Teenage Girls – Dealing with Anger

It is quite normal for teenagers to feel angry with everything and everyone. During the teenage years. strong emotions are due to a combination of hormonal changes and the developmental stage of the brain. While annoying people will still exist when teenagers reach adulthood, their brains will be more mature, and they’ll better able to regulate their emotions. 

Stepping away from situations, whilst a good solution, isn’t always an option if the annoying person happens to be your form teacher, a sibling or classmate. As a teenager, you cannot reduce the irritability rating of others, so you will have to change how you deal with the situation or person.

Strategies that might help would include: –

1. Distracting yourself.

• Count ceiling tiles, count backwards from 100, or say the alphabet in reverse. The task being difficult enough to make you concentrate, and put some mental space between you and the aggravating situation. 
• Repeat a mantra silently to yourself: ‘This is irrelevant.’ ‘Who cares.’ ‘Bothered.’ ‘This isn’t helpful.’ 
• Find a new and engaging hobby. Perhaps something creative: cooking, designing houses or new fashions, knitting, sketching, drama or dance. Anything you can enjoy and get absorbed in that will stop you from ruminating about situations.
• Use the Arts. Write poetry to describe your feelings and then illustrate the poems. Take up art and paint or draw your emotions. Write short stories about the bad guys and how they get their come-uppance.

2. Using self-calming techniques.

• Calm your breathing. Breathe in slowly through your nose and out through your mouth, (smelling a flower, then blowing up a balloon) 
• Do something to raise your spirits. Apply a nice smelling hand lotion, or look at a photo of your pet or a special place you like to visit.

3. Participating in activities you enjoy to raise your general mood.

• Think about what you enjoy most and do more of it: reading, drawing, sport, listening to music or watching a feel-good film. 
• Plan treats for yourself for the evening or the weekend.
• Exercise will help to you to relax and improve the quality of your sleep. Go for a walk or a jog: the fresh air will calm you down. After you’ve exercised, your mind will be clearer, you’ll be calmer and more able to think of solutions to a problem. Try boxing or skipping to work off excess negative energy and tire you out. Martial Arts are good for developing emotional control and learning to keep calm, as well as providing a good physical work out. 
• Mindfulness and yoga are good for relaxation, de-stressing and keeping calm.

4. Developing positive friendships.

• Find your ‘tribe’: people who are like you, share your interests and who you enjoy spending time with. Make friends with individuals who are ‘radiators’ not ‘drains.’ Radiators will reflect warmth, kindness and fun, while drains are negative, moan and sap your energy. 
• How much do irritating people really matter? Will you still be friends with them after you’ve left school? Write letters to the people who annoy you most, explaining why they get on your nerves …… (but don’t give them the letters!!)
• Think what advice you would give your BFF if she was feeling angry, then give that advice to yourself.

5. Thinking about the biology of the situation.

• Are your emotions linked to your hormones?  It may be that feelings of anger are linked to your menstrual cycle. Levels of dopamine, (known as the happy hormone because of the way it affects a person’s mood), rise and fall during the menstrual cycle. Knowledge about the body makes changing emotions easier to understand and deal with.
• Seasonal Affective Disorder, (SAD), can make people feel unhappy in winter. As a result of the shorter days, the individual doesn’t get enough sunlight to boost their mood. Make sure you get outside during the day, and try to sit near a window as often as possible. Some people use a ‘light box’. This is a special lamp for use in the home that mimics sunlight. 
• Try to work out when and why you get cross. Are you tired or hungry, disappointed, embarrassed, frustrated? Could you help yourself by, for example, getting more sleep? Having a better diet? Should you take vitamin tablets to cover gaps in your diet? Would iron tablets compensate for heavy periods?
• When you get cross about something, check that you have understood the situation correctly and are not imagining that it’s worse than it is. There’s a support programme some people find useful called CBT, (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). CBT programmes aim to change your thinking from negative to positive. You’ll find CBT workbooks in most stationery / book shops.

6. Directing your anger in a useful direction.

• Use your anger to make change. Focus outside yourself on the problems experienced by others. If you feel something is unfair at school, start a petition, write a letter to the Head explaining why it’s unfair, what should be done and by whom. Direct your anger towards things that need to improve: litter in the playground, recycling, bullying, unfair detentions, uniform rules, supporting the under-dog generally. This may also put your own issues into perspective.

Anger can be used for the good when directed towards injustice, inequality, discrimination and prejudice. It is when anger is internalised or use inappropriately, that it becomes a destructive force.