Anger is an important emotion. It is the emotional response to perceived injustice. It is a necessary emotion that protects us, our family, and our friends. Like any emotion, it must be regulated and directed towards positive results that benefit everyone.

The 6R’s are a way you can control yourself when you feel angry and solve problems that arise with other people. The 6R’s are the Following:

Recognize How You Feel. Know what makes you angry and the warning signs telling you are losing your temper.

Restrain Yourself. Acting on an angry impulse leads to a case of “foot-in-mouth” disease. When you feel yourself ready to blow tell yourself to “slow down,” think about the bad things that might happen if you lose your temper, take a deep breath, stay seated, keep your distance from your partner, and tell yourself to “hold it.” Tell yourself- “be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to act!”

Retreat. If you feel things are going no where or you are about to lose it, take a “time out.” Tell your partner you need a break but you’ll be back later to talk when you’ve cooled down.

Relax. After leaving an argument do not dwell on what happened. Instead, do something to cool off and relax.

Reflect. After settling down think about what happened and what you plan to do to work things out. It helps to talk things over with someone else. Fill in the blanks to the following sentence: “I feel angry and … at … because, and I want …”. Once you’ve done that ask yourself if you have truly been wronged. If not, then forget about the incident. If yes, then ask yourself if this is merely an aggravation you just must put up with, or a problem you really have to solve with the other person.

Resolve. Think of all the different things you can do to solve the problem. Once again, it helps to talk this over with people whose opinion you respect. Take some time to weigh the pros and cons of each option. Then choose the best solution and work out a plan of how you will implement it. Once you’ve tried out the plan take stock of how successful you were in getting your needs met. Generally, there are three general solutions to disputes. This is the 3A’s.

Avoid the situation. Sometimes the best way to avoid becoming angry or arguments are to simply avoid the people, places, and behaviors that cause you to lose your temper or provoke arguments with others.

Alter the situation. Sometimes you do have a legitimate grievance with another person making it appropriate for you to ask another person to change their behavior or to make restitution for some harm they caused you. When you need to do this fair, firm, and considerate.

Accept the situation. Then there are times when we are powerless over aggravating events or other people’s bad behavior. At those times we need to emotionally detach ourselves from aggravating events. We do this by taking charge of our emotional reactions and stop automatically becoming angry when an aggravating event occurs. We adopt flexible and more realistic mental attitudes about the world and other people’s behavior. We may have to learn effective coping skill so we can deal with an aggravating person in our lives. Finally, we need to let go of past resentments. We may need to replace resentment with appropriate caution. We may also need to forgive people for wrongs they committed against us in the past.

The 6R’s is the natural course we follow when we feel angry. Being more mindful of the sequence of steps our anger naturally progresses through allows us to exercise more control over those steps.