Relaxation Skills Can Help You Manage Your Anger
Whether you struggle to manage your frustrations about traffic, have difficulty tolerating your spouse’s bad habits, or arrive home from work still angry, it’s important to learn skills to help you manage your anger. If you struggle to manage your anger it’s likely to impact your marriage in several different ways.
When people experience chronic or frequent low levels of anger, it causes stress hormones to be released. The fight-or-flight response in the body gets the brain ready for action during an emergency. However, people with anger management problems experience this reaction much more frequently than the average person. This can cause health problems due to the added stress this has on the body.
Learning relaxation skills can help your body calm down. People must learn to recognize when they are starting to experience increased stress levels. Then, they can perform relaxation exercises and help calm down their body’s physiological response to stress. When the body is calmer, it is easier to think more clearly and be more rational.
There are several different types of relaxation skills that can help with anger. Progressive muscle relaxation is a method of learning how to tense and then relax various muscle groups. It helps people to learn how to recognize when their muscles are tense. Then they learn how to relax all of these muscles.
Guided imagery helps people imagine a peaceful scene. This can help calm and relax the mind. This prevents people from continuing to think about the situation that is causing them to feel angry and it can help their body to return to a more relaxed state.
Breathing exercises can be very effective. The good part about breathing exercises is that you can do them anywhere. So if you are feeling angry or upset in the car, at work, or in public, you can do them and no one will know. Various breathing exercises help you to focus on your breathing by taking slow deep breaths.
Other strategies to help control stress and manage anger include yoga and meditation. Even a regular exercise program can help manage your stress levels. You can learn relaxation skills by meeting with a counselor or through a self-help program. Many self-help books teach relaxation skills. Relaxation skills require practice and dedication in order to master the skills.
It’s so true. So much marital distress is made worse by anger and frustration. It interferes in the ability to communicate and problem solve effectively by literally causing a drop in the person’s IQ or intelligence. As Dr. Phil might say: When we get mad we get stupid!
When there’s an anger problem, I have always counseled my clients about the importance of mastering the relaxation response as a fundamental couple communication tool. Relaxation and self-calming is an incredible parenting tool as well.
People can learn how to totally calm themselves (self-invoke the relaxation response) in just a few seconds, with as little as 20 minutes of daily practice. Relaxation helps with falling asleep faster and deeper too.
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