Responding Instead of Reacting: An Effective Cure for Anger (Backed by Neuroscience)
Become better able to deal with anger and train your brain for solution-oriented responses
Anger sucks.
It makes you snap at loved ones and strangers for things that, most of the time, aren’t worth it.
It ruins relationships, affects your mental and physical health, and makes responding to challenging situations effectively almost impossible.
Although anger is part of the human spectrum of emotions, and, as such, a legit and healthy state to experience at times, if we are honest with ourselves we’ll notice that 99% of the time is avoidable and leaves us regretful and usually feeling shame, blame, and guilt.
Not an ideal place to be if you care for the quality of your life.
Here’s a science-backed strategy to decrease the incidence of your “anger accidents” and choose a better alternative instead.
The Neuroscience of Anger
In his cutting-edge work on Affective Neuroscience, neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp explains that when our freedom of action is under threat, our anger response is activated.
“[Anger] invigorates aggressive behaviors when animals are irritated or restrained, and also helps animals defend themselves by arousing FEAR in their opponents” — Jaak Panksepp
In today’s world, we rarely have to deal with life-threatening situations. Yet, we still get angry quite often and that’s because we’re surrounded by constant threats to our sense of self and stability, ranging from global phenomena such as climate change and war to more specific situations like an unsupportive partner, an intrusive relative, or a traffic jam when we’re late for work.
Whether the threat is perceived or real, it doesn’t matter.
The RAGE circuits in our brain get activated and our anger response is triggered. From that point on, the instinctual part of our brain gets in the driver's seat, and we lose our ability to think logically.
Train Your Brain to Look for Solutions Instead of Fighting the Current Situation
Here’s the good news: it’s not possible for the RAGE pathway to fire when we’re looking for solutions to the threat.
The same brain region responsible for activating our anger response is also responsible for finding the resources needed for survival. This means that when we switch to solution-oriented mode, we are much less likely to snap in anger.
Neural circuitry gets stronger with repetition.
Training ourselves to look for creative solutions when faced with what makes us angry is how we rewire our brains to lessen instinctual and illogical responses to perceived threats.
A win-win: you find a way to resolve the situation and you don’t have to feel ashamed or guilty and ask for forgiveness later (prolonging your suffering).
Not Getting Angry Is a Matter of Habit
Our neural circuits are like muscles: the more you use them the stronger they become. This is why unlearning a behavior is so difficult.
And this is also why learning a new one to replace the old is possible.
All you need is repetition.
In his book, Master of Change, Brad Stulberg suggests a 4-step framework to deal with anger while also training our brains to search for solutions:
Pause, Process, Plan, Proceed.
Pause
Take a moment to distance yourself from what you’re experiencing by simply naming what you’re feeling. This alone gets you out of the experience and into your curious, analytical brain.
- What am I feeling right now?
- Where in my body am I feeling it?
- How does it feel, taste, sound, look like?
Expanding your vocabulary around feelings and emotions is key. As Brené Brown’s research shows, the average person is able to name only 3 emotions as they’re feeling them (three out of the 87 she identified)
Process
Take your time to process what you’re feeling.
When you’re emotional, talking your way out of it is not always effective, or ideal.
Allowing yourself the space and grace to feel what you’re feeling might not be pleasant, but that’s how you let it pass instead of burying it down to pile up with the rest of your frustrations until you eventually explode.
Plan
When the emotional clutter starts to dissipate, you can strategize a way out.
Imagine a friend being in your situation, what advice would you give them?
- What are some steps you can take to improve the situation or solve the problem?
This can be as simple as sending an email to let your boss know you’ll be late for work because of a traffic jam. Or choosing to step out of the room to calm down and later have a conversation about boundaries with your partner.
Proceed
Finally, you’re able to respond to the situation in a solution-oriented manner.
Responding instead of reacting means being able to make value-based decisions that improve the situation for ourselves and often for others, instead of making it worse.
The difference between the two is merely a matter of space.
“When I look back on my knee-jerk reactions now, I realize I should have just taken a breath.” — Fred Durst
Anger is very often a waste of energy and a sure way to ruin your peace of mind. Hopefully, you are better equipped to deal with it now!
