How to Keep Yourself from Bursting Out of Anger

After bursting out of anger many times, I searched for ways to prevent myself from saying or doing things out of anger again.

I read books and reflected on my experiences. In the next few minutes, I’ll share with you what I learned and what worked for me.

First, let me tell you a quick story.

The Ulysses’ Contract

After winning the Trojan War, Ulysses, King of Ithaca, wanted nothing more than to go home and hug his wife and son, who both thought he’s already dead.

But the journey home wasn’t easy.

One of the trials he faced on his way home was passing by the deadly island of the sirens. The song of sirens killed thousands of sailors who had heard it. It turned the sailors insane that they steered toward the shore and crashed to their deaths.

But despite knowing about the danger, Ulysses wanted to hear the song.

So his crew, following his order, tied his hands to the ship’s mast and filled their ears with beeswax to shield themselves from the song.

Ulysses’ plan succeeded.

He and his crew passed by the island safely. He arrived home, united with his wife and son, and became the only man to hear the sirens’ song and lived to tell the tale.

This scene from Homer’s Odyssey, a poem written 700 years BCE, inspired one of modern behavioral science’s techniques for self-restraint: The Ulysses Contract.

Protect Yourself with Ulysses’ Contract

Ulysses foresaw that his future self would be enchanted by the Sirens and act insanely that would lead to his death.

By binding his hands to the mast, he restrained himself against future danger.

In our lives, we also have moments when we’re prone to making bad decisions. These are usually moments when strong emotions override reason. In her book, Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke calls these moments of heightened emotional state as tilt.

Annie Duke writes, “If you blow some recent event out of proportion and react in a drastic way, you’re on tilt.”

If we’re angry, we’re on tilt. It means we’re most susceptible to making decisions we may regret later on.

I’ve made terrible decisions in the past out of anger. Many times I acted on impulses to fight back and did things I wish I never did.

So after I learned about the Ulysses contract last year, I created ‘drills’ to calm myself when angered.

Some Ulysses’ contracts to tame anger

Here are some of Ulysses’ contracts I know from years of reflecting on what works for me and learning what works for some people.

1. Tie your tongue.

This is really hard. I failed to follow this many times, but when I started to be more intentional about it, I became better at doing it.

I remind myself of this quote:

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

-Ambrose Bierce

Cliché it may be. But it’s handy, memorable, and does the work — reminds me the horror of my emotional outburst in the past.

2. Keep distance.

When our anger intensifies, we change our focus from wanting to feel understood to wanting to win the war of who’s right or wrong. And as emotions reach their peak, we no longer just want to win, but we also want to make the other person suffer.

Every word and gesture can be misunderstood, which can then trigger our suppressed emotions to explode. We’ve been there. And it was ugly and will always be ugly.

If we keep our distance, we can cool the situation down by stop fueling it any further.

And besides, we don’t need to exercise willpower not to hurt someone’s feelings if that someone is not present in the first place.

3. Take 20 deep breaths.

When we’re enraged, blood flow increases to other parts of our body that are responsible for the fight and flight response such as the arms and legs. As the arms and legs get more blood, the brain gets less.

Because our ability to reason narrows down as our brain gets less oxygen, we are more likely to make terrible choices, choices we wouldn’t make in our normal state.

Taking deep breaths can help us deliver more oxygen to our brain, which results in a calmer mood.

4. Release strong emotions through writing.

Sometimes when I want to release extreme emotion — like anger — I pour my thoughts on paper. I don’t censor myself. I just keep my hands moving.

This allows me to say what I want to say without hurting other people.

As Anne Frank once wrote,

“Paper is more patient than people.”

As I release my feelings on paper, as I go deeper with what I feel, I feel lighter and calmer and better.

A heavy emotion is like a burning coal we grip in our hands. If we release our grip, the burning coal rolls and falls. It means the extreme emotion we feel isn’t what holds onto us, but us holding on to it.

5. The ‘10–10–10’ Strategy

This strategy, developed by Suzy Welch, uses the power of regret in advance to restrain ourselves.

It creates a moment that disrupts our tendency to act on impulses so we can no longer become reactive to our emotions.

We just ask this simple question…

• What are the consequences of my actions in ten minutes? In ten months? In ten years?

Or, this…

• How would I feel today if I had made this decision ten minutes ago? Ten months ago? Ten years ago?

Regret can’t change what has already happened. But if we can channel the feeling of regret before we make a decision instead of after, we are more likely not to give in to the impulse to act out of anger.

Create Your Ulysses’ Contract

You can make your own Ulysses’ contracts.

Is there a time when you feel like bursting out of anger, but you’ve successfully restrained yourself?

What did you do? Recall those times. Write down what you did that cooled your flames.

And decide a specific action you can do in times of tilt.

“Next time, when I feel like bursting out of anger, I will…”

Ulysses contract is not perfect

But binding our hands in times of tilt can disrupt our automatic response to fight back.

So instead of acting on impulses, we stop and think and consider the consequences of our in-the-moment decisions.

Ulysses’ contract may not completely bind our hands to the mast. It may not prevent us from making irrational decisions every time. We may still be tempted. We may sometimes lose our cool.

But it will happen less often.

This article first appeared here.