17 Anger Management Techniques for stressful Occupations
Remaining calm: it’s the hardest part of the job.
Whether it’s a drunken student biting off more than he can chew, or a genuine threat to your safety, security staff are regularly placed in precarious situations that would challenge almost anybody to stay in control.
That’s why these 17 tips are so important. May they help you in your career, as well as your day-to-day life.
Contents
1. Start off with Keeping Your Cool
2. The Best Methods to Maintaining your Composure
3. Think Before you Speak
4. The Power of Using ‘I’ Statements
5. Practice Your Listening Skills
6. Why Patience is a Virtue
7. Know the Difference Between Anger and Aggression
8. How to Control your Temper
9. Understanding How to Manage Stress
10. Recognising the Signs of Anger
11. How to Identify Internal & External Triggers
12. How You Can Use Humour as a Tool
13. Put Yourself in Their Shoes
14. How to Deal with Angry People Efficiently & Effectively
15. How Stimulating your Vagus Nerve will Help you Relax
16. A Breakdown of Other Techniques
17. Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help
1. Start off with Keeping Your Cool
Thomas Jefferson famously said, “Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances.” – and he was right. After all, you don’t get to be the President of the United States by angrily overreacting to every little thing you don’t like or can’t control.
…Or maybe you do (Touchè, modern world).
Anyway, we all have our boiling point, but a good way to cool off is to focus on the positive things in your life, instead of caving in to the negative or getting as hot as your heated jacket, As the saying goes, positivity is a habit that becomes a lifestyle.
If you can relate to the stress-inducing circumstances of your day as simply a minor part of an otherwise good life, you’ll be amazed at how high your tolerance levels can become.
Remember, you’re above all this. The person in front of you may be angry, but you don’t have to share that feeling or join their argument.
You’re a professional doing your job. View their problems from a distance and deal with them in a calm, responsible manner.,
2. The Best Methods to Maintaining your Composure
Maintaining composure is a skill like any other – and, as such, it can be learned, even mastered, by anyone.
The trick is not to let yourself crack, and if you do start to crack, to not let the other person see it. Now is the time to work on that poker face.
Here are a few other ways you can stay cool, calm and collected.
Don’t take things personally
The person insulting you doesn’t know who you are or care anything about you. They are trying to make things personal, but they can only do this if you allow them to.
Do not give in to fear
Have faith in your training, your colleagues and, above all, yourself. Trust that the situation will be resolved soon and don’t let doubts and anxieties sway you from that belief.
Speak clearly and act decisively
Commit to a course of action and make good on any punitive measures you’ve threatened. Remain dispassionate and analytical. Such actions are the essence of composure.
3. Think Before you Speak
Words are powerful things; they shape our reality and sculpt our self-image. The right words can enhance the majesty of great moments (“I have a dream”, “that’s one small step for man” etc) and the wrong words can wreak absolute havoc on a person’s life.
Using factual, polite and non-inflammatory statements can help to diffuse a situation, as can the subtle replacement of accusations with questions.
Your words will help to determine what a person thinks of you, so if you speak clearly and ask questions, you can often find a peaceful resolution to a potentially explosive situation.
But be aware there are CCTV and home based Cameras everywhere, so your actions are always be viewed and recorded.
4. The Power of Using ‘I’ Statements
An ‘I’ statement is a way of communicating the frustration you feel towards a person or situation without necessarily forcing blame upon them.
Using a ‘you’ statement might be something like, “you’ve ruined the roast. Look at it, you’ve burned it to a bloody crisp!”
Whereas an ‘I’ statement might be more along the lines of, “I’m really frustrated that the roast is ruined. I was looking forward to eating that”
One statement focuses the ire and blame upon the person who burned the roast, while the other acknowledges the anger without aiming it at anyone in particular.
Correct use of ‘I’ statements can really help to soothe a tense situation…But, sadly it won’t save a burnt roast.
5. Practice Your Listening Skills
The person before you is angry, but do you know why? What caused them to behave in this manner?
Even if their behaviour is alcohol or drug related, it does not necessarily follow that alcohol or drugs have caused their feelings. In most cases, such substances are mood enhancers, meaning that the anger was already there, just below the surface.
This is where your listening skills come into play.
Your feelings of anger are most likely normal and probably reasonable enough, but this does not necessarily validate a decision to react aggressively towards others.
As Dr. Martin Luther King once wrote,
“We must not think in terms of retaliatory violence. Violence creates many more problems than it solves”
6. Why Patience is a Virtue
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In most cases, you don’t need to respond to a situation right away. You can take a little time and evaluate that situation from a slight distance.
Often, our first reaction to a problem is an emotional one, but emotional solutions rarely solve problems. What is required is clear, balanced thought.
Take a second, breathe deeply and try to imagine any negative emotions leaving your body as you exhale.
Practice patience every day. You can do this by reading more (especially older or longer books), planting something to watch it grow, cooking from scratch, collecting something one piece at a time, building models, or finding a creative hobby such as drawing, painting or learning to play a musical instrument.
Any or all of these activities will help you to become a more patient person.
7. Know the Difference Between Anger and Aggression
Anger is a feeling, an emotional reaction to particular stimuli, whereas aggression is a course of action brought about by that feeling.
Being angry once in a while is a normal and unavoidable part of the human condition. Aggression, on the other hand, is a decision.
Although aggression can take many forms, it is most often a conscious course of action taken as a result of anger. The most extreme form of reactive aggression is violence.
So if a person insults you, the feeling of anger that arises from it is more or less automatic, but the decision to retaliate in some way is an act of aggression, get it?
This is where the term ‘anger management’ comes into play, because if you know how to adequately deal with your feelings of anger, then you are far less likely to respond aggressively to people or situations that make you angry.
Your feelings of anger are most likely normal and probably reasonable enough, but this does not necessarily validate a decision to react aggressively towards others.
As Dr. Martin Luther King once wrote,
“We must not think in terms of retaliatory violence. Violence creates many more problems than it solves”
8. How to Control your Temper
Pop psychology is everywhere these days. You know that episode of whatever where one character hit out at another character because so-and-so died or such-and-such left them or he-or-she lied? Yeah, like that.
The reason these well-worn stories have never gone away is because they almost always ring true. Everybody is dealing with something, even (or perhaps especially) if they don’t feel like they are.
We have all lost our temper at some point, haven’t we? In that white hot, rage-filled moment, we felt justified; maybe we still do, even in hindsight, and if you’re lucky it wasn’t caught on camera.
The skill you need to develop is to keep your cool and not rise to provocation when it is offered.
Breathing exercises work. Counting to 10 under your breath works. Meditation works. All you have to do is want them to work and work at making them work.
Losing your temper and lashing out is the easy solution – and, in the moment, it feels good, but the long-term ramifications for such rash action could be (and often are) dire.
There are many options available for keeping your temper under control; take your pick.
9. Understanding How to Manage Stress
The word ‘stress’ describes a feeling of being under pressure. It can be caused by any number of things, from oncoming deadlines and financial concerns, to relationship issues and bereavement. It often has a cumulative effect, as stresses from one area of your life appear to ‘pile up’ and combine with pressure from other areas.
If it isn’t properly dealt with, stress can lead to all manner of debilitating physical and psychological disorders.
Some signs of stress include,
The key to understanding stress in others is to recognise it in yourself.
Firstly, you need to understand the things that are causing you stress. You may not be able to do anything about them, but you can at least acknowledge them and the effect they have on you.
Next, you can sort these worries into three categories; things you can fix, things that will solve themselves naturally over time and things that you have no control over (and therefore cannot change).
Try to focus on solving the first set, waiting out the second set and not worrying so much about the third.
Once you understand how to relieve your own stress, you can begin to help others do likewise.
10. Recognising the Signs of Anger
It is very important that you recognise when you are angry. This sounds a bit obvious, but very often people are unaware of the true depth of their feelings.
A lot of people simply pretend that they aren’t angry, or else displace themselves from the causes of their anger.
Anger can be subtle and quietly influential. It isn’t always expressed by shouting, violence or antisocial behaviour; anger can find expression in numerous other ways.
If you are angry, you may find yourself clenching your teeth, suddenly suffering from a headache, or experiencing a stomach ache or muscle tension.
You may end up shaking or trembling, feeling sick or desperately wanting to get away from the person or situation that’s bothering you.
Emotionally, you could become irritated, depressed, guilty, resentful, anxious or even afraid.
Recognise these signs, know yourself and when you’re about to lose your temper, then look out for those signs in others. It can be, quite literally, a lifesaver.
11. How to Identify Internal & External Triggers
Obviously, you also need to understand what makes you angry.
You might believe that it’s that mountain of bills that made you angry, that fire in the corner that needs to be put out, or your team’s less-than-stellar performance in Saturday’s big game, the truth is that when we’re happy and things are going well, we don’t really focus on those things that irritate us. Instead, we tend to let them go.
Other (often quite complicated) emotions can be brought to the surface by certain stimuli. For example, feelings of guilt, frustration or failure can arise when you confront your monthly bills, but those emotions can all subsequently find release as anger or aggression.
However, once you understand that there’s more to your anger than simply the trigger, you’re already halfway home.
External triggers could be things like:
- Being disrespected by someone in public.
- Losing money (or spending too much).
- Getting stuck in traffic.
- Queuing (no matter how much you remind yourself that it’s Britain’s national sport).
- Difficult co-worker(s).
- Being accused of things you didn’t do and etc.
These things raise feelings inside you that either make you angry directly, or else find their release as anger about something else.
Internal triggers could be things like:
- Not getting enough sleep.
- Feeling hungry (hence the term ‘hangry’).
- Dehydration
- Personal issues unrelated to the issue you’re facing.
- Past trauma.
- Desire for sex (and the various social issues/stigmas that often come with that).
- Negative emotions (such as anxiety or depression).
- Worrying about what other people think (or don’t think) about you.
Ultimately, these internal triggers are usually thought based – and, with dedication and self-discipline thoughts can be controlled.
Identifying the triggers that ‘set you off’ as it were is an important step on the road to emotional wellbeing.
For advice, we recommend identifying these triggers and what makes them…trig. Understand what they are and why they exist. This may be painful at first, but it will likely offer a small amount of release then and there, which should be enough to let you know you’re on the right path.
Remember also that your thoughts are just thoughts, they can’t hurt anybody and nobody besides you is aware of them. The flip side of this is that you don’t know what others are thinking, either, so don’t assume you do.
Keep in mind that conversation, NOT telepathy, is key if you wish to resolve an issue.
If you have a persistent, disturbing or