What Triggers Anger and How Can You Control It?

Anger is a natural human emotion that is marked by hostility towards someone or something that you feel has done something wrong to you intentionally.

Anger is a strong emotion and is needed to a certain degree for our survival. This is because when under its grip, our body goes through both physiological and biological changes that help us to protect ourselves from physical threats.

For instance, some of the physiological changes include racing heart-beat, sweating, tensed muscles, increased blood pressure levels, etc. Likewise, your body goes through biological changes like the release of hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline that boost your energy levels and put you in fight or flight mode.

That is, you react by either running away or fighting back for your survival. Now, as said earlier, some amount of anger is good and necessary for surviving. However, it becomes problematic when it turns into chronic anger.

What Causes Anger?

Different things cause anger in different people. You can get angry as a result of your expectations not being met, you being unable to achieve your target, or your needs not being met.

This is similar to what Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., and author of one of the best anger management books ‘The Dance of Anger” writes.

In this book, she clarifies how anger is an indication that something is off-balance in your life. For instance, your rights may not be protected, or you may be the one who is compromising or adjusting way beyond your potentiality in your relationship, or that people are trying to overprotect you and do too much for you which is hampering your personal growth.

Also, how easily one gets angry varies from individual to individual. That is, some people might easily get triggered as compared to others and may lose their temper.

Still, there are some common triggers of anger.

1. Stress Causes Anger

Stress is one of the major factors that make you angry. Stress makes you feel frustrated and anxious as things seem to go out of your control or you are unable to achieve what you want to.

You get disappointed when your expectations are not fulfilled or are unable to achieve your personal or professional goals. Likewise, fear resulting from the threat of being hurt, physically or verbally, can make you feel stressed out and leave you irritated. Also, you feel discontented when someone hurts, offends, or rejects you which brings stress followed by anger.

Thus, various stressors of life like family issues, relationship problems, financial challenges, etc have the potential to leave you angry and irritated and put you in reactionary mode.

 2. Various Mental Disorders Trigger Anger

Anger is emotion when left unregulated becomes problematic. However, it is not a mental condition in itself. But, anger can be an indication of an underlying mental health issue.

Thus, some of the mental disorders that can be the cause of your anger include:

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

OCD is one of the types of anxiety disorders marked by compulsive and obsessive behavioral patterns. A person with OCD has the unnecessary urge to do things repeatedly. For example, they may tap a surface a particular number of times because of the underlying unreasonable belief that something unfortunate may happen if they don’t perform such a ritual.

Such compulsive behaviors or others preventing you from performing such repetitive behaviors may cause frustration and make you angry. As per research, anger is taken as one of the symptoms of OCD.

Depression

If you get angry easily, chances are that you may be experiencing depression. Depression is a mental condition that brings loss of hope and interest in life.

Anger may be an indication of this mental condition as it is marked by hopelessness, loss of interest in activities, sadness, and melancholy.

However, apart from anger, other symptoms like suicidal thoughts, irritation, hopelessness are also signs of depression.

Bipolar Disorder

This is a mental condition that may also leave you angry and irritated as it is characterized by mood swings. These sudden changes in mood are intense in nature and may result in a host of other mental issues like mania or depression.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

This is a type of mental disorder in which one is unable to concentrate, is impulsive, and hyperactive. Feelings of anger and frustration can be seen in people with ADHD.

Apart from anger, the other symptoms of ADHD are lack of focus and attention, are not able to manage time appropriately, are restless, etc.

Grief

Grief can be the result of financial distress, breakup, losing someone close, etc. And this may result in feelings of anger and frustration which may be taken out on others, on objects, etc.

Alcoholism

Alcoholism results in people getting aggressive and getting into unreasonable behaviors. You may get into violent as alcohol consumption prevents you to think rationally and makes you extremely emotional.

For instance, when under its influence, you may get angry and pull a trigger on someone.

3. Judgements of People May Trigger Anger

People may judge you for your thoughts, opinions, behavior, actions, perception, and almost everything. This may make you leave you frustrated and angry.

For instance, your fellow mates may try to judge your character based on what you wear or how you look. This may trigger frustration and anxiety in you. Or, your sibling may ask you to talk to your best friend for she’s keeping unwell and you may think that your sibling is asking you to do that immediately.

You may find this controlling and thus get frustrated. Judgments are mere perceptions about a particular person, situation, event, etc. They are simply how one comes to see and understand a particular situation and not how things really are which trigger anger.

4. Being Sensitive to Rejection Can Cause Anger

If you are someone who cannot take rejection easily, you are bound to get irritated and angry quickly. Even the slightest hint of being threatened makes you feel agitated and gets you in reactionary mode.

How to Control Anger?

The first and the most important thing to control anger is to understand the anger cycle. When any event or person triggers you, you go through both physiological and biological symptoms like sweating, increased heartbeat, tensed muscles, hormonal rush, which puts you into fight or flight mode.

As a result, you either get into a reactionary mode. Thus, instead of thinking and analyzing the situation, you simply take action. This can be fatalistic as actions taken under the grip of anger are usually incorrect.

So, the best way to control your anger is to recognize your triggers, calm down, and try to understand what people are saying or doing to you.

When you are angry, anything that would come your way would seem demeaning or a threat to you in some way or the other.

Therefore, it’s important you not let the emotion overpower your reasoning.

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Created on Oct 5th 2021 22:52. Viewed 254 times.

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