Some Anger-Management Strategies

An overview of techniques used in cognitive-behavioural therapy for anger

All of these techniques are used in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), although different practitioners tend to combine them in different ways.  Our main source for concepts and terminology used below will be the works of Aaron T. Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy.

Core Strategies

Self-Monitoring

Self-monitoring is an important part of most CBT.  In many cases, though, it’s not just about gathering information.  In my view, it’s better to think of self-monitoring as cognitive skill, i.e., a form of “mindfulness” or self-awareness training.  That’s because self-monitoring alone can often lead to self-improvement, perhaps through a “measurement effect” of sorts.  One reason for this is that self-observation tends to interfere with the automaticity of habits, including the sequence of thoughts and actions that occur during anger.

• The simplest form of self-monitoring is to keep a tally or count of how many times each day you notice yourself getting angry – tracking the frequency in this way is usually how I advise clients to begin self-monitoring.  For example, you might simply note down that you became angry once on Sunday, three times on Monday, and twice on Friday. 

• The next step could involve recording the frequency, intensity, and duration of your anger episodes (e.g., 'Angry twice on Wednesday - once for 5 minutes at 5/10 intensity, and once for an hour at 4/10 intensity'). Timing episodes last can help reduce their duration, which often also leads to a decrease in their frequency and intensity.

A more advanced approach, although commonly used in CBT, is called the daily thought record.  This can take different forms but, e.g., a simple version might include recording where and when an episode of anger occurred, and your thoughts, actions, and feelings in response to it.

Situation | Automatic Thoughts | Feelings | Behaviour

Briefly describe the situation, including the date and time.  Note especially any negative automatic thoughts that popped into your mind between the triggering event occurring and your emotional reaction appearing.  Describe your emotions briefly (rating the intensity from 0-10), and note any physical sensations accompanying them, and also note what you said or did.  Below, I’ll describe how cognitive therapy disputes negative automatic thoughts.  This form can be adapted to include thinking errors you identify in your negative automatic thoughts, and evidence for and against them, which turns it into more of an exercise in cognitive disputation instead of simple self-monitoring.

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Spotting Early-Warning Signs

I normally recommend that all clients do this early on, when working on anger.  People tend to report feeling that they have more control earlier in episodes of strong emotions such as anger and that as it escalates they feel less in control.  If you can notice what previously went unnoticed, especially the “early-warning signs” of anger, you will be more able to “nip it in the bud” before it escalates.  Writing things down tends to heighten attention, so making a list of the early warning signs that you notice can actually change how you feel during an episode of anger.  You have to first notice that you’re becoming angry before you will be able to apply any other techniques in the situation.  However, becoming more aware of what’s happening earlier in the process will often be sufficient to break the cycle.  

Early-warning signs might include certain images, automatic thoughts, or bodily sensations, but in practice it’s very common for people to begin noticing areas of muscular tension, or physical behaviours, that they’d previously overlooked. A coach or therapist can help you do this by asking questions.  For instance, it’s common for angry people to frown, clench their jaw, tense their shoulders, or make their hands into fists. They’re often unaware, at the time, though, that they’re doing these things because they’re so absorbed in thoughts about the situation that is making them angry.  Reversing that by increasing awareness of your own activity in the present moment is therefore likely to derail your anger, and increase your sense of control over your response to the situation. Charles Darwin famously observed that some of our emotional expressions are inherited from animals, such as furrowing our brow when worried or angry. 

Taking a Time-Out 

One of the simplest and most powerful tools for managing anger comes simply from learning to view anger as a different “mode” of psychological functioning from your normal brain state, not unlike the way we think of someone who is intoxicated or very tired or anxious as temporarily “not themselves” or “not thinking clearly”.  Anger introduces some well-documented biases and limitations, which impair our ability to solve complex problems, especially social ones.  Once we know that, though, if we notice ourselves entering what Beck calls the “hostile mode”, we can treat it as a signal to take a “time out” from the situation, and postpone our attempts to tackle any problems.  Wait until you’ve calmed down and are thinking more clearly before planning how to respond to the situation, or engaging in problem-solving.

Automatic versus Voluntary Thoughts

Why do people find it so difficult to deal with anger and other unruly emotions?  One of the reasons is that most of us don’t distinguish clearly enough between our automatic and voluntary mental activity.  Automatic thoughts are ideas or images that just pop into your mind unbidden, perhaps triggered by something you hear or so, or just seemingly out of nowhere.  They are usually fast, sometimes barely conscious, and typically stand-alone at first rather than part of a logical sequence of reasoning.  Voluntary thinking tends to be slower, more conscious, and consists more of an ongoing internal conversation, or line of reasoning.  

Trying to unthink automatic thoughts is basically a fool’s errand.  People often try to suppress them or distract themselves from upsetting automatic thoughts, which arguably constitutes a subtle form of avoidance.  It’s usually better, though, to learn to tolerate these thoughts, and view them with indifference.  There’s a knack to replacing avoidance with acceptance, which can be described as sitting with it for a few moments, and doing more or less nothing in response to them – just allow them to fade naturally from your mind.  There may be a number of them, or they may keep coming back – just keep noticing them and doing nothing.  At least at first, the only thing you really need to do in response to automatic thoughts is to view them with detachment, rather than become fused with them – see the defusion techniques below.

Voluntary thoughts in response to anger can simply be stopped.  If that seems difficult at first, defusing the automatic thoughts and sometimes using postponement strategies can help, although in practice, once they’re able to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary thoughts, the majority of people seem able to suspend or cease most of their voluntary angry thinking.  The main obstacle turns out to be our belief, in the heat of the moment, that anger is helpful or necessary in the situation, which can be addressed using cognitive therapy questioning techniques.  The distinction between automatic and voluntary aspects of anger is very important because it helps to resolve an apparent contradiction in the research literature.  Various students have found that people who think anger is bad or harmful may be more likely to engage in suppression or avoidance, and often experience problems as a result, such as relationship difficulties or even health problems.  Other studies have found, on the contrary, that people who believe anger is helpful or justified tend to experience more problems on average and to suffer from more episodes of anger.  How can it be harmful both to view anger as bad and to view it as good?  What’s the alternative?  Well, the answer is that we have to distinguish between different aspects of our anger. Learning to view the involuntary aspects of anger as neutral or indifferent and the voluntary aspects as unhelpful appears to be the healthiest solution. 

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Identifying Anger Rules

Traditional cognitive therapy begins with a “working hypothesis” or conceptualization of the problem, which places your beliefs at the centre.  By carefully observing your automatic negative thoughts, and discussing them with a coach or therapist, you will soon notice recurring themes and patterns, which indicate underlying beliefs.  With anger these typically (but not always) take the form of “should” statements or rules, that lead you to become angry if they’re violated.  

For instance, I may notice that when I’m angry I have automatic thoughts like “Why is that guy talking to me like this?”, “He should speak to me more politely!”, “Did he just turn his back while I was talking?”  Perhaps that indicates that I have a rule that says other people must treat me politely and with respect – and if they don’t, I will get angry.  Sometimes  these rules are barely conscious because we just take them for granted.  Sometimes people, when they’re feeling calm, may even deny that they have these rules because they consider them irrational, but nevertheless when they get angry they start to behave as if this is the rule they’re following.  That’s because such rules only tend to become fully activated when our anger is triggered.  

Some common examples:

• “People should treat me with respect.” – You will be angry with other people.

• “Life should be fair.” – You may become frustrated with a situation.

• “I must succeed.” – You may become angry with yourself, an attitude that is often associated with depression.

You can help yourself to identify your personal rules by asking yourself questions such as:

• What patterns can I notice in my angry thoughts? What are the common themes?

• What am I telling myself must happen, otherwise I’ll get angry?

• When I get angry, what rules do I feel as though others might be breaking?

Again, merely putting our beliefs into words and becoming clear about them often changes the way we feel, because it can allow us to gain defusion and view them in a more detached way.  It can also help you to spot early-warning signs of anger because you may notice when you perceive that your rule is being violated.    

Identifying Aggression Beliefs

By “anger” we mean the emotion, whereas the word “aggression” is typically used to describe angry behaviour.  (I include ruminating under this heading, although it’s a mental activity.)  In addition to the fact that anger is usually triggered when a personal rule is thought to have been violated, this often leads to the activation of harmful beliefs about how to cope with the situation.  Typically, angry people tend to believe that aggression is their best or only option, in the heat of the moment.  If the target of their anger is no longer present, though, they will often activate a belief about rumination, and replay arguments in their mind, or ruminate about why someone acted the way they did, or they may even engage in elaborate revenge fantasies.  

• “I have to teach you a lesson.”

• “This is the only way I can get what I want.”

• “I can’t control my temper.”

• “People who do wrong must be punished.”

• “Going over this in my mind will help me solve the problem, or prevent it from happening again.”

These sort of beliefs have to do with how we respond to our initial feelings of anger, and our attempts to solve a problem or cope with it.  Unfortunately, when we’re in the angry mode we can often only see one possible solution, and it will tend to be a crude one, which we will try to make work not by adapting or refining it but by exerting more force.  That could be the belief that the “only way” that we can get our way is by yelling at someone or punishing them, or even engaging in violence toward them, such as punching them.  It’s helpful to realise that this whole way of thinking is due to tunnel vision.  Angry people are well-known to have impaired problem-solving ability, because they tend to become absorbed in the idea that they must use solutions that are relatively crude, and sometimes even violent.

Cognitive Defusion

Beck believed that before we can begin questioning our own beliefs we must first change perspective and realise that they are merely hypotheses and not facts – we have to at least be open to the possibility that our assumptions could be mistaken.  More recently, researchers have found that this shift in perspective (called “distancing” or “defusion”) can actually be one of the most powerful and versatile techniques in therapy.  Beck described it as the difference between looking at the world through coloured lenses and looking at the lenses.  Cognitive defusion is a subtle shift in perspective that we don’t even have a word in English to describe – so we have to refer to it using jargon.  It’s not difficult to learn, though, and there are now several techniques that are known to help acquire it.  These include:

• The leaves on the stream exercise, or similar mental imagery, from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

• Repeating a phrase very rapidly aloud for about 45 seconds, or sometimes repeating it very slowly with pauses

• Visualising the thought projected onto a wall and focusing on the physical properties of the writing, such as colour and font, etc.

• Referring to thoughts from a third-person perspective or as though they are in quotation marks, e.g., “I notice right now that Donald is telling himself: ‘How dare that guy talk to me that way!’”

• Imagining that you are holding the thought in your hands and experimenting with repeatedly moving it closer and further away again 

Anger often involves cognitive fusion, where our thoughts become fused with reality.  We go into a sort of tunnel-vision and become completely absorbed in one way of thinking about the situation.  Defusion has two main benefits.  The first and most obvious is that it dilutes the intensity of negative emotion.  The second is less obvious but more important.  Defusion leads to greater cognitive flexibility – we become able to view the situation from different perspectives.  That makes it easier to problem-solve, and come up with alternative ways of coping, which can benefit us over the longer-term.

Modifying Beliefs

We can dispute or modify underlying beliefs in a variety of ways in cognitive therapy.   It’s usually best to begin by defusing them.  With anger rules and beliefs about aggressive behaviour, the easiest way to dispute them is usually to begin thinking about their consequences.  Very simply, ask yourself: “How is this rule working out for me?” or “How is holding this belief working out for me in the long run?”  (Probably not very well, right?)  You might say you already know that but repeatedly posing this question isn’t so much meant to gather information as to shift your attention.  We know that the angry “mode” of functioning tends to inhibit people’s ability to think about the consequences of their actions, that probably explains the well-documented tendency for angry people to under-estimate risks and engage in impulsive behaviour.  It’s also very useful to rate how helpful your belief actually is in practice, rated from 0-100%.  That allows you to follow-up, if appropriate, by asking yourself why you didn’t rate it higher or lower – why didn’t you rate it 0% helpful; why didn’t you rate it 100% helpful?

You can expand this basic technique by asking yourself to think about the consequences of holding the belief in the longer-term: months, years, decades from now.  How would it work out for you overall as a philosophy of life?  Would you teach the same rule to children?  Broadening your perspective on the consequences can further weaken the belief.  Another technique is to consider the wider impact of holding the rule on different domains of your life.  

• How might believing in that rule impact your quality of life in general?  

• How might it impact your performance at work or in your studies?  

• How might it affect different relationships over time, such as with a spouse or partner, with parents or children, with friends?  

• How might it eventually affect your physical or mental health?  

Again, this sort of technique will be much more beneficial if you actually take time to write down notes and maintain a list of the negative consequences of holding the belief, which you should review periodically and refine over time, until it becomes so familiar that if someone asked you, you would be able to summarise its disadvantages very easily and in very clear and concise language.  

Another way of approaching this would be to draw two columns and list the pros and cons of holding the belief, or advantages and disadvantages.  Typically you will find that the perceived advantages are short-term and some of the disadvantages are more obvious over the longer-term.  Next, you should challenge the perceived advantages, and look for reasons to question whether they are real or merely illusory.  For instance, people often say that expressing anger is “the only way” to get their point across or get their way, in some situations, which can feel like a short-term advantage.  That needs to be vigorously challenged if you want to weaken the habit of becoming angry, though.  For instance, you might question whether getting angry merely gets you what you feel that you want in the heat of the moment, rather than achieving what would ultimately be in your best interests – so is it really getting you anywhere?

Generating Alternative Beliefs 

Once you begin questioning your rules, you’re likely to think of alternative ones that appear less rigid, healthier, and more rational.  This often happens automatically, once you defuse beliefs, although sometimes it may require more work.  Generating multiple alternative perspectives, and being able to shift between them, can enhance cognitive flexibility, which will tend to reduce the intensity of emotions such as anger, and make you better at problem-solving.  Here are some questions you can use to prompt yourself:

• What would be a better way of looking at things?

• How could you view things in a more healthy and rational way?

• Would you teach this rule to a child?  What would be a better alternative?

• If the roles were reversed, what rule would you prefer other people apply in this situation?

Again, writing down your rational alternative beliefs, reviewing them periodically, and refining them, will make you more likely to remember them.  They’re most likely to “stick”, though, if you actually try living in accord with them by applying the new rules to challenging situations in the real-world.  A good way to prepare for that is to mentally rehearse by imagining typical situations that would normally provoke anger, and asking yourself what the consequences would be if you were to apply your new rule.  You should repeat this, in your imagination, until it becomes more familiar, and begins to feel like a habit is forming.  Then remind yourself of that rule when you’re actually facing a real situation, but try to do so immediately beforehand, in anticipation, or as soon as you notice any early-warning signs of anger.    

Additional Strategies

Disputing Automatic Thoughts

This is the bread and butter of traditional cognitive therapy but I’m placing it in this section because “cognitive restructuring” is less widely-used in recent approaches, and I find that other techniques are often more helpful when dealing with anger.  However, most people will still find it helpful to use this approach to some extent.  

Evaluating the Evidence

Beck used to say that the central question used in cognitive therapy is simply: “Where’s the evidence for that?”  When you notice negative automatic thoughts, you can dispute them by asking yourself what evidence exists for and against them, and perhaps writing this down.  It can also be helpful to rate from 0-100% how strongly you believe each thought before and after evaluating it in this way.  

A closely-related technique involves generating alternatives to negative automatic thoughts, by writing down more rational and realistic ways of thinking.  These can potentially become coping statements (see below).  One down-side of this approach is that, according to some researchers, cognitive disputation techniques can sometimes inhibit the benefits of defusion techniques, and may lead some clients, particularly those prone to “overthinking”, to become entangled in analysing their thoughts.  It’s important, therefore, to keep this method concise, and not to allow it to turn into rumination.

Spotting Thinking Errors

This is an easier technique for many people, and potentially fits in slightly better with the use of cognitive defusion.  There are many lists of common cognitive distortions or thinking errors.  Once you learn how to spot them, you may immediately recognize that certain automatic thoughts are irrational, and this can sometimes help you to defuse them.  I like to use this simple classification that comes from Beck’s first book on cognitive therapy:

• Extreme thinking, which can take the form of exaggerating (blowing up) some things or trivialising (downplaying) others, such as idealising one person and demonising another, or judging one thing to be perfectly good and another to be absolutely bad, and so on.  A common example in anger is what we call “catastrophizing” where we greatly exaggerate the severity of some feared event. 

• Selective thinking, where relevant information is simply ignored or discounted, leading to a very incomplete and distorted perception of events.  We can call this cherry-picking data, and we have all heard of selective hearing, and selective memory.  For example, when angry with someone we tend to conveniently forget the good things they’ve done for us, or times when we have been guilty of similar wrongdoing ourselves.

• Unfounded assumptions, or jumping to conclusions, without sufficient evidence.  The two most common forms are referred to as “mind-reading”, where we make assumptions about other people’s motives or what they are thinking, and “fortune-telling”, where we make assumptions about what is going to happen in the future.  

• Overgeneralization, which takes the form of saying “always” / “never”, “all” / “none”, or “everybody” / “nobody”, despite the fact we can seldom draw such general conclusions based on a limited sample.  When people are angry they often make sweeping generalisations of this kind, such as “nobody ever lifts a finger to help me!”

Simply learning to notice when you are guilty of common thinking errors can weaken the effect they have.  For example, you might tell yourself: “Oh, I seem to be making the error of mind-reading again and assuming I know what people are thinking without any evidence!”

Turning the “Anger Dial” Up and Down

This is what I call a technique, loosely based on Albert Ellis’ “Rational-Emotive Imagery” (REI).  Over the years, I’ve found that, especially with anger, people find it useful to imagine themselves reliving a specific situation in which they became angry, by visualising it as if it’s happening now, and rehearsing ways of changing how they feel.  You can also visualise a future event in which you want to reduce the risk that you will become angry.  Imagine the situation as vividly as possible, and allow yourself to evoke some genuine anger.  Think of yourself as having a dial marked 0-10, which we will calibrate to 5, in the middle, for the exercise.  Begin by slowly turning it up, first one or two points, then very gradually, all the way up to ten, or as close as you can get.  Imagine that your anger is increasing and study how you would have to think differently in order to get more angry.  

Again, this is best seen mainly as a form of self-awareness training.  If you can learn what makes you more angry, you will soon realise what makes you less angry.  Don’t “cheat” by changing the situation.  Focus on your response.  In particular, notice what you do with your level of absorption in or cognitive fusion with certain thoughts.  In most cases, as you become more angry, cognitive fusion will increase, and you will become more focused on the most upsetting aspects of the situation.  Next, turn the dial down and practice making yourself less angry.  Study how you do that?  The chances are that you will be exhibiting cognitive defusion by viewing your angry thoughts from a more detached perspective.  By repeatedly turning the dial up and down, very slowly, in this way, you should be able to study the ingredients that go into your anger.  Raising awareness in this way will normally give you more control, by encouraging you to become generally more defused from your angry thoughts, as well as making you more aware of early-warning signs and other associated parts of the experience.

Decatastrophizing

We saw earlier that therapy usually begins with self-monitoring.  Beck asked his clients, in particular, to record their initial automatic thoughts when angry.  He was surprised to discover that in almost every case, anger followed initial automatic thoughts about having somehow been harmed or being threatened with harm.  Sometimes these were obvious to clients but in many cases they were so fleeting that they went unnoticed until self-monitoring began.  This has contributed to the theory that, in many cases, anger is not a primary emotion but a secondary one, which occurs in response to an initial feeling of emotional pain or anxiety.  Often the harm is an injury to our self-esteem or social status.  For instance, if someone insults me, I may become angry so suddenly that I don’t even notice how my feelings have been hurt.  For a split second, though, rather than anger, I may initially have felt terrible sadness or anxiety, as though the insult diminished me in my own eyes or the eyes of others.  

Anger is very effective at masking emotional pain of this kind, for several reasons.  The first is that when we respond to emotional pain by becoming angry with another person, it radically changes our focus of attention from internal to external: we stop blaming ourselves and start blaming them.  That means we’re no longer focusing on the pain or anxiety inside, though.  In other words, anger often functions as a subtle but very powerful avoidance strategy.  Anger, for example, can become a temporary distraction from:

• The pain of rejection

• The pain of confrontation.

• The pain of humiliation   

If you have identified an initial sense of hurt, though, you can potentially eliminate that using other techniques, such as decatastrophizing.  Decatastrophizing refers to a variety of techniques designed to reduce the perceived severity of a perceived threat or injury – it’s about realising that it’s not the end of the world.  One very simple method, known as time projection, involves asking yourself how you will feel about the situation looking back on it from the future.  Suppose someone insults you, by calling you an idiot, and it really hurts your feelings initially.  How will you feel about that tomorrow?  What about a week from now, or a month?  How will you feel differently about it, looking back on it a year or a decade from now?  Some people can do this shift in perspective very quickly and easily, whereas others find it helps to ask a series of questions like that, progressively moving further away in time.  You can also close your eyes and try to use your imagination more, as if you’re visualising looking back on events from the future.  The basic strategy is very simple, though.  

When someone says “I would feel less upset”, I usually ask “Why shouldn’t you feel that way about it right now?”  Often people struggle to answer that question.  Another popular form of decatastrophizing involves describing a situation in objective language without any emotive words, rhetoric, or value judgments – just sticking to the bare facts of what happened, described in a “neutral” way.  Decatastrophizing is just one of many different ways we can tackle the initial fear or emotional pain that precedes anger but for now these examples should suffice.     

Coping Statements

Coping statements are less common in modern CBT but they were widely used for anger management in the past, with good results.  These are short verbal statements that you repeat to yourself as soon as you notice that you are starting to become angry.  

• “I can handle this.”

• “This is just a feeling; it will pass.”

• “It’s not worth getting upset about this.”

• “Pause, take your time, and think about this rationally.”

• “We both have a right to be heard in this situation.”

In  my opinion, these sorts of statements can help in a variety of ways.  They may interrupt the sort of thinking that typically causes anger.  They shouldn’t, however, become a substitute for addressing the underlying problem, which usually consists in the rules that cause anger.  

Assertiveness Training

Assertiveness training used to be extremely popular in the 1970s but during the 1980s and 1990s it was superseded by a very different approach: mindfulness training.  Assertiveness training can still be very helpful, though, particularly in overcoming anger.  It was originally part of early behaviour therapy, as Wolpe argued that social assertiveness was incompatible with and was therefore capable of reciprocally inhibiting anger.  Certainly, some people become anxious and also angry when they feel they’re struggling to communicate effectively.  As we’ve seen, anger is often associated with aggressive coping strategies, and the sense that this is “the only way” to get what you want.  What if there’s another way, though?  For instance, instead of feeling like you would need to yell or punch someone to get your point across, what if you were confident that you could get your point across assertively by communicating very clearly.  There are two well-established assertiveness techniques that I find it helpful to teach people:

1. Acknowledging Mutual Rights

When people are angry they often feel entitled.  They assert their own rights but typically deny the rights of others.  This strategy modifies that by encouraging you to assert mutual rights.  It’s useful because once you get the basic concept, it’s very quick and easy to use.  Some typical rights address in this way include:

• The right to express your feelings and opinions

• The right to make mistakes and learn from them

• The right to disagree with something or say no

• The right to change your mind about things

• The right to be treated with respect

For instance, suppose you get angry sometimes because you feel you have a right to be treated with respect.  Shifting your attention onto the idea, instead, that both you and the other person have the same right to respect, may be useful on several levels. One is that it divides your attention between yourself and the other party, which will tend to dilute the intensity of your feelings.  It will also force you to think less rigidly because you will probably immediately recognize that the other person’s right to respect needs to be balanced, as does your own, with other considerations, such as a mutual need for honesty and your common right to express yourselves.  By starting to think more flexibly about mutual rights, you can train yourself to move beyond the rigid one-sided thinking that tends to be associated with anger.r.

2. Four-Step Assertiveness

This has long been a popular formula for assertive communication, although it can require a little practice.  

1. State common ground, without any value judgments, just sticking to the basic facts that both parties can agree upon.  This helps to frame the rest of the conversation more in terms of collaboration and avoid opening with anything that might provoke the other party or make them defensive.

   1. “First of all, I think we both agree that there appears to be a fly in my soup.” 

2. Acknowledge their perspective, stating with some empathy what you understand their feelings and desires to be concerning the subject.  This allows them to relax and hear you out without feeling that they need to interject and make themselves heard.

   1. “I understand, from what you’ve said, that you want me to keep my voice down, in case everyone else wants one.”   

3. Express your perspective, stating concisely how you feel, if relevant, what your concerns are, and what you desire.  Having established common ground and validated the other party, this is your opportunity to say your piece.  

   1. “However, I really don’t like the look of it, and it’s putting me off my meal.”

4. Propose a solution, in plain language, state what you think should be done and by whom, given what you’ve just said.  This allows you to quickly move beyond grievances or concerns and focus on a way forward that is actionable and potentially acceptable to both parties.

   1. “So this is what I’d like to suggest: if you’d be kind enough to take it back to the kitchen, and bring me another bowl of soup, I won’t mention it again.”

This way of communicating can easily be learned through role-play exercises with a partner but some people also find that once they understand the steps they’re able to apply them without any need for coaching.  

Muscle Relaxation

Relaxation techniques are no longer commonly used in modern cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), but they can still be of value in some cases.  Muscle relaxation techniques have the advantage that progress tends to be easier to judge.  We also know that anger tends to be associated with muscular tension, so relaxation can be viewed as directly antagonistic to that and capable of suppressing it through what’s sometimes called counter-conditioning, i.e., replacing one habit with its opposite.  

In my experience, most people find it easiest to learn muscle relaxation exercises by listening to an audio recording about once per day for about 2-3 weeks.  Relaxing for 20 minutes or so every day on your bed, or in an armchair can be helpful, and it may naturally generalise to make you more calm throughout the day.  However, there’s a risk that your relaxation, like any skill, may become compartmentalised.  For instance, I once met a yoga teacher who could relax her muscles extremely deeply, very easily, because she had practised savasana for many years.  She still became very angry, however, when she perceived someone as disrespectful and she had never learned how to apply her skills during challenging situations in the real world – she left her relaxation on the yoga mat  

There are two main ways in which you can transfer a behavioural skill such as relaxation to real situations, where you would otherwise become angry.

1. Rapid cue-controlled relaxation.  If you can learn to induce relaxation very rapidly by associating it with a gesture or cue-word, and you are able to spot early-warning signs of anger, or to anticipate high-risk situations, you can potentially apply that skill before your anger has a chance to escalate and nip it in the bud.

2. Mental rehearsal.  If you can imagine typical situations in advance, where you might become angry, while you relax at home, you will probably be able to condition yourself to associate relaxation with the triggers, which we now can inhibit anger and anxiety through a process called counter-conditioning or reciprocal inhibition.   

One of the earliest forms of evidence-based psychotherapy was systematic desensitisation, a fairly robust form of behaviour therapy that involves muscle relaxation training, followed by repeatedly pairing relaxation with imagined distressing scenes to reduce anxiety or anger.