How to Stop Being Angry at Yourself and Others

Angry. Furious. Livid. Majorly pissed off.

You know how it feels in your body when you’re good and mad — your heart races, your muscles tighten, you may feel short of breath. That's the “fight or flight” reaction that rage is biologically designed to elicit, in order to protect us from danger, like someone coming at us swinging a baseball bat.

But in humans, anger is triggered by all sorts of situations that aren’t literally a threat to our physical safety, including when we feel frustration or impatience at being made to wait on hold forever, for instance, being betrayed by someone we trusted — or even politics.

It doesn’t feel good to be angry, and many people (especially women) think you need to figure out how to completely stop being angry. And it’s true that the long-term effects of anger on the body aren’t great — they can include headaches, anxiety, digestion problems, high blood pressure and more.

But not only is it impossible to completely prevent yourself from having this natural emotional response, anger isn’t always bad, say experts. The trick is to manage that feeling and control how you act on it.