After two years of navigating a global pandemic, tensions are high. While conducting research for our book Big Feelings, we heard from readers who told us that they’d recently lost their cool over all kinds of seemingly small triggers: inconsistent WiFi, an email from their boss that just read “?,” or a coworker pinging them at 4:45 pm asking for a “quick favor.”
When we face chronic stress or trauma, our brain “rewires the rage circuits,” explains neuroscientist R. Douglas Fields. In other words, the sustained level of stress and fear you experience every day when you’re under pressure depletes your emotional resources, making you much more likely to get mad, even at minor provocations.
Our emotional outbursts can be upsetting, especially because we often receive messages that anger is harmful, irrational, and should be suppressed. But anger isn’t inherently bad (and suppressing it isn’t good for you or the people around you). In fact, if you know how to channel it, it can serve you. “Anger is pain’s bodyguard,” writes author David Kessler.
Take Pixar executive Brad Bird, who intentionally recruited frustrated animators to work on a new film because he believed they were more likely to change things for the better. The result? The Incredibles, a movie that broke box office records.
If you want to channel your anger in more positive ways, here are six things you can do.
Acknowledge that a violation took place.
We often try to immediately stamp out our feelings to avoid appearing upset. But if you’re hurt because of an unfair decision or made to feel unworthy because someone continuously excludes you (or worse), you’re allowed to feel unapologetically angry. Don’t immediately take your emotions out on another person, but acknowledge what you’re feeling. In fact, research shows that, when it’s justified, anger is a much healthier response than fear because it triggers feelings of certainty and control, which are less likely to lead to the adverse effects of stress like high blood pressure or high stress hormone secretion.