
- meditation helped me with this acting/feeling detachment. Just training my mind to see/notice feelings without having to be beholden to them was really useful. Might be worth a shot. Even a simple "take four deep breaths and count to ten before you throw the phone" might help you find some space.

My therapist suggested that some people (men usually but doesn't have to be men) can act this way when they are grappling with depression, sometimes situational depression. So even though it feels like anger, it may be sort of the outward manifestation of something that has another cause/root. Best of luck working through this.
posted by jessamyn at 7:38 AM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sublimity makes some great points above re: anger and its protective aspects. When I spoke with a therapist about this issue for myself, she helped me reframe away from calling certain emotions negative and others positive, which helped me give myself a break - I was super fucking angry and then I was ashamed of it, which was a great spiral of crappyness that didn't help me at all. Secondly, when you start to feel that anger -- which for me was this like, white hot, crazy need to just fucking DO SOMETHING - try to walk it back and think about what other choices you could make. Envision other reactions to that situation -- even if they are ridiculous -- and consider whether you will get the outcome you want. The fact that you CAN choose is really the point of this -- you are in charge of your emotions, they are not in charge of you.

Give yourself a little break. It's okay. Sometimes life is really crap and hard.
posted by Medieval Maven at 7:47 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm so sorry for what you're going through, and glad to hear that you have a therapist.

When I've gone through periods of anger, it's been good for me to have a physical outlet, like long bouts of heavy housecleaning or yard work. It has the physical and mental benefits of exercise, with the additional boost that I feel like I'm actually accomplishing something rather than just making repetitive motions while my mind wanders. (It feels even better if I can manage to throw a bunch of old junk away in the process.) Long, rambling walks by myself in the woods are good, as are long, hot, scrubby showers. Cussing up a blue streak when nobody's around to hear sometimes takes the pressure off. Watching the funniest movies I can think of is a good distraction; so is writing about how horrible I feel in minute, curmudgeonly detail.

Here's hoping things turn around for you soon.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:49 AM on October 31, 2016

Anger as a coping mechanism for grief is very common. If you have any hobbies, now is the time to throw yourself into them. Exercise is great too, but if you're not someone who enjoys the gym at the best of times (I certainly don't), then don't start throwing yourself into things you don't really like because, from personal experience, that can make you feel more frustrated.

I'm sort of dissatisfied with a few things about my life
I can only give general advice here because I don't know what these things dissatisfying you are, but if they are things that you can change, change them.
posted by Lewnatic at 8:51 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Meditation can help you sit with difficult emotions and have them move through you, rather than controlling you.

I've found Headspace super helpful in developing a meditation habit, where before Headspace, I didn't really understand in a very literal sense, how to do it.

There's a 10 day free trial, and I have a coupon code for 30 days if you do the first 10 and find you want more. Just memail me.
posted by spindrifter at 9:40 AM on October 31, 2016

Oops, maybe exercise is not a great idea.
posted by mareli at 10:15 AM on October 31, 2016

non-paywalled article.

“This research suggests that emotional upset and excessive physical exertion can be triggers for a heart attack. Whilst this is interesting these are not the underlying causes.

“Heart attacks are mainly caused by atherosclerosis, the buildup of fatty plaque in the arteries. When plaque breaks off, a blood clot forms leading to a heart attack.

“That’s why it’s important people know their heart attack risk and take steps to reduce their risk, by quitting smoking, keeping physically active and maintaining a healthy weight.”

So assess your own health limits before exerting yourself to calm down. I am a small healthy person and exercise is absolutely a lifesaver for me.
posted by jessamyn at 11:07 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thank you for asking this question. I am in a similar predicament, due to different triggers, and much of my daydreaming is a kind of self-examination to pinpoint the source(s) of my rage.

This is purely anecdotal, although I have read articles on the physical manifestation of anger. My grandmother and her sister are 89 and 88 years old, respectively. They had a rough childhood - being orphaned, civil war turning them into refugees that lost everything, and they're now widows. My grams has an intense, depressive personality. I remember her throwing tantrums, threatening suicide in attempts to manipulate her family, meting out unnecessary punishment to her grandkids. She's managed to alienate pretty much everyone in her immediate family. Mental illness is a relatively new diagnosis, so she was never actually treated for anything, but she was and is a very, very angry person. Her sister, on the other hand, has a more cheerful, laid-back personality that's allowed her to take life in stride, enjoy her kids and grandkids, and just be a generally happier person.

Their health, now as octogenarians, couldn't be more different. My grams is terminally ill, and she has had severe health issues for the last two decades. My great-aunt is in great health for her age, and her most severe complaint is the occasional bout of arthritis.

I'm a scientist and I don't believe in woo/ conjecture. However, I strongly suspect that anger, and associated emotions, can break your body down in ways that can be truly painful down the line. If nothing else, remember that your body is valuable, you are valuable, and the anger that engulfs you isn't worth the price of a long, healthy life. This is a thought that has helped me calm down my fury at times when I want to scream at someone for a minor mistake. I hope it helps you too.
posted by Everydayville at 2:08 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

My therapist pointed out to me recently that anger is often a symptom of feeling out of control. I raged about various trivial things in response to feeling out of control about important things. Grief around a parent sick or dying is absolutely a thing you can't control.
posted by bendy at 5:35 PM on October 31, 2016