Bottling up anger is unhealthy, it can be released through exercise, talking to someone and even writing about it, a sense of humour can sometimes help with putting things into perspective, a good belly laugh is a great release.

It is also important to work on assertiveness skills to enable yourself to speak up in a clear, confident, non-judgemental manner.

Here are some pointers to help you manage your anger:

• Take responsibility for your feelings and behaviour

• Know and understand your triggers:  This will help diffuse them, counselling can help with this.

• Be strong, stay calm:  You lose control when you lose your temper, it takes strength to control yourself. If you can interrupt an intense angry impulse within the first 2 seconds you can regain control of yourself.  Do you have a stance of ‘I need to win’ or ‘I’m the good guy, he’s the bad guy’?  Situations are rarely that black and white.  Plan what you will do to press the pause button when anger feels intense e.g. walk away, count to ten, distract yourself, think of something that calms you, keep quiet/bite your tongue.

• Know your physical signs of anger:  Notice when you begin to experience them and bring in your calming tactics.  What things might you try in order to stop your anger building from the early stages?  e.g. slow breathing, self talk- say calming words to yourself, exercise, talking to someone you trust, behave assertively

• Don’t allow yourself to be provoked:  As this allows the other person to control you, if someone is pushing your buttons detach yourself from what they are saying.

• Accept what you can’t change:  We can only change our own behaviour, we can communicate our perspective and feeling to others but we cannot control their behaviour.  If we don’t accept this it can lead to frustration.

• Loose the tunnel vision:  The longer you have been holding resentment or feeling victimised the more you are likely to have acquired ‘tunnel vision’ and need to look at the bigger picture in order to consider your difficulty more objectively. Don’t allow yourself to become consumed by anger that has built up, this can isolate you.  Talking can help you regain perspective.

• Notice your ‘Self talk’:  Beware of winding yourself up, by frequently going over the situation in your mind. This encourages ‘tunnel vision’. Mindfulness, noticing your thoughts and feelings and bringing yourself into the present moment, can help with this.

• Assertiveness:  If you are feeling justifiably angry towards someone who is in your working or personal life, communicate with them assertively and from the hurt/disappointed side of yourself : this encourages open communication and seeks to understand the other person’s perspective. Whereas communicating from your angry side can be hurtful, blaming and destructive to the relationship

• Exercise, relaxation and not taking yourself too seriously can also help you manage your anger

Image source: Monstrous Discrepancies

Which are often based on the belief that others are confident and are scrutinising us, noticing in particular any mistakes and keeping them ‘on file’. The reality is most people feel similarly, in varying degrees. While many are too busy focusing on themselves and not YOU, at worst they are aware of many others and not you alone. A client once illustrated this by telling me a story of budding amateur actor who was asked to go on stage and deliver two words: “It is!”. She became very self conscious about the thought of the audience looking at her but persisted to prepare her line, repeating the words “It is! It is! It is! It is!”. When the first showing of the play took place, she couldn’t shake the idea of being scrutinised by an audience who she fully expected to judge her harshly. She walked on stage and delivered the two words “Is It?”

Image source: Monstrous Discrepancies

Self talk is relevant here. We all have ‘voices in our head’. For people with issues around self worth this often takes the form of the self critic. In order to get a sense of the kind of self talk a client engages in, I often ask; if they stumbled as they were walking along a path, would they pause for a moment think “Oops”, maybe suffer a moment of embarrassment, and forget about it a minute later, or would they berate themselves for the rest of the day, calling themselves “cluts, stupid” etc., replaying it on and off, wondering who might have seen them?

The self critic is very destructive, imagine having someone constantly putting you down through your every movment, imagine how that would effect your mood, your behaviour, your relationships. Most are unaware of their self critic, it is only when we become aware that we can then begin to stand outside ourselves and gradually introduce the ‘fair judge’ as a counter voice to the critic. Not patting you on the back for your every move but considering the situation fairly.

We need to question our premise that “it’s ok for others to be flawed or mess up but I must be perfect” or “I’m unacceptable” , “it’s ok for others to talk socially about things that are not particularly interesting but if I’m to speak it must be worth hearing and well delivered”. Why make the rules be so different and punitive for yourself? Why not be kinder to yourself? Certainly you can choose to improve aspects of yourself and at the same time remember you are human, you are not supposed to be flawless. If you feel you don’t deserve it then this really needs to be looked at, with the fair judge in mind.

Some practical pointers to help you overcome social anxiety:

-Beware of using drink or drugs as a crutch. This dependence can lead to addiction.

-Let go of the high expectations of yourself. You don’t have to be interestING, just be interestED. Don’t feel you have to be entertaining, knowledgeable or accurate. If you speak up at all or even just show an interest in what’s happening in the social situation you are contributing. Really listen to what others say, it is often not that interesting or accurate and that’s OK, its the contribution that counts.

- Take your self focus and instead focus on others and the conversation and interactions. Focusing on yourself only reinforces your anxiety. It really is enough to be quiet and interested, people will notice the difference between someone who is quietly interested rather than quietly self absorbed and un-engaged in the conversation.

-Understand that your physical symptoms of anxiety are a result of a misinterpretation that the situation is (emotionally) threatening. It is just caused by the flight/fight response and is harmless. If someone notices you blushing or your voice shaking, they will forget it in an instant or at worst have a moment of concern for your shyness. They will not be lying awake that night thinking about it!

-Practice mindfulness and relaxation daily.

-Visualise yourself as comfortable and relaxed in social situations.

-It’s not all about you! Stop interpreting every sigh as evidence that others think you are boring, or every comment as meaning something negative about you. People are wrapped up in themselves and don’t have the energy to judge you the way you judge yourself.

-Notice when your ‘self critic’ comes into play and bring in a fair and balanced voice instead (it can help to think of what you would say to a friend) e.g. if I notice myself thinking ‘they will all think Im odd’ , the balanced, fair voice might say, ‘they are not focusing or thinking about me at worst they will notice that I am shy or quite and that won’t bother them’. Or the critic might say ‘if someone asks me a question I wont have the answer and they will think I am stupid’, whereas the fair, balanced voice would say ‘I could say that -”I can’t answer that question off the top of my head”- and that’s an acceptable response so no-one will think anything of it’

-Be kind to yourself, being to accept yourself. Check out this website for information and guided meditations for self-compassion http://self-compassion.org/

-Lighten up! Don’t take yourself too seriously. The best fun in social situations happens when we allow ourselves to be silly.

He realises that he is missing his jack and can’t change his tyre with out it. He sees a house a mile or so away and walks towards it in order to ask for a loan of a jack. During the walk Tom anticipates the unwanted disruption he will cause to the occupiers of the house. He begins to imagine how annoyed the ‘man of the house’ might be for being disturbed to answer the door to a stranger looking to borrow his property. Tom works himself up imagining how angry this man will be towards him about the inconvenience and intrusion of his request. When he reaches the house and knocks on the door, a man opens it, and Tom shouts at him “you can shove your f#($ing jack up your a***!”

I often tell this story to people who experience anxiety, as it illustrates so well what we do to ourselves. We build up all sorts of worst case scenarios, and in some cases contribute to a less desirable scenario by our behaviour, born out of our worst anticipations. Anxiety usually manifests itself physically as naseau or a knot in the stomach, loose bowels, a tightness or heaviness in the chest. Some people may experience headaches.

Mindfulness is widely used to help deal with anxiety. Bringing oneself into the moment enables us to hold back on creating negative images, thoughts and feelings about what already has happened, or might never occur. It can be very calming and grounding to simply be in the moment and to be present to the room, the action, the minute, that is with us at any time. The prayer of serenity is also useful to bear in mind, regardless of your beliefs, as it asks for courage to change what we can, serenity to accept what we cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Its important to recognise what we cannot alter or influence and no amount of worrying will help. Finding a way to accept or let go of this is important rather than tormenting ourselves.

Victims may become overwhelmed by emotions or with feeling unsafe and begin to push those emotions away. The unexpressed feelings then go ‘underground’ and are not being dealt with.

Victims of trauma usually find that the event gets replayed in their mind regularly. In many cases this will lessen significantly within a month. Talking through the incident many times and journaling about it can help.

People may hold anger about the incident or towards the perpetrator. Often this is energy that was frozen during the incident and didn’t get to be released. It is important to find healthy ways of discharging this anger,through physical activity, rather than turning it inwards or towards the people closest to you.

Sometimes victims of house break-ins feel almost as if a personal invasion has occurred, as a stranger has violated their ‘space’. This can lead the person to feel that the world is unsafe. It takes time to trust and to rebuild a feeling of security.

One of the biggest blocks to recovering is our own judgement of our feelings. Emotions usually have a way of working themselves out if we allow them to move through us. We tend to ‘get in our own way’, by suppressing or denying our feelings or ‘putting on a brave face’. We need to work through our anger or allow ourselves to cry. Sometimes, as shock moves through the body, we actually physically shake, this is perfectly normal.

There is a delicate balance between taking time to recover and removing ourselves too much from our daily routines and connections with the world. This will vary for each person. It can help to ask yourself what the healthiest option is for you.

If you have been the victim of a crime it is important that you allow friends and family to support you, engage in physical activity, talk to someone you trust, allow healthy emotional release, and be patient with yourself.

We looked at themes such as the ‘shoulds’ we have taken on from our own expectations of ourselves as mothers, and our interpretation of our environment/media/family/partner’s expectation of mothers. High achieving women who become mothers are often particularly inclined to put pressure on themselves to be ‘superwoman’, i.e. expecting to maintain more of their previous activities than is now practical with a small baby,e.g. keeping the house tidy, hosting dinner parties etc. Other areas covered were self esteem and sense of identity, relationship difficulties and stress management.

Many women find it difficult to voice their struggles. When they are asked “Are you delighted?” its hard to respond with “no, I’m sleep deprived, I don’t get a second to myself and sometimes I feel like I’m going to lose the plot”. So the feelings get buried and harder to deal with. Often there is delight in the new bundle of joy but this doesn’t negate the reality of the difficulties. It takes courage to say “I’m finding this really hard, I need some support”. Most of us are aware that caring for a baby is hard work, but the difficult emotional burden is often overlooked.

Many women in the group programme felt they could only speak about positive things in their coffee group. The most beneficial aspect of the group programme was for the participants to have a safe, supportive place to say when things were difficult, to realise there was nothing ‘wrong’ with them, that they were not alone in how they were feeling.