Trying to keep your hands and mouth busy are helpful when trying to beat addiction cravings.

Give these ideas a try:

• work on a puzzle
• write in your journal, cards, notes
• drink warm water with lemon
• play cards
• learn sign language
• draw or paint
• hold a pen
• trim your nails

Anger Coping Strategies

Anger is a normal human emotion, and can range from mild irritation to an intense rage or fury. Our handout ’What Is Anger?’ provides more detail about the difference between normal anger and problem anger, and some questions to help you identify whether anger may be a problem for you.

This article includes a number of tips, which you may use to help you to cope better with your anger. You may wish to practice some of these on your own, or you may wish to combine them with individual or group therapy for extra support.

Triggers and Warning Signs

One of the first steps in managing your anger is to identify what types of situations usually trigger your anger.

Some of these situations you may be able to avoid, such as planning ahead to avoid running late. Other situations are less in your control, such as being cut off in traffic, but what you can control is your reaction.

Mindfulness is a state of mind achieved by focusing awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations.

Trying to control or avoid worries or other negative thinking by answering back, chasing, or suppressing these negative thoughts can sometimes strengthen this negative experience rather than diminish it.

Mindfulness is one way of skillfully disengaging from or letting go of negative thinking.

This approach involves practicing how to notice when you are automatically drifting into negative thinking and then skillfully redirecting your attention back to the present, to the here and now.

Try These Steps for Letting Go

To begin, it may be best to start by practicing with minor concerns before moving onto major worries or negative thoughts.

1) To begin the practice, sit down in a chair and adopt a relaxed and alert posture.

• Ask yourself:

  What am I experiencing right now? What thoughts are around, what feelings are around, and what body sensations?

• Allow yourself to just acknowledge, observe and describe these experiences to yourself, without trying to change them or answer the thoughts back.
• Spend 30 seconds to 1 minute just doing this.