An excellent anger management practice is to keep a daily anger journal. This helps you become more familiar with how anger operates in your life, which ultimately will give you more control and anger management skill. Here’s what you do:

Take a notebook with you during the day and when you experience anger of any form, stop and make a note of it. Often the circumstances will make it impractical to do this, so if you are with people for example, wait until you are alone again and stop to make the note. Depending on how much focus and time you have in the moment, try to make a note of the following four factors:

1. What am I angry at?
Examples:
-I’m angry at the traffic
-I’m angry at myself for being late
-I’m angry at my coworker because they….to me.

2. Give the anger a number, a level of intensity from one to ten.

3. The trigger thoughts: What is the thought just below the surface of the anger, what is behind it? This one may not be easy to see at first. Examples:
-Being stuck in traffic makes me feel so helpless.
-I’m sick and tired of always having to work at a job I can’t stand.”
-I hate it when I’m treated this way. It makes me feel rejected. 

4. Where in my body do I feel the anger. Examples: I feel the anger in my chest, in my head right behind my eyes, in my guts.

Then, each day take two minutes at the end of the day and transfer the notes from the notebook into your anger journal. In the anger journal have four columns with the four headings.

This rewriting of the anger notes into a journal is an important step because it gives you a chance to view the anger when you are not wrapped up in it. It helps you see your anger with more perspective and clarity. Also rewriting it deepens  your awareness simply from the fact of the repetition.

Keeping an anger journal can be a powerful way for you to gain knowledge of your anger. This knowledge greatly facilitate your anger management skills by giving your more power to change your state of mind.

By Craig Mollins