By now, you’ve probably already heard that meditation can help deal with anger issues. While this sounds promising on its face, it’s understandable if you wonder whether or not there is any tangible, scientific proof to back it up. So really, are there any scientific ways in which meditation can help with anger issues?
Meditation can help deal with anger issues by reducing the amount of cortisol in the body and promoting positive physiological changes. The reduction in cortisol usually translates into a reduction in stress–one of the biggest causes of anger issues. Further, a person’s mindset changes as well.
If you’re considering meditation as a way of dealing with your anger issues, or you are just curious and want to know more about how it works, this is the article for you. In our guide below we will demonstrate that there is scientific evidence meditation helps with anger issues, and then describe how it does so. We’ll even give you some tips to get your practice started!
Table of Contents
Does Meditation Help Anger Issues?
Meditation certainly has a major impact on anger issues, as it does with most other emotional regulatory issues. Meditation is known to reduce the stress that causes anger, promote positive thinking, and even help with emotional processing.
How Does Meditation Help With Anger Issues Generally?
Meditation helps with anger issues in a number of different ways. From allowing you to observe and understand your feelings of anger, to reducing your likelihood of reacting impulsively, meditation can act as a powerful tool.
To make things easy, we’ve outlined some of the biggest ways that meditation can help with anger issues below:
- Meditation allows you to observe your anger: You may have heard practitioners of various forms of meditation say that they use it to observe their thoughts without judgment. The same can be done with your emotions as well. By removing yourself from and observing your anger, you will be better equipped to process it.
- Meditation helps you process anger: Going hand-in-hand with the last point is emotional processing itself. Meditation is known to help its practitioners process difficult or unwanted emotions like anger.
- Meditation increases your awareness of your anger: Sometimes we can carry around repressed anger without even knowing it. Though we don’t know we have it, it affects our outlook and behavior. Meditation allows you to tune into yourself in a deep and unique way. Studies have proven that meditation increases emotional intelligence.
- Meditation gives you tools to deal with anger: You’re always going to experience anger from time to time regardless of whether you meditate. Still, with meditation, you will be equipped with the tools to pause and disconnect from your anger so you can view it and deal with it appropriately.
In our section on scientific ways that meditation helps with anger, we will get into more detail on the mechanisms that allow it to work so well.
What Causes Anger or Angry Feelings?
The specific root of angry feelings isn’t always easy to pinpoint. Still, there are some common triggers that can cause a person to have unwanted–or maybe in some cases, wanted–feelings of anger.
Below, we’ve outlined some of the most common triggers of anger or angry feelings so you can know what to watch out for:
- Blatant or subtle disrespect: Nobody is happy when they are disrespected. Whether it’s your boss at work or a family member at home, people disrespecting you can easily trigger an anger response.
- Past Trauma: Past trauma can rise to the surface in the form of anger. This can be quite severe as it is often accompanied by rumination–a process where you can’t get your mind off the negative thoughts.
- Injustice: Whether the injustice is being committed to ourselves or others, it can easily enrage us and set off an anger response.
- Stress: It’s not uncommon for stress to lead someone into momentary bursts of rage or slow burning anger.
- Tested Patience: If you’ve ever had someone give you an ear beating on a topic you didn’t care about, you likely know what this kind of anger feels like. This type of anger can sometimes lead us to also feel shame because we don’t believe it is warranted.
- Under appreciation: If you give it your all at work or at home but you’re never shown any appreciation, it’s not hard to see why you would feel angry.
At the end of the day, the threadline that runs through all of these triggers is a feeling of being threatened. It can be something as small as the threat against your time when someone is testing your patience, to a literal threat in the case of trauma or injustice.
How Do I Get Rid of Anger During Meditation?
So now that we’ve got a good grasp on anger and what causes it, let’s see if we can’t figure out what to do about it. So, how do you get rid of anger during meditation?
Well, there are several meditation methods that have proven successful in getting rid of–or at least managing–anger. These range from
3 Scientific Ways Meditation Helps with Anger Issues
As we stated in our intro, there are plenty of science-based ways that meditation can help with anger. Meditation has been studied as far back as we’ve been doing studies. It has existed in some form in nearly every culture around the world. Therefore, we know through science not only that it works but now how it works as well.
Below we’ve outlined three different ways that meditation can help with anger issues and how exactly everything works:
Meditation Has Been Scientifically Shown to Help Develop Self-Awareness
Think about one of the times that you were at your angriest. Did you really feel like you had self-control in that moment when the anger reached its peak? Perhaps you snapped at a spouse, co-worker or friend. Not necessarily in a big way, but you were cuter than you should have been.
When things like this end most people feel regret and wish they hadn’t snapped. It’s almost like their body was taken over briefly by another personality.
The way to combat this, and thus reduce your anger, is to have good self-awareness. Scientific studies have found that people who practice mindfulness meditation, score higher on measures of self-awareness.
The newfound self-awareness you get from meditation, will, therefore, be a powerful tool in dealing with your anger appropriately.
Meditation Has Been Scientifically Shown to Reduce Stress
As we stated in our section on what triggers anger, stress is a big factor. Think about it. Have you ever been really stressed out, had something minor happen, and immediately felt angry about it? It’s really an experience we can all relate to unless we have extraordinary luck.
High levels of the hormone cortisol correlate heavily with the amount of stress we feel. While it’s definitely an oversimplification to say cortisol is the stress hormone, it’s an okay and easy way to think about it for simplicity’s sake.
Studies have shown that practicing mindfulness meditation, actually lowers the amount of cortisol you have in your blood. This not only protects you from feeling as much stress, but it also lowers your risk for all kinds of maladies like migraines, inflammation and certain types of ulcers.
Once you begin to receive the positive effect of lower cortisol levels, a domino effect takes place. Because you’re less stressed, you’ll be far less likely to snap into anger if something you don’t expect happens. For many people, the simple reduction in stress massively affects how long and how often they feel angry or like snapping at people.
Meditation Has Been Scientifically Shown to Increase Positive Emotion
It’s hard to be angry when you are filled with compassion and positive emotions. If you haven’t felt that way in a long time, using meditation to finally feel that way again will be almost magical to you.
There are now well over a dozen studies that have found that those who practice meditation develop a better self-image and more kindness and compassion towards others.
When you are more compassionate and kind, you are more likely to be forgiving. Being able to let go of past problems is huge in diffusing your anger. You’ll come to realize how much of anger is really just us taking what was supposed to be a momentary feeling and clinging onto it so it sticks around.
Which Meditation should I try first to help with anger? (... use walking nature mindfulness meditation)
While we’d certainly invite you to explore all kinds of different meditation techniques, there is one that is especially good for dealing with anger issues. This type of practice is called “walking nature mindfulness meditation.”
This type of mindfulness meditation will have you feeling like Henry David Thoreau himself. It involves taking long nature hikes where you focus on your walking the same way you focus on your breathing or a mantra in other types of meditation.
One of the biggest benefits of doing this kind of meditation when you’re struggling with anger is that you don’t have to sit or lay still. The movement alone can really help you zone in (or zone out depending on how you look at it) and stay in the present moment.
How to Practice Walking Nature Mindfulness Meditation
So how exactly do you practice this kind of mindfulness meditation? Well, there isn’t one right way to do it. Rather there are guidelines to enhance your experience and allow you to get more out of the practice.
Below we’ve outlined a few tips to help you practice walking nature mindfulness meditation more successfully:
- Focus on walking to stay in the present: With mindfulness meditation, you want to keep your awareness in the present moment as long as possible. One technique to do this is to really focus on your walking. Notice how you’re walking, the effort you put in, and the feeling of your feet as they touch the ground.
- Take advantage of your senses: Don’t be afraid to stop along the way and take in the beautiful natural view. In fact, you can use more senses than just sight to engage your mind in the present moment. You could stop and touch things, take in the scent of the trees and flowers, listen to the rustle of leaves or even eat a snack.
- Stop and use your peripheral vision: There are exercises that have you expand your focus to your peripheral vision without moving your eyes. This has the effect of really focusing your mind on the present moment and it helps you to feel less distracted. Doing this with natural scenery is not only beautiful but effective as well.
- Stay observant: Overall, the best way to keep yourself grounded in the present moment is to stay observant of everything around you. Try not to have any judgments over what you see, but instead just allow it to wash over you so you can note the way it makes you feel.
Using mindfulness meditation on your nature walks will not only make it easier for you to meditate, but it will also make it easier to form into a habit. If you can regularly force yourself to go to your local nature trail it will quickly become a part of your routine. Remember, meditation is most effective when it’s practiced over a period of time.
Final Thoughts
Practicing meditation is a fantastic way to address your underlying anger issues. Through it you will develop a better self-image by really exploring yourself, which will lead to more compassion and forgiveness towards others instead of anger. Additionally, you will feel less stressed and on edge, leading to even less anger.
This has been scientifically shown through the meta-analysis of countless studies. Some studies prove that meditation is effective by demonstrating the effects on hormones in the brain, while others try to measure people’s emotional responses to stimuli. At the end of the day, they all really prove one thing; meditation is a tool for dealing with anger issues everyone should have.
Check out this article to learn the tips to help get better at meditation.
