3 ways to get rid of anger, according to neuroscience

3 ways to get rid of anger, according to neuroscience3 ways to get rid of anger, according to neuroscienceTheyre one inch from your face, boiling with rage, screaming and yelling at you. And all you want to do is scream and yell back.But you know thats bedrngnis going to be good for anyoneIve talked before abouthow to deal with others who are angry and irrational, but how can you control those emotions inyourself?Looking at the neuroscience, theres a right way and a wrong way to do it.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreSo lets dig intothe research onhow to get rid of anger, what youre doing wrong, how to do it right and how it can make you and those around you much happier Suppressing angeris rarely a goodideaYou grit your teeth and hold it in Imfine.The good nachrichten is unterdrckung works. You can bottle up your feelings and bedrngnis look angry. However Its almost always a ba deanstalteanstalteanstalt idea. Yes, it prevents the angerfrom getting out, but when you fight your feelings they only get stronger.ViaThe Antidote Happiness for People Who Cant Stand Positive Thinkingwhen experimental subjects are told of an unhappy event, but then instructed to try leid to feel sad about it, they end up feeling worse than people who are informed of the event, but given no instructions about how to feel. In another study, when patients who were suffering from panic disorders listened to relaxation tapes, their hearts beat faster than patients who listened to audiobooks with no explicitly relaxing content. Bereaved people who make the most effort to avoid feeling grief, research suggests, take the longest to recover from their loss.When you try to stop yourself fromcrying,the tears arent cathartic. You dont feel better afterward.And anger is no different. What happens in the brain when you try to clamp down on that rage?A whole mess of bad stuff.Your ability to expe rience positive feelingsgoes down - but not negative feelings. Stress soars. And your amygdala (a part of the brain closely associated with emotions) starts working overtime.ViaHandbook of Emotion regulierung experimental studies have shown that unterdrckung leads to decreased positive but not negative emotion experience (Gross, 1998a Gross Levenson, 1993, 1997 Stepper Strack, 1993 Strack, Martin, Stepper, 1988), increased sympathetic nervous system responses (Demaree et al., 2006 Gross, 1998a Gross Levenson, 1993, 1997 Harris, 2001 Richards Gross, 2000), and greater activation in emotion-generative brain regions such as the amygdala (Goldin, McRae, Ramel, Gross, 2008).And heres whats really interestingwhen you suppress your feelings, the encounter gets worse for the angry person, too.You clamp down on your emotions and the other persons blood pressure spikes. And they like you less. Studies show that over the long haul this can lead to lousy relationships that arent as rewar ding.ViaHandbook of Emotion RegulationSocially, experimental studies have reported that suppression leads to less liking from social interaction partners, and to an increase in partners blood pressure levels (Butler et al., 2003). Correlational studies support these laboratory findings. Individuals who typically use suppression report avoiding close relationships and having less positive relations with others this dovetails with peers reports that suppressors have relationships with others that are less emotionally close (English, John, Gross, 2013 Gross John, 2003 Srivastava, Tamir, McGonigal, John, Gross, 2009).And fighting your feelingsuses a lot of willpower. So afterwards you have less control and thats whyyoure more likely to do things you regretafter youre angrybad moods foster risk taking by impairing self-regulation instead of by altering subjective utilities. Studies 5 and 6 showed that the risky tendencies are limited to unpleasant moods accompanied by high arousal nei ther sadness nor neutral arousal resulted in destructive risk taking.(To learn how to win every argument, clickhere.)Now some of you might be saying, I knew bottling it up welches bad You should let that angeroutWrong.Dont vent your angerSo you punch that pillow. Or yelland rant about the encounter to a friend.Not a good idea.Venting your anger doesnt reduce it.Ventingintensifiesemotion.ViaHandbook of Emotion Regulationfocusing on a negative emotion will likely intensify the experience of that emotion further and thus make down-regulation more difficult, leading to lower adjustment and well-being.Sharing your feelings with others constructively is a good idea but getting it outtends to snowball your anger.What does work? Distracting yourself. But why would distraction help?Because your brain has limited resources.Thinking about something elsemeans you have less brainpower to dwell onthe bad stuffResearch suggests it is because both cognitive tasks and emotional responses make use of the same limited mental resources (Baddeley, 2007 Siemer, 2005 familienkutsche Dillen Koole, 2007) That is, the resources that are used to perform a cognitive task are no longer available for emotional processes. Accordingly, people can rid themselves from unwanted feelings by engaging in a cognitive activity, such as doing math equations (Van Dillen Koole, 2007), playing a game of Tetris ( Holmes, James, Coode-Bate, Deeprose , 2008)You know thatfamous marshmallow test?Experimenters put a kid alone in a room with a marshmallow. If the child can resist eating it, they get two marshmallows later. The kids who succeeded in waiting went on to achieve better grades and more success in life. (They also stayed out of jail.)Now this study has been covered a lot, but what they dont usually talk about ishowthe successful kids avoided temptation how they reduced those powerful emotions screaming, EAT THE MARSHMALLOW NOWThey distracted themselves.Walter Mischel, who led the famous study, ex plains.ViaThe Marshmallow Test Mastering Self-ControlSuccessful delayers created all sorts of ways to distract themselves and to cool the conflict and stress they were experiencing. They transformed the aversive waiting situation by inventing imaginative, fun distractions that took the struggle out of willpower they composed little songs (This is such a pretty day, hooray This is my home in Redwood City), made funny and grotesque faces, picked their noses, cleaned their ear canals and toyed with what they discovered there, and created games with their hands and feet, playing their toes as if they were piano keys.And this works with other hot emotions too - like anger.(To learnthe secrets of grit from a Navy SEAL, clickhere.)I know, I know when someone is yelling in your face its really hard to distract yourself. But theres a way to do this thats very easy and backed by neuroscience researchThe answer? ReappraisalImagine the scene again someone is screaming at you, one inch from you r face.You want to scream back. Or even hit them.But what if I told you their mother passed away yesterday? Or that they were going through a tough divorce and just lost custody of their kids?Youd let it go. Youd probably evenrespond to their anger with compassion.What changed? Not the event. Situation is the same. Butthe story youre telling yourself about the event changed everything.As famed researcherAlbert EllissaidYou dont get frustrated because of events, you get frustrated because of your beliefs.Researchshows that when someone is exploding at you a good way to reappraise the situation and resist getting angry is simply to thinkIts not about me. They must be having a bad day.As one of the neuroscientists behind the studysaidIf youre trained with reappraisal, and you know your boss is frequently in a bad mood, you can prepare yourself to go into a meeting, Blechert suggested. He can scream and yell and shout but therell be nothing.When youchange your beliefs about a situation, yourbrain changes the emotions you feel.ViaYour Brain at Work Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day LongIn one of Ochsners reappraisal experiments, participants are shown a photo of people crying outside a church, which naturally makes participants feel sad. They are then asked to imagine the scene is a wedding, that people are crying tears of joy. At the moment that participants change their appraisal of the event, their emotional response changes, and Ochsner is there to capture what is going on in their brain using an fMRI. As Ochsner explains, Our emotional responses ultimately flow out of our appraisals of the world, and if we can shift those appraisals, we shift our emotional responses.Reappraisalworks for anxietytoo. Reinterpretingstress as excitementcan improve your performance on tests.And what happens in yourbrain?Your amygdala doesnt get worked up like it does with suppression. In fact, the little guy calms down.ViaHandbook o f Emotion RegulationEvidence that reappraisal can directly influence this amygdala circuitry comes from consistent findings in positron emission tomographic (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of healthy individuals showing reappraisal-dependent decreases in amygdala activation in response to negative stimuli.As opposed tobottling up, when you tell yourself theyre having a bad day, angryfeelingsplummet and goodfeelings increase.ViaHandbook of Emotion RegulationBy contrast, experimental studies have shown that reappraisal leads to decreased levels of negative emotion experience and increased positive emotion experience (Gross, 1998a Feinberg, Willer, Antonenko, John, 2012 Lieberman, Inagaki, Tabibnia, Crockett, 2011 Ray, McRae, Ochsner, Gross, 2010 Szasz, Szentagotai, Hofmann, 2011 Wolgast, Lundh, Viborg, 2011), has no impact on or even decreases sympathetic nervous system responses (Gross, 1998a Kim Hamann, 2012 Stemmler, 1997 Shiota Levenson, 2012 Wolgast et al., 2011), andleads to lesser activation in emotion-generative brain regions such as the amygdala (Goldin et al., 2008 Kanske, Heissler, Schonfelder, Bongers, Wessa, 2011 Ochsner Gross, 2008 Ochsner et al., 2004) and ventral striatum (Staudinger, Erk, Abler, Walter, 2009).What about the social results?People who reappraise report better relationships - and their friends agree.ViaHandbook of Emotion RegulationReappraisal, by contrast, has no detectable adverse consequences for social affiliation in a laboratory context (Butler et al., 2003). Correlational studies support these findings Individuals who typically use reappraisal are more likely to share their emotions- both positive and negative- and report having closer relationships with friends, which matches their peers reports of greater liking (Gross John, 2003 Mauss et al., 2011).You know when youget angry and start telling yourself, Theyre out to get me They want to make my life miserableThats reappraisal too - in the wrong direction. Youre telling yourself a story thats evenworsethan reality. And your anger soars. So dont do that.As the infomercials always say, But wait theres more Reappraisal holds another big benefit remember how suppressionsapped self-control and made you do stuff you later regretted?Well, just like the kids in the marshmallow experiment, reappraisal can increase your willpower and help you behave better after intense moments.Walter MischelexplainsThe marshmallow experiments convinced me that if people can change how they mentally represent a stimulus, they can exert self-control and escape from being victims of the hot stimuli that have come to control their behavior.(To learnthe secret to how to get people to like you - from an FBI behavior expert, clickhere.)Okay, lets wrap this up and learn the research-backed way to make sure that anger doesnt come backSum upHeres how to get rid of angerSuppress rarely.They may not know youre angry but youll feel worse inside and hurt the relationship.Dont vent.Communication is goodbut venting just increases anger. Distract yourself.Reappraisal is usuallythe best option.Think to yourself, Its not about me. They must be having a bad day.Sometimes someone gets under your skin and suppression is the only thing you can do to avoid a homicide charge.And sometimes reappraisal can cause you to tolerate bad situations you need to get out of.But that said, telling yourself a more compassionatestory about whats going on inside the other persons head is usually the best way to go.And whats the final step in getting rid of that anger over the long haul so you can maintain good relationships?Forgive.Its not for them, its for you. Forgiveness makes youless angry and more healthyTrait forgiveness was significantly associated with fewer medications and less alcohol use, lower blood pressure and rate pressure product state forgiveness was significantly associated with lower heart rate and fewer physical symptoms.Neither of these sets of findings were the result of decreased levels of anger-out being associated with forgiveness. These findings have important theoretical implications regarding the forgivenesshealth link, suggesting that the benefits of forgiveness extend beyond the dissipation of anger.As the old saying goesHolding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.So remember Theyre just having a bad day.Join over 215,000 readers.Get a free weekly update via emailhere.This article originally appeared at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from nesthkchen Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people3 ways to get rid of anger, according to neuroscienceTheyre one inch from your face, boiling with rage, screaming and yelling at you.And all you want to do is scream and yell back.But you know thats not going to be good for anyoneIve talked before abouthow to deal with others who are angry and irrational, but how can you control those emotions inyourself?Looking at the neuroscience, theres a right way and a wrong way to do it.So lets dig intothe research onhow to get rid of anger, what youre doing wrong, how to do it right and how it can make you and those around you much happierSuppressing angeris rarely a goodideaYou grit your teeth and hold it in Imfine.The good news is suppression works. You can bottle up your feelings and not look angry. HoweverIts almost always a bad idea. Yes, it prevents the angerfrom getting out, but when you fight your feelings they only get stronger.ViaThe Antidote Happiness for People Who Cant Stand Positive Thinkingwhen experimental subjects are told of an unhappy event, but then instructed to try not to feel sad about it, they end up feeling worse than people who are informed of the event, but given no instructions about how to feel. In another study, when patients who were suffering from panic disorders listened to relaxation tapes, their hearts beat faster than patients who listened to audiobooks with no explicitly relaxing content. Bereaved people who make the most effort to avoid feeling grief, research suggests, take the longest to recover from their loss.When you try to stop yourself fromcrying,the tears arent cathartic. You dont feel better afterward.And anger is no different. What happens in the brain when you try to clamp down on that rage?A whole mess of bad stuff.Your ability to experience positive feelingsgoes down - but not negative feelings. Stress soars. And your amygdala (a part of the brain closely associated with emotions) starts working overtime.ViaHandbook of Emotion Regulationexperimental studies have shown that suppression leads to decreased positive but not negative emotion experience (Gross, 199 8a Gross Levenson, 1993, 1997 Stepper Strack, 1993 Strack, Martin, Stepper, 1988), increased sympathetic nervous system responses (Demaree et al., 2006 Gross, 1998a Gross Levenson, 1993, 1997 Harris, 2001 Richards Gross, 2000), and greater activation in emotion-generative brain regions such as the amygdala (Goldin, McRae, Ramel, Gross, 2008).And heres whats really interestingwhen you suppress your feelings, the encounter gets worse for the angry person, too.You clamp down on your emotions and the other persons blood pressure spikes. And they like you less. Studies show that over the long haul this can lead to lousy relationships that arent as rewarding.ViaHandbook of Emotion RegulationSocially, experimental studies have reported that suppression leads to less liking from social interaction partners, and to an increase in partners blood pressure levels (Butler et al., 2003). Correlational studies support these laboratory findings. Individuals who typically use suppression repor t avoiding close relationships and having less positive relations with others this dovetails with peers reports that suppressors have relationships with others that are less emotionally close (English, John, Gross, 2013 Gross John, 2003 Srivastava, Tamir, McGonigal, John, Gross, 2009).And fighting your feelingsuses a lot of willpower. So afterwards you have less control and thats whyyoure more likely to do things you regretafter youre angrybad moods foster risk taking by impairing self-regulation instead of by altering subjective utilities. Studies 5 and 6 showed that the risky tendencies are limited to unpleasant moods accompanied by high arousal neither sadness nor neutral arousal resulted in destructive risk taking.(To learn how to win every argument, clickhere.)Now some of you might be saying, I knew bottling it up was bad You should let that angeroutWrong.Dont vent your angerSo you punch that pillow. Or yelland rant about the encounter to a friend.Not a good idea.Venting you r anger doesnt reduce it.Ventingintensifiesemotion.ViaHandbook of Emotion Regulationfocusing on a negative emotion will likely intensify the experience of that emotion further and thus make down-regulation more difficult, leading to lower adjustment and well-being.Sharing your feelings with others constructively is a good idea but getting it outtends to snowball your anger.What does work? Distracting yourself. But why would distraction help?Because your brain has limited resources.Thinking about something elsemeans you have less brainpower to dwell onthe bad stuffResearch suggests it is because both cognitive tasks and emotional responses make use of the same limited mental resources (Baddeley, 2007 Siemer, 2005 Van Dillen Koole, 2007) That is, the resources that are used to perform a cognitive task are no longer available for emotional processes. Accordingly, people can rid themselves from unwanted feelings by engaging in a cognitive activity, such as doing math equations (Van Dil len Koole, 2007), playing a game of Tetris ( Holmes, James, Coode-Bate, Deeprose , 2008)You know thatfamous marshmallow test?Experimenters put a kid alone in a room with a marshmallow. If the child can resist eating it, they get two marshmallows later. The kids who succeeded in waiting went on to achieve better grades and more success in life. (They also stayed out of jail.)Now this study has been covered a lot, but what they dont usually talk about ishowthe successful kids avoided temptation how they reduced those powerful emotions screaming, EAT THE MARSHMALLOW NOWThey distracted themselves.Walter Mischel, who led the famous study, explains.ViaThe Marshmallow Test Mastering Self-ControlSuccessful delayers created all sorts of ways to distract themselves and to cool the conflict and stress they were experiencing. They transformed the aversive waiting situation by inventing imaginative, fun distractions that took the struggle out of willpower they composed little songs (This is su ch a pretty day, hooray This is my home in Redwood City), made funny and grotesque faces, picked their noses, cleaned their ear canals and toyed with what they discovered there, and created games with their hands and feet, playing their toes as if they were piano keys.And this works with other hot emotions too - like anger.(To learnthe secrets of grit from a Navy SEAL, clickhere.)I know, I know when someone is yelling in your face its really hard to distract yourself. But theres a way to do this thats very easy and backed by neuroscience researchThe answer? ReappraisalImagine the scene again someone is screaming at you, one inch from your face.You want to scream back. Or even hit them.But what if I told you their mother passed away yesterday? Or that they were going through a tough divorce and just lost custody of their kids?Youd let it go. Youd probably evenrespond to their anger with compassion.What changed? Not the event. Situation is the same. Butthe story youre telling yoursel f about the event changed everything.As famed researcherAlbert EllissaidYou dont get frustrated because of events, you get frustrated because of your beliefs.Researchshows that when someone is exploding at you a good way to reappraise the situation and resist getting angry is simply to thinkIts not about me. They must be having a bad day.As one of the neuroscientists behind the studysaidIf youre trained with reappraisal, and you know your boss is frequently in a bad mood, you can prepare yourself to go into a meeting, Blechert suggested. He can scream and yell and shout but therell be nothing.When youchange your beliefs about a situation, yourbrain changes the emotions you feel.ViaYour Brain at Work Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day LongIn one of Ochsners reappraisal experiments, participants are shown a photo of people crying outside a church, which naturally makes participants feel sad. They are then asked to imagine the scene is a wedding, that people are crying tears of joy. At the moment that participants change their appraisal of the event, their emotional response changes, and Ochsner is there to capture what is going on in their brain using an fMRI. As Ochsner explains, Our emotional responses ultimately flow out of our appraisals of the world, and if we can shift those appraisals, we shift our emotional responses.Reappraisalworks for anxietytoo. Reinterpretingstress as excitementcan improve your performance on tests.And what happens in yourbrain?Your amygdala doesnt get worked up like it does with suppression. In fact, the little guy calms down.ViaHandbook of Emotion RegulationEvidence that reappraisal can directly influence this amygdala circuitry comes from consistent findings in positron emission tomographic (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of healthy individuals showing reappraisal-dependent decreases in amygdala activation in response to negative stimuli.As opposed to bottling up, when you tell yourself theyre having a bad day, angryfeelingsplummet and goodfeelings increase.ViaHandbook of Emotion RegulationBy contrast, experimental studies have shown that reappraisal leads to decreased levels of negative emotion experience and increased positive emotion experience (Gross, 1998a Feinberg, Willer, Antonenko, John, 2012 Lieberman, Inagaki, Tabibnia, Crockett, 2011 Ray, McRae, Ochsner, Gross, 2010 Szasz, Szentagotai, Hofmann, 2011 Wolgast, Lundh, Viborg, 2011), has no impact on or even decreases sympathetic nervous system responses (Gross, 1998a Kim Hamann, 2012 Stemmler, 1997 Shiota Levenson, 2012 Wolgast et al., 2011), andleads to lesser activation in emotion-generative brain regions such as the amygdala (Goldin et al., 2008 Kanske, Heissler, Schonfelder, Bongers, Wessa, 2011 Ochsner Gross, 2008 Ochsner et al., 2004) and ventral striatum (Staudinger, Erk, Abler, Walter, 2009).What about the social results?People who reappraise report bett er relationships - and their friends agree.ViaHandbook of Emotion RegulationReappraisal, by contrast, has no detectable adverse consequences for social affiliation in a laboratory context (Butler et al., 2003). Correlational studies support these findings Individuals who typically use reappraisal are more likely to share their emotions- both positive and negative- and report having closer relationships with friends, which matches their peers reports of greater liking (Gross John, 2003 Mauss et al., 2011).You know when youget angry and start telling yourself, Theyre out to get me They want to make my life miserableThats reappraisal too - in the wrong direction. Youre telling yourself a story thats evenworsethan reality. And your anger soars. So dont do that.As the infomercials always say, But wait theres more Reappraisal holds another big benefit remember how suppressionsapped self-control and made you do stuff you later regretted?Well, just like the kids in the marshmallow expe riment, reappraisal can increase your willpower and help you behave better after intense moments.Walter MischelexplainsThe marshmallow experiments convinced me that if people can change how they mentally represent a stimulus, they can exert self-control and escape from being victims of the hot stimuli that have come to control their behavior.(To learnthe secret to how to get people to like you - from an FBI behavior expert, clickhere.)Okay, lets wrap this up and learn the research-backed way to make sure that anger doesnt come backSum upHeres how to get rid of angerSuppress rarely.They may not know youre angry but youll feel worse inside and hurt the relationship.Dont vent.Communication is goodbut venting just increases anger. Distract yourself.Reappraisal is usuallythe best option.Think to yourself, Its not about me. They must be having a bad day.Sometimes someone gets under your skin and suppression is the only thing you can do to avoid a homicide charge.And sometimes reappraisal can cause you to tolerate bad situations you need to get out of.But that said, telling yourself a more compassionatestory about whats going on inside the other persons head is usually the best way to go.And whats the final step in getting rid of that anger over the long haul so you can maintain good relationships?Forgive.Its not for them, its for you. Forgiveness makes youless angry and more healthyTrait forgiveness was significantly associated with fewer medications and less alcohol use, lower blood pressure and rate pressure product state forgiveness was significantly associated with lower heart rate and fewer physical symptoms.Neither of these sets of findings were the result of decreased levels of anger-out being associated with forgiveness. These findings have important theoretical implications regarding the forgivenesshealth link, suggesting that the benefits of forgiveness extend beyond the dissipation of anger.As the old saying goesHolding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.So remember Theyre just having a bad day.Join over 215,000 readers.Get a free weekly update via emailhere.Related postsHow To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done 5 Expert TipsHow To Get People To Like You 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior ExpertNew Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More SuccessfulThis article originally appeared at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.