Cookie Settings
Our website may need to store or retrieve information on your browser in the form of cookies. Used mainly to make the site work as needed & give you a more personalized web experience, this information might be about you, your preferences, or your device. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different cookie settings below to learn more and to manage your preferences. Please note that blocking some cookie types can impact your site experience & the services we're able to offer.
Advertising Cookies(?)
Enables storage related to advertising
Analytics Cookies(?)
Enables storage related to analytics (for example, visit duration, page views, etc)
Functional Cookies(?)
Enables storage that supports the functionality of the website or app such as language settings
Personalization Cookies(?)
Enables storage related to personalization such as video recommendations
Security Cookies(?)
Enables storage related to security such as authentication functionality, fraud prevention, and other user protection
Strictly Necessary(?)
REQUIRED: Allows our website to function correctly and cannot be disabled. For login authentication, form submission, basic security, admin, hosting, etc
Confirm My Choices
Accept All Cookies
Cancel
141 Meditation Benefits FAQ Testimonials Order Now Contact Health & Body Brain Power Mind Power Happiness Mental Health Login
Free Demo / Newsletter
Go Back
How Meditation Dissolves Anger, Frustration, & Stress – EOC Institute

How Meditation Dissolves Anger, Frustration, & Stress

The Ultimate Guide To Mastering Anger

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

We all know it. We have all felt it. Anger. For those of us with anger issues, our health, our work, our relationships, and our whole quality of life are under the thumb of one supreme ruler.

Luckily meditation remedies the mental, emotional, and physiological factors underlying anger. We discuss a few of them here.

"Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it." — Charles Swindoll

Tip: Use the links below to quickly navigate down the page:

Meditation & The Physiology Of Anger: Prefrontal Cortex

"Meditation is the blossoming of the prefrontal cortex to overcome the momentum of nature." — Amit Ray

How To Deal With Anger Problems Through Meditation

Hacking Anger. No longer are we cavemen. We have evolved. Other than being taller and less hairy, what's the biggest difference, the clearest dividing line between ancient man and modern man? The brain. And if we had to choose one region specifically, the clear winner would be our thought orchestrating, higher level thinking "prefrontal cortex." That's the biggest difference.

We've always been taught that certain things can't be changed. You can't move a mountain. You can't drain the ocean. You can't change your brain.

But science has proven otherwise. You CAN change your brain... through the power of "Neuroplasticity!" If you want to be a smarter, happier, and healthier person, then finding a way to train the "Einstein-like" prefrontal cortex is critical. Luckily, meditation is evolution’s secret cheat code, the very best way to catapult your brain into the future. One where anger is obsolete.

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

A landmark 2005 study by Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Sara Lazar found that meditators' prefrontal cortexes had an incredible amount of what scientist call "thickness," "folds," and overall "surface area." You know how pushups build up your chest, triceps, and shoulders? Meditation does the same for your brain.

Evolving Beyond Anger. Moreover, the study found that the participants' measurables for higher level thinking, raw intelligence (IQ), emotional well-being, psychological balance, and happiness were off the charts. Kind of hard to be angry when so many things are going your way? Above and beyond, the implications of this finding are immense, reaching far and wide.

"You will not be punished for your anger,
you will be punished by your anger."
 — Buddha

The Physiology Of Anger: Fight Or Flight Mode

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." — Mark Twain

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

From Ancient To Modern. With "caveman" on the nightly dinner menu, our ancestors often went face to face with hungry lions, tigers, and bears.

Back then, if we failed to show proper aggression, be it using our weapon, screaming at the top of our lungs, looking real mean and scary, throwing rocks, or whatever else our ancient neanderthal brethren did to ward off enemies — then we could quickly find ourselves on the wrong end of a Thanksgiving feast.

Obviously, a certain amount of anger was essential to our ancestors' everyday survival. The problem is, in this day and age, we no longer face life or death situations. Yet, we are still wired much like cavemen.

"Be careful with your words. Once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten." — Carl Sandburg

Depression And Anger

We Aren't Cavemen Anymore. Modern man doesn’t really need his fear center activated at the drop of a pin. We don’t need noradrenaline stress hormones pumping through our veins because this month’s electricity bill is twice what it should be. Our jobs, relationship problems, and money struggles shouldn't evoke flight or flight biochemical reactions. Nor should we be lashing out at our friends, family, and colleagues like they're a pack of prehistoric sabertooths.

Luckily, by supercharging our futuristic "prefrontal cortex" and dramatically reducing our "fight or flight" stress hormones (like cortisol), meditation provides a kind of "instant evolution" to our "anger-prone" caveman physiology.

"It's not the load that breaks you down. It's the way you carry it." — Lou Holtz

How To Control Anger: Perspective

"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." — Dr Wayne Dyer

Ways To Control Anger

"My flight is cancelled. This is the worst case scenario. Absolutely terrible. Why do bad things always seem to happen to me?"

The Sky Is Falling. Some people with anger issues are masters at being overly dramatic, blowing things out of proportion, exaggerating the mundane, while sweating the little things. Luckily, meditation gives us a much broader perspective.

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it." — Mary Engelbreit

Resistance Makes The Mind Grow. Like an Olympic hurdler, learning to overcome life's obstacles forces us to grow. The most successful people are those that learn to navigate turbulent waters — coming from rough neighborhoods, dysfunctional families, disadvantaged backgrounds, you name it. When channeled intelligently, the darkness you face only brightens your future.

Signs Of Anger Issues

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." — Winston Chruchill

When getting angry, jaded, or quitting is not an option, you start to believe. Belief in whatever you are doing unlocks the power of your subconscious mind — which then guides you to your goal via intuition. Keeping a clear meditative mindset will help you find the greatness within (and the anger without).

"The right perspective makes the impossible. Possible." — Unknown

Meditation & The Physiology Of Anger: Amygdala & Cortisol

"Bad news sells because the amygdala is always looking for something to fear." — Peter Diamandes

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

Quieting The Caveman Brain. Contained within the temporal lobes of the brain are two almond shaped groups of nuclei called the "amygdala." Serving as the brain's "fear center," overactivity within this region increases our likelihood of having an anger disorder 100 fold. Luckily, you don't have to succomb to the impending doom that the human mind so often generates.

"I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life, a few of which actually happened." — Mark Twain

A Harvard University study brain scanned freshly minted meditators before and after an 8 week mindfulness class. What did they find? Amazingly, the meditators "fear center" amygdalae were far less active, sending almost no "distress signals" to the rest of the brain. Meditation had effectively forced the brain to upgrade its long outdated "caveman software," while cooling off the often overheated temper-tantrum-linked hardware.

How To Control Anger Outbursts

Canceling Angry Hormones. Do you have anger issues? Then your system is likely oozing with cortisol, a major age-accelerating hormone which is released in abundance when we're stressed out.

Excess cortisol in our system can lead to a slew of problems: brain-fog, tissue break-down, good hormone blockage, insomnia, anxiety, depression — we can go on. Too much cortisol is clearly bad news, double that for people battling anger issues.

What if there was a way to reduce this nasty hormone? You can! A Rutgers University study found that, after practicing for only a couple of weeks, meditation dramatically reduced (by more than 50%!) the body's main stress hormone "cortisol." What does this mean? By "squeezing out" our body's main anger biochemical, meditation directly impacts how we think, feel, and react in every situation. The result? No more angry outbursts.

"Lower your cortisol. The happiest people have the lowest levels of cortisol.  — Daniel Gilbert

In the end, quicker than a light switch, meditation's brain & biochemical transformations put to bed our "caveman within." In turn, we become a far happier person, while staying cool, calm, and collected even if the world around us is in total chaos. Anger begone.

How To Control Anger: Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

"IQ gets you hired. EQ gets you promoted." — Time Magazine

Decades ago, most agreed that it was raw intelligence (IQ) that predicted whether or not we ultimately became successful in our respective field of work.

Anger Management Through Mindfulness Meditation

EQ Instead Of IQ. Got a perfect SAT score? You'll become a CEO. You can memorize 1000 digits of Pi? Get promoted to University Chancellor. Solve a rubix cube in 10 seconds? Your name is etched on the NASA Administrator’s door. Does this happen in the real world? No.

Today, we know better. It's not the egg-heads that make it to the top of their fields. How high we can reach and how far we can go in the world has a much more accurate indicator. It's Emotional intelligence (EQ) — as scientists have shown again and again. And meditators have EQ in oodles. But before we get to that, what kind of characteristics do high EQ folks display?

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

Characteristics Of Emotional Intelligence. People with advanced emotional intelligence have mastered both work and play. They tend to have prosperous careers, lots of friends, and highly fulfilling relationships. They are very often generous, motivated, empathic, with the capacity and willingness to love and be loved.

And they are not angry. Think of the most successful people that you know. How many of them would you define as being prone to anger? High emotional intelligence and anger have an inversely proportional relationship. More EQ equals less anger. Very simple.

How To Relieve Anger Disorders

Building EQ Through Meditation. Luckily, your emotional intelligence is not set in stone. Like doing curls to strengthen your biceps, there are certain things you can do to build up your EQ. Perhaps the very best way of all? Meditation.

From targeting the very brain region (temporoparietal junction) associated with high EQ, to increasing your self understanding and awareness, to melting away years of layered anxiety & depression, to becoming in tune with reading people's vibes, facial expressions, and body language — meditation is the very best way to fill your EQ to the brim (while emptying out the anger).

"Anybody can be come angry. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, in the right way... is not easy." — Unknown

How To Control Anger: Making The Impossible, Possible

"We can't solve our problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create them." — Albert Einstein

When life throws you an anger-inducing unhittable curveball, meditation can help in two main ways:

Managing Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

#1 — Meditation Helps You Handle The Impossible. First, if the solution is undefined or doesn’t exist, then meditation will make you far more emotionally balanced to properly deal with it.

For example, on your drive home, you get blindsided by a drunk driver. You survive, but the doctor couldn't save your left leg, below the knee. Barring some kind of scifi limb generating technology, being physically whole again ain't gonna happen.

You could play the victim. After all, you are the victim! You could become bitter, jaded, hate your life. People have given up for a lot less, that's for sure. Your anger could spiral out of control, making you a shell of your former self.

Going Above & Beyond. Or, you could raise your consciousness. Instead of piling up more and more frustration, day after day, you could reset it in meditation. You can roll back the odometer on your anxiety, depression, and frustration, whenever you wish.

Instead of living your life in the mental gutter, you could transcend the experience. You could use it as a springboard to go higher and further than you ever dreamed possible.

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

A new career helping amputees maybe? Perhaps leverage that insurance settlement money into a passionate business venture? Go back to school? Maybe get into counseling or therapy? After all, who has more street-cred than the one-legged happy guy?

The point is that meditation puts your level of thought above anger, even for people going through highly traumatic experiences. There are a million ways to overcome just about anything, perhaps even inspiring others along the way. Meditation unlocks this high level mindset.

Coping Skills For Anger

#2 — Meditation Helps You In Solving The Possible. Second, if the hurdle blocking your path can somehow be overcome, then meditation will arm you with the mental toolkit to do so.

For example, your lazy coworker, who just so happens to be engaged to the CEO's daughter — just got promoted to the job you have slaved toward over the last 7 years.

You could get angry and frustrated, put in your resignation, throw a stapler at your boss, maybe go postal. While you may not act on these thoughts, it's certainly normal to be angry in a situation like this.

They say that great athletes' brainwaves drop into a calm "alpha" state" when under pressure. For example, kicking a game tying field goal, shooting a late fourth quarter free throw, putting on the 18th green to win a golf tournament — you get the idea. Guess what? Meditation does the same thing!

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

Mind Is The Builder. Like an athlete, you could harness the power of meditation to attain (and maintain) your mental and emotional zero point — while digging deep within for creative solutions.

Maybe it's time to start your own business? Become a consultant? Start fresh in a new city? Maybe try cooking or writing? Teach yourself to code? Start a vlog? Sublet your apartment while regathering in a cheap Mexican beach town?

The point is that a calm, clear mind generates creative solutions. Meditation is the best way to tap into that endless reserve of inner wisdom. Anger not only clouds the mind, but spirals further and further until you find yourself living a bitter, unhappy life.

Letting Go Of Anger Disorders Through Mindfulness Meditation

All Solutions Reside In The Mind. Have you heard of the term "shower thoughts?" Great thinkers often report that, like bolts of divine inspiration, their best stuff strikes them when they least expect it.

When Albert Einstein was working on the modern theory of relativity, he had a routine for accessing his deep mind. He would lay down in a trance-like state, waiting for subconscious ideas to surface — recording them on paper upon waking (sounds like he was a meditator).

Meditation's simmering of the deep mind can cook up all kinds of wonderfully creative solutions that a clouded, frustrated hot-headed mind simply cannot. In situations that would otherwise have you pulling your hair out, sometimes a bit of subconscious cerebration is necessary to find a proper solution.

"Your subconscious mind is 30,000 times more powerful than your conscious mind." — Unknown

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

Subconscious Exploration. Serving as your mental "Magellan," meditation circumnavigates the depths of your mind, locating hard-to-find solutions, while easily weathering any anger-causing storm on the horizon.

Who's more likely to find the cure to cancer? The frustrated scientist, banging his head against the wall, hating himself and his life? Or the scientist who stills, quiets, and disciplines his mind through a half-hour of daily meditation? Who's going to be at the proper level of consciousness for such divine thinking? Who's going to be a more well-tuned conduit for receiving such quantum information? The secrets to the universe are contained within.

"To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders." — Lao Tzu

Causes Of Anger: When We Lack Control

"A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough." — Bruce Lee

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

Here are a couple different ways people use anger to their real world advantage:

Feeling Powerless. Anger is often used as a go-to power grabbing strategy when we feel like we lack control of a particular situation. Because it works, it can also be quite addictive. Yelling at the supermarket store clerk for not honoring last week’s milk coupon is a good example.

Meditation shifts consciousness in a way that helps us see more clearly (especially when our emotions are heated). If our flight gets delayed three hours, will yelling at the desk attendant change anything? When we distance ourself from our (often irrational) conscious mind, meditation helps us see through anger's illusion of control, resulting in us lashing out far less (if at all). How To Manage Anger Disorders Through Mindfulness Meditation

Finding Solutions & Keeping Cool. If you find yourself in what appears to be a "no way out" situation, keeping a calm, clear head will open doors that you wouldn't have otherwise seen. Anger only clouds the mind and crimps clear thought.

When controlling a situation is impossible, a regular meditation practice will help you diffuse the fear, become cool with the uncertainty, and melt the anxiety long before they approach a boiling point.

Angry outbursts can be compared to an emotional time bomb. The advanced emotional recognition and mindfulness learned through meditation ensures the green wire gets clipped first, then the black, then the yellow. Always in the correct order, no matter the situation.

Causes Of Anger: Controlling Other People

"Anger is the emotion we snatch up to avoid less comfortable feelings like confusion, fear, and sadness." — Jill Herzig

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

Abuse Of Power. A smaller percentage of people who feel small and insecure weaponize anger to feel bigger than everyone else, using power trips and false machismo to make up for their shortcomings. An abusive boss who finds a little too much pleasure in controlling his employees would be a prime example.

In this case, the problem is a bit more clear. When you see everyone as "separate from you," as competition, as disposable tools waiting to be "used," then you are certain to have anger and control issues. It's par for the course. Luckily, meditation uproots this problem.

"You are the universe expressing itself as a human for a little while." — Eckhart Tolle

How To Let Go Of Anger Issues

We Are All One. Black or white, rich or poor, religious or atheist, republican or democrat, meditation deepens our understanding into the universal truth that we humans are far more alike than we are different, we all have the same basic needs, wants, and motivations — health, love, purpose, and happiness.

When you start seeing people as "other forms of you," and really that, in the grand scheme of things "we are all one," the idea of controlling other people to your benefit seems absurd. In this way, meditation makes you far less selfish, and far more of a giving person.

Raise your consciousness. Shift your polarity. Discover meditation.

"We are all one. Only egos, beliefs, and fears separate us." — Nikola Tesla

Why We Become Angry: Dealing With The Monkey Mind

Causes Of Anger Disorders

"If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts." — Peter McWilliams

The Inner Critic. Many people with anger issues have a very loud and very negatively polarized "inner critic." So loud, in fact, that it drowns out the "true us" — our intuition. "I never remember anything... I'm not good enough for that job... I can’t do this... I can’t do that... Everyone is always out to get me..." This inner critic really likes to paint pictures of everything as being good or bad.

"Rule your mind or it will rule you." — Buddha

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

Capping Your Potential. When we listen to our inner critic instead of our intuition, we become prone to self-sabotage, squandering one growth opportunity after another, closing one door after another. We can find ourselves becoming highly defensive, closed off to feedback, unwilling to course correct no matter how off track we are. The captain who fails to heed the expertise and advice of his crew is sure to run the ship aground. Luckily, meditation fixes all of the above!

"Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power." — Lao Tzu

How To Control Anger: Stilling the Mind

Causes Of Anger

Mind Chatter Cease & Desist. By quieting the human mind's 50,000+ thoughts per day, meditation mutes the so called "inner critic" while, from negative to positive, transforming our inner dialogue.

The meditative mind has learned to not place "good" or "bad" labels on thoughts, and instead, simply observing and witnessing them from a distance. In turn, "thought resistance" goes to the wayside, defusing the spiral of emotions which so often precedes angry outbursts.

By putting to bed useless, fear-based thinking, meditation extinguishes our "not having enough, not being enough, and not doing enough" inner monologue.

"A positive life never came from a negative mind." — Unknown

How To Control Anger: The Positive Mindset

How To Control Anger Issues Through Mindfulness Meditation

Unplanting The Seeds Of Anger. People who succeed in their respective field often attribute it to their positive mindset. It should come as no surprise, then, that many highly successful people meditate.

It's the big picture mindset and the view from the "top of the mountain" that transforms how meditators deal with their thoughts / master their inner monologue. The seeds of anger: feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness, and helplessness — get replaced with confidence, self-belief, and a positive mindset.

"What we think, we become." — Buddha

Meditation empowers your thinking on every level. Your mind will be calm and rational, your thoughts will be clear and creative, your consciousness will be clean and pure. How high can you go? How far can you reach? You never know until you practice meditation. At the very least, melting away our "inner angry" has massive upside.

Feel The Power Of Deep Meditation. Discover EquiSync®
Feel The Power Of Deep Meditation.
Discover EquiSync®

Try For Free
Button 1
Button 2
Button 3
Button 4
Button 5
Button 6
Stop Interval

Click the buttons to play or pause the audio.

X