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How do you know when you're angry?
When people become angry they can experience many different thoughts, feelings, and physical reactions. Some people experience strong feelings of resentment or hostility, raise their voice, curse, or throw things. Other people experience physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, and increases in heart rate and blood pressure. For some, angry feelings become so overwhelming they feel ready to explode. Others may not know they are angry about a situation but will feel physically ill, guilty, or will overreact to other situations. Listed below are some direct and indirect expressions of anger. Look through the list and see if you experience any of these thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.
Direct signs of anger: raised voice, yelling, cursing, headaches, stomach aches, tightness in the throat, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, clenched fists, threatening others, pushing, shoving, hitting, feeling violated, hostility, resentment, rage.
Indirect signs of anger: excessive sleeping, chronic fatigue, anxiety, numbness, depression, sulking, overeating, loss of appetite, crying, constant criticizing, mean or hostile joking, abuse of alcohol or drugs.
Many people experience these general signs of anger. First, identify which feelings you experience using the list above. Then, look at how your anger develops. There are some feelings and thoughts that occur when anger begins and those that occur as anger increases. In order to identify how your anger symptoms develop, it may be helpful to fill out an anger scale. This scale will help you identify your physical symptoms, thoughts and feelings when you first begin to feel angry and help you track how these change as your level of anger increases. In order to use the form, try to think of situations in the past where you have experienced anger and recall what feelings and symptoms you experienced. It will be helpful to think of situations where you experienced different levels of anger in order to better understand how your feelings, thoughts and physical symptoms change.
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