Making Your Own Anger Thermometer: A Tool to Help Control Anger

Perhaps you’re familiar with tropes about anger in cartoons. It’s probably more prevalent in older cartoons, but there was always a scene in which a character gets angry at something or someone. Maybe they’re in a frustrating situation, or they are interacting with someone annoying. The cartoons depict them like a kettle that’s on the boil, heating up until they blow their top. That, or they turn red until they explode. An anger thermometer might be able to help.

In their own way, these shows were trying to depict anger in a comical but real way. We’ve all likely felt it at one point or another: feelings of mild irritation that slowly but surely, through increasing provocation, build until we can well and truly say we are feeling angry. Maybe you didn’t blow your top and verbally or physically abuse someone, but it really did feel like this strange thing was growing inside you.

When you feel angry, those feelings can lead you down different paths. You decide where you end up, but it needs you to exercise control and not be guided by those feelings. If you said or did everything your frustration or anger led you toward, you’d hurt your relationships, other people, and likely yourself. It’s important to have tools to help you keep your anger under control, and that’s where an anger thermometer comes in.

How to Make Use of an Anger Thermometer

Imagine that you’re at home, and you’re trying to get some work done. Your neighbor is busy doing yard work and maintenance, and it’s a bit loud and disruptive. At first, you ignore it and get on with things. As they carry on, however, it feels as though it’s getting louder, particularly when they’re closer to your window and begin using power tools. Slowly (or maybe quite quickly), you feel yourself getting angrier as the distractions mount.

The way an anger thermometer works, and how it could help you, looks like this. Firstly, as the thermometer is a visual tool, you can look at it and use it to try and figure out what you’re feeling.

Being able to name things is such a huge help because it’s one step toward controlling and expressing what you’re feeling appropriately. Whether you’re feeling annoyed, exasperated, infuriated, or irate, it is helpful to acknowledge and accept the emotion.

Beyond acknowledging that you’re feeling a certain type of way and accepting that you are feeling this way, you can also rate your anger level. Naming the emotion goes a long way, but it’s important to take that and place it on the scale so that you are aware of how hairy things are getting. Later, we’ll talk about designing your own thermometer and how you can tailor it to suit your unique experiences.

Third, you can use your anger thermometer to monitor your progress in handling your anger well. You can, if you take care to, document and track your anger levels over time. This can be an immense help not only in gaining a better understanding of your emotional patterns, triggers, and responses but also in refining your thermometer to be an even more effective tool.

Lastly, you can incorporate your anger thermometer into your process of developing and implementing effective coping strategies. With time and intention, you can learn what appropriate coping strategies will work to handle a particular level of anger. For instance, deep breathing or muscle relaxation might work best for you when you’re at level two, for example, but talking to someone might be more effective for you when you get to level five.

What an anger thermometer does for you is it creates an easy shorthand for handling your anger. Instead of leaving your feelings in a nebulous zone, the thermometer helps you accurately name what you’re feeling. Over time, you can pair this with the appropriate intervention to reduce and communicate your anger effectively, and this empowers you to deal with your anger in ways that promote well-being instead of causing harm.

Making an Anger Thermometer

If, after all that’s been said, you’re thinking about making your own anger thermometer, where would you even begin? Below is a guide to help you fashion an anger thermometer, which can help you to better understand and manage your emotional response. An anger thermometer doesn’t have to be complicated – it’s meant to be a simple visual tool that helps you name your feelings and have ready means to address them.

Some steps that you can follow to create your unique anger thermometer include the following:

Identify your triggers Take time to reflect on what triggers your anger. Look over your life, personal experiences, situations, and interactions with people. Think about your boundaries or limits, and the things you care about that you feel compelled to protect. When you know your triggers, you’ll be able to create an anger thermometer that is relevant to you, and one that is accurate.

Reflect on your anger levels You likely don’t feel anger in the same way over the same things as other people. Maybe you’ve never gotten explosively angry, and you’re unlikely to. Define your own levels of anger that you experience, and you can put them on your thermometer either as descriptive phrases, such as calm, annoyed, upset, and furious, or on a numerical scale running from 0-10, or both of these.

Choose a visual representation When you’ve decided on the various anger levels that best describe you and your experiences, you can decide how you’ll visually represent all of this. You can use one or a combination of things, including a number scale with descriptions, like 0-2 is paired with “calm, peaceful, relaxed”, 3-4 with “frustrated, annoyed”, 5-6 with “upset, resentful, angry”, and so on.

In addition, instead of using numbers, you can make use of color to code levels of anger, like moving from green to red to indicate increasing levels of anger.

Lastly, you can also make use of emoji-type pictures that show different emotional states, and each picture can be labeled to correspond with a particular level of anger. The goal is to do whatever is simplest but clear and meaningful for you in naming or describing your emotions.

Personalize it Your anger thermometer won’t look like the next person’s. Yours might include particular triggers, specific effective coping mechanisms that have a proven track record, or indications of emotional warning signs that tell you when your anger is escalating, like feeling flushed, clenching your jaws or fists, and a racing heart.

Refine Things can change over time. You may find yourself gaining better mastery over your anger, and experiencing levels 5 and above less frequently, for instance. You can do a review of your anger thermometer to refine it to better reflect where you are now. If you learn new coping mechanisms or triggers, you can add those too, and this can help you on an ongoing basis.

Anger is a powerful emotion that can be destructive if it isn’t handled well. If you find it hard to function well in life and your relationships because of anger, it may be helpful to find professional support.

A counselor can help you better understand your anger, and they can set you on the path to better cope with anger without causing harm to yourself or others. One tool they can put in your hands to help you cope is an anger thermometer. To learn more or to speak to a therapist, contact our office today.