Anger: The guest that won't leave

Say you’re waiting in your car at a red light. It turns green. You start to go, when another car zips through the intersection, running their red light and nearly taking off your front end. Now you’re angry. How long does it take for you to cool down?

If you take a long time to cool off from anger, you may be doing one of two things: rehearsing or elaborating.

Rehearsing refers to playing out situations in your mind in which you act upon your anger. You tell the person off. You make cutting remarks. You scream. You might even exact revenge in creative ways. None of this actually happens, but it’s all very real inside your head.

What happens to your anger level while you’re imagining these elaborate scenes? Most likely, it’s on the way up. It’s only natural for your anger to intensify, or at least gain staying power, if you’re keeping it around in your thoughts. After all, you’re rehearsing for anger, and we tend to get better at what we rehearse.

Another mental activity that keeps anger around is elaborating. After getting angry at someone you know, have you ever found yourself thinking of every thing you don’t like about that person? Or you might make a mental list of every time they made you mad in the past. The current issue may even be forgotten by the time you’re through. In any case, you’ve just given yourself a lot more reasons to be angry.

Trying to stop rehearsing or elaborating altogether is a lofty goal, but there are ways to cut back. Using ideas from anger management self-help books, working with a therapist, and practicing mindfulness can all make a big difference. Just becoming aware of when you’re engaging in either of these activities can help. And when you’re able to shorten your cool-off time, just think of the extra time and energy you can devote to things that matter more to you than that person who just ran a red light.