How to Manage Anger and Stress

angry woman with crossed arms sitting on couch

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Learning to manage stress and anger is a key life skill because these big feelings can affect us in negative ways—from our mental well-being to our physical health. Anger and stress management skills can help us handle our emotions in ways that support us and protect our relationships with others.

Let’s talk about how anger and stress are linked and the steps you can take to manage the stress and anger in your life more effectively.

At a Glance

Anger and stress can feed into each other—being stressed out can make you angry, and being angry about something can stress you out. There are strategies you can use to learn how to cope more effectively with both of these feelings.

What Anger and Stress Do to You

It’s probably no surprise that strong feelings like anger can negatively affect your mental health, but studies have shown that they also affect your physical well-being. Research has found that even a brief bout of anger can raise your blood pressure, and being exposed to stress for a long time also increases your risk of high blood pressure.

Having high blood pressure can lead to health problems down the road, like raising your chances of having a heart attack. Studies have also suggested that when we “push down” anger, it can affect our bodies. For example, we might actually feel more physical pain.

Researchers have also seen how chronic stress can cause physical changes in our bodies, like high cortisol or adrenaline levels, which can lead to health problems over time.

Anger and stress that are not being addressed and managed don’t just wear down our bodies—they also wear us out mentally. Over time, feeling these intense feelings and not dealing with them effectively can make us more likely to experience depression and anxiety and can also have a negative effect on our relationships.

We can also develop negative habits as a response to excessive levels of anger and stress that become more difficult to control over time. Either of these effects can result in more anxiety.

Think about how anger and stress play out in your life. Does it feel like a vicious circle? It can be hard to unravel the loop of anger and stress because these feelings often feed into each other. You get angry, and it stresses you out, and then feeling stressed out makes you angry.

That said, the goal is not to avoid anger and stress completely. It’s impossible to never have these feelings, and we all go through them. The key is to learn how to manage them in ways that support your mental and physical well-being and protect your relationships. 

Take the Anger Test

This short, free 21-item test measures a variety of symptoms and feelings associated with anger, such as anger about the present and future, anger towards the self, and hostile feelings toward others.

This anger quiz was medically reviewed by Rachel Goldman, PhD, FTOS.

What Triggers Stress and Anger?

There are a lot of things in life that can make you feel angry and stressed, often at the same time. There are also certain things about you as an individual that can make you more or less likely to get stressed and/or angry.

How You See the World

Some events can easily trigger anger or stress in anyone, but how much of an influence they have on you depends on your perspective—how you see and interpret the world.

For example, two people can be cut off in traffic. One person might interpret the gesture as a lack of respect, a threat to their physical safety, or a hostile gesture. This situation makes them angry. Another person may figure that the offending driver didn't see them or might be wrapped up in their own thoughts and let the event roll off their back.

The different reactions each person had depended on their view, or interpretation, of the triggering event (stimulus).

Your Personality

Some people have personality traits they were born with or developed very early in life that make them more likely to feel anger and stress. Some of these tendencies are seen early in life, but these tendencies can be mitigated.

  • Some people are naturally more observant than others. This trait can make them more likely to notice things that might make them angry—things that may go unnoticed by someone else.
  • Some people are naturally less comfortable with change, which can also cause stress and anger in certain situations.
  • Other people have a low tolerance for frustration and get angrier more easily than others. 

Your Thoughts and Attitudes 

Our habitual thought patterns also contribute to our experience of anger or stress. Some people tend to interpret things negatively as a matter of habit. They may attribute someone else’s error to malicious or unkind motives, for example. They may take one negative event as a sign that more negative events are to come, which can cause more stress. They may even become bitter and resentful if they feel like the world is "out to get them."

Your Overall Health

If you live with a chronic illness, especially chronic pain, you probably don’t need to hear that research has shown it can be a lot harder to deal with life’s stresses when you’re trying to manage symptoms 24/7.

Living with a chronic illness or being in chronic pain can make even typical stressors and triggers feel a lot harder to manage. That’s why it’s even more important that you make stress and anger management part of your treatment plan, no matter what illness you’re dealing with.

While it can be easy to forget about the wellness of your mind when you’re so focused on what’s going on in the rest of your body, don’t let your mental health take a back seat.

There are even some expected variations in your health that can be triggers for anger and stress—hormonal shifts are a common example. If you’ve ever felt like your fuse is super short right before your period, you know this. Intense anger that’s related to changes in your menstrual cycle can even be a sign of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).

Anger and Stress Management Skills 

Anger and stress are natural experiences that we all go through. It’s how we deal with these feelings and what triggers them that determines the effect they have on us.

We can’t always prevent stressful events from happening. Learning to manage stress with steps like breathing exercises, journaling, or other stress management techniques helps us neutralize the effects.

We also can’t always avoid getting angry—in fact, pushing down anger and trying to ignore it is not helpful and can even be harmful. Instead, we can learn to work through our anger in helpful ways.

We can learn how to respectfully express how we feel and prevent it from snowballing into bigger feelings we can’t control. Learning how to use assertive rather than aggressive communication can help us make sure that the conversations we have with others are productive and supportive.

Asking for Help

You don’t have to try to manage stress and anger alone. Working with a mental health professional can help you learn to identify what triggers these feelings and figure out how to manage them.

Learning new coping skills, finding supportive ways to express yourself, and discovering strategies that help you handle your emotions can improve your physical and mental well-being, as well as your relationships with others.

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Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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By Elizabeth Scott, PhD
Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.