Coping Skills for Anger: Using Tools Like an Anger Thermometer

There is something visceral and almost primal about how you feel when you approach an unfamiliar animal. It could be a dog, a seal, a horse, an ostrich, or a llama. If you’re unfamiliar with it, you just don’t know how it’ll react to you, or how to be around it. There may be a bit of apprehension because it’s an unknown, and you could get hurt. But, what joy it is when you overcome that fear and have an unexpectedly positive experience.

The unknown can be scary, but it’s also scary when you encounter a familiar thing that you’ve previously had unpleasant interactions with. A challenge that people face is how to relate to their own anger.

While it’s not a wild animal, but something that’s inside you, and you may have been witness to damage caused by it. Perhaps your anger or the anger of a loved one unsettles you. There are ways to address and cope effectively with anger.

Is anger a problem for you?

Anger is an emotion that we all possess, and it’s part of our makeup, just as joy, fear, and sadness are part of us. These different emotions all play a role in our lives, and that role is important for our well-being. You could say overall that our emotions function a bit like an instrument panel in a car or an airplane cockpit. It tells you what’s happening, and you can adjust or pivot appropriately to address any concerns.

Your anger has a function and place in your life. It can help you discern if your boundaries have been violated, for example. If someone makes a joke that involves you, and you become angry, that could be a sign that you feel like a boundary or limit that’s important to you has been crossed and violated. Even if you don’t know precisely what bugged you about it, your anger lets you know that something isn’t sitting right.

One of the ways to form a healthy relationship with your anger is to build an appreciation for it and the function it plays in your life. Your anger can spur you toward movement and action. When you’re angry about something that matters to you, it can give you a boost of energy and focus that propels you to pursue solutions to problems.

Anger, however, can indeed be unhealthy. One way that anger can be unhealthy is when you feel anger often and it is intense or overwhelming. If you fear your anger, your chief mode of expressing anger is verbally or physically abusing others, or if you see a pattern in your life of regrettable words and actions that were inspired by anger, you likely have a problem with anger.

It is important to point out that many of the unhealthy expressions of anger we witness or hear about, such as aggression, or passive-aggressive behaviors, aren’t the last word on anger. It’s possible to work through your anger and express it in ways that don’t humiliate or harm other people. Such expressions of anger are as far from their unhealthy counterparts as night is from the day.

If anger is an issue for you, there are several tools you can use to begin bringing it under control and for it to serve its intended purpose. One such tool is an anger thermometer.

You need your own anger thermometer

What is an anger thermometer? Pause and ask yourself what a thermometer does. It helps you to measure temperature, and there are various situations in which you’d want to keep an eye on how hot something is. It matters when you’re doing pottery, cooking the perfect medium rare steak, casting bronze statues, or thinking of going for a picnic and don’t know if the day will be good for it.

An anger thermometer is simply a visual tool that you can use to help you identify and measure how angry you are. This tool, which is also known as an anger meter or an anger scale, is a simple way to try and keep track of your level of anger.

It won’t be as exact as an actual thermometer, but the function is more or less similar. When you can track how angry you’re feeling, you can tell if things are under control or starting to go off the rails.

An anger thermometer is usually on a simple numbered scale that ranges from 0 to 10. On a scale like this, a zero can indicate that you aren’t feeling angry, annoyed, or frustrated. You’re doing okay, in other words. On the other end of the scale, the ten represents when you feel extreme anger, or perhaps it could be more accurately labeled as “rage” or “fury’.

Having an anger thermometer helps you track what you’re feeling at a given moment. Sometimes, the simple act of taking stock and recognizing what you’re thinking and feeling can make a huge difference.

If you can tell that you’re angry and have enough self-awareness to recognize how angry you are and the ways you’re likely to respond, you can respond proactively to de-escalate or diffuse your anger.

We all need something like an anger thermometer, if only to help us stay in touch with ourselves and this powerful emotion.

Some Benefits of Using an Anger Thermometer

There are benefits to using an anger thermometer. The thermometer is one of several tools you can use to get anger under control, and it helps you to increase your emotional self-awareness. For the thermometer to work, it requires you to recognize what you’re feeling and be able to identify the patterns and triggers of anger in your life.

Effective use of an anger thermometer will result in improved emotional regulation. One of the components of an anger thermometer is an accompanying strategy that’s effective for dealing with various levels of anger. With time and exploration, you’ll come up with a suite of tools that can help you cope with anger.

Another benefit of an anger thermometer is that it can help you articulate your emotions. When you can name your emotions, and if you’re aware of how they affect you, you are better placed to express those emotions more effectively. When you can tell the people in your life where you’re at and what you’re feeling, you can improve those relationships and reduce unnecessary conflict.

Lastly, when you take active steps to acknowledge and address your feelings of anger, over the long run you make gains by reducing not only the intensity of your anger, but its frequency as well.

Anger is the sort of emotion that can fester and worsen with time if it isn’t addressed. Your triggers may increase in number and sensitivity if you allow anger to run amok in your life.

Effective Tools for Coping with Anger

An anger thermometer is just one of several tools that can be used to effectively cope with anger. It allows you to better understand your anger and to put measures in place that help you calm down or express that anger well.

Other tools for addressing and coping well with anger include learning how to disrupt negative patterns of thinking that can fuel anger, like jumping to conclusions or generalizing in given situations.

You can also make use of basic self-care like exercising as a way to reduce your stress levels, elevate your mood, and find an outlet for your energy. Getting good sleep also does wonders, helping you to regulate your emotions better, and having regular meals can also help in this regard. Situations that could escalate easily when you’re feeling tired, stressed, or hungry can be dealt with more amicably when you’re feeling rested, relaxed, and well-fed.

Dealing with anger can also be a matter of developing your communication skills. When you understand the movements in your own emotions, you can name them, and you know what needs those emotions are indicators of, you can communicate this to the people in your life. Other skills, like active listening, can also play a significant role in avoiding unnecessary provocations and conflict.

Anger can be effectively managed if you know your triggers and can make necessary adjustments to compensate. It also helps to know which unhealthy patterns of thought and behavior you engage in can inflame anger when there’s an option to move past the provocation or choose to interpret it otherwise.

If you seek help from a mental health professional, they can help you identify these patterns. Talking to a professional can be a powerful tool in the journey to get anger under control and nurture a healthy relationship with it.

If, as you look over your life, you find that anger is a problem, don’t hesitate to reach out and connect with me or another counselor in Harlingen, Texas, who can help you make anger work for you and serve its intended purpose. The counselors at Texas Christian Counseling, Harlingen, are ready to help.