Is anger a healthy response to situations?

One expert says it can be, but it depends how you manage that anger.

Geraldine Corr is nurse practice development manager at St John of God Hospital.

She is presenting a talk, entitled 'Controlling anger before it controls you'.

She told Newstalk Drive: "One of the most important aspects of managing your anger is getting to know yourself - getting to know what the warning signs are.

"These can be either emotional - maybe perhaps when you're feeling a particular way... that can be a warning sign that anger may be something that's coming down the track.

"Or they can be cognitive - that's how you think about things.

"Sometimes that may be thoughts about teaching someone a lesson or over-generalising in terms of saying: 'well this always happens to everyone all the time'.

"Or they can actually be physical - so in the immediate build up to anger you can find things like your heart is racing, that you clench your fists or jaws, that your muscles are tense and you've got faster breathing.

"If you can actually pinpoint your own warning signs, you might be able to put in place some mechanisms that will help you not blow the lid in a particular situation."

Ms Corr says control can sometimes be simple: "If you can deliberately let yourself go lose, deliberately let your body language get a little softer it might help you defuse the situation - just enough time to give you those extra few seconds to think about what you want to say".

"What I suggest is even the old cliche of counting to 10.

"If you're in a work situation where you don't want people to see you do that, you could cover it by even having a sip of water from a glass".

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