My first memory of punching a wall was at age 12, so let’s start the timeline there. I’m 38 now; that’s how I got 26 years of anger.

TL;DR — We never want to talk about anger, but for some of us it’s a daily demon. I fall in that camp, to the nth degree. Here are some of my thoughts. (Informally written, and unordered. To be clear: I struggle with all these to this day.. not perfect, but in progress..)

1. Anger is extremely difficult to stop once it starts spiraling out of control.
2. Anger creates a feeling of power in people, esp. if you saw your dad do it and everyone “bent to his will”. We need to reprogram that in our head.
3. Anger is sometimes, but rarely, warranted. I’ve had team members who wanted to see the “passion” you have, in the form of anger. Or you can use it to build esprit de corps (but again, rarely). 
4. The anger you feel internally is always half of what others see when it comes out.
5. Don’t suppress your anger. Instead, let it out; ideally, in a calm and communicative way.. even if it means talking out loud to yourself.
6. Your environment matters. If you have an environment that always makes you angry, when you change the environment, it’s possible the anger completely disappears. I had that experience when I first moved away from home. I forgot what anger was for 10 years, and I’m not exaggerating. The first day I came back, I had “that familiar feeling”, and I’ll never forget thinking “Wow, I haven’t felt this in 10 years”.
7. Anger usually comes from feeling like we’re the “effect”: being made fun of, being told we’re not good enough, etc. But others usually aren’t thinking as intensely about the thought as you are (more on that later).
8. Anger is scary for others. We shouldn’t downplay this. If your spouse didn’t grow up around it, when you feel it, it’s often 2x — 100x scarier for her. Have compassion for her by working on your anger.
9. Anger seems to have a genetic component. It doesn’t mean it’s fully genetic (of course), but there’s a genetic predisposition to: “quick to anger”.
10. Use the “divide by half” technique. If you know you have a genetic propensity for anger, divide your anger by the multiplier that you estimate your predisposition to be (e.g. anger of 8/10 genetically, while most are 2/10. So, when something happens and you get angry, divide it out accordingly — “I’m mad about X”, “Ok wait, I am a natural 8/10 here so let’s divide this by at least 2 and maybe more to get closer to a more normal reaction here”. Basically divide by your order of magnitude. (Not easy to do but theoretically ideal).
11. It’s not okay to never be angry, nor to always be angry. You want to show your kids that you don’t suppress or repress. Instead, you can tell them “That is frustrating me, do you want to help me overcome my little frustration here? Let’s go on a walk together!” That, if anything, can’t hurt your kid because it shows them you’re dealing with it in a healthy way. But I’m not a child psychologist, so take that with a grain of salt.
12. This is similar to a previous one, but anger burns brighter for those around you, than you feel it. If you feel 5/10 anger, assume others see 8/10 or more. Hence why it’s “not a big deal” to you, and “terrifying” to others.
13. Anger can be more easily burned off, like a gas tank, than managed emotionally — once it becomes a problem in your life. So treat it like a gas tank — go run it down to empty (run, workout, be creative, do something).
14. It’s a power trap. As mentioned before, it can feel like “you’re losing your power” when you try to get rid or manage your anger, as per #2. Don’t believe that. Calm is the true power (e.g. art of war, 33 strategies of war, or every book on strategy ever written).
15. Build an equilibrium. If you write down triggers, and what you’re grateful for about them, and what you’re grateful for not having them. It can build an equilibrium of intensity in the emotions. You’ll find the next trigger is less intense. Note: this is not a fun exercise, though.
16. Anger can be a light switch. When you get triggered you can visualize a light switch on the wall, and physical turn it off. It is more advanced b/c this is not easy, but it can help. I used to do this when I was 16 and my dad would nightly start the “I’m drunk and yelling and smashing things” bit. It helped, a lot.
17. Treat it as dials not switches. A navy seal I follow teaches this. Most of us, when we realize something works (even anger), we turn the switch to the “on” position, then smash it to break the switch. Which is a very “brute force” approach. But we can be more nuanced, by thinking of attributes like dials. We have the ability to dial the attributes of our personality at will (with great effort), and for instance can dial down our intensity when around our daughters (for example). You can eventually manage your anger with a dial, not just the switch. But, as per usual, we often don’t want to do this, b/c it’s more fun to play the victim. 
18. Anger abhors a game. Let your brain find a game. Your subconscious is always seeking a game. If It can’t find a big game in real life, it will self destruct inside. That’s where anger sometimes comes from, it’s an “eating yourself from the inside out” thing, because there’s really no other game to play. (Note: see word sometimes. Not all anger stems from this, but a nontrivial %).
19. You’re the cause and the effect, not just the cause, nor just the effect. Realize that and accept both. Not just the victim, not just the cause — both. Act like it.
20. Anger is a nonlinear dynamic feedback system. Something triggers you (input), a maladaptive process creates the anger (process), then you output the anger (output), then it usually feeds back around to the input (feedback), causing a 2x, 4x, 16x (etc) growth in the anger from that continuing to loop. But remember it’s non linear, so the speed at which it spirals is not always predictable. 
21. Cut it off at the beginning. To cut off the anger, you have to catch it before it feeds back around to grow the second loop. This is the most important thing in my experience in trying to manage extreme anger. Catch it, and cut it real quick. If I miss that first cut off point, and it loops around (feeds back) even just one time, it’s 10x harder to stop — and 10x may be a conservative estimate.
22. Anger is showing us something. What triggers you, what causes it? Look in that direction, calmly. Find the reason behind it. You don’t need to “journal” to do this, just think about it. And then become self aware.
23. Self awareness is like half the battle, honestly. 
24. The concept that our dads had so much anger, and never asked themselves “is this healthy?” is like, hilariously absurd. And you could argue “they did wonder that”, well, some good that did. 
25. Anger is performative and as a kid, a call for help. Why else do kids punch things. I broke my knuckle from punching a brick wall multiple times at age 18, and my dad was there. And he had 0 to say about it. We drove home in silence. I was clearly neurodivergent-ly and maladaptive-ly asking for help (which I didn’t know or think at the time), but he either didn’t see that or couldn’t be available emotionally to help process anything that wasn’t anger coming from him. Don’t regret the past, but understand what things are performative and what things aren’t.
26. Meditation did help me. I got really deep into meditation and eastern spirituality books around age 16, and I would meditate for hours (honestly too much). I was also into “psychonautics” (via drugs) but I thought meditation could alter my state of mind to travel this parallel reality (etc etc, you know the story). So, I may have not had the best reason for wanting to meditate, but it did help. A dumb example: I once spilled a red drink all over my white carpet in my room, and I had 5+ good friends over, and they all watched how I said “That’s okay…” and they talked about how “I’m a changed person” for like 10 minutes. It was silly, and not a big deal, at the time. But looking back, yeah, before meditation, I would have behaved very differently. So they were kinda’ right.

That’s not everything, but that is some of the things… 

Let’s try to work on it, one day at a time.

Much ❤️
– Dain