If you give people a choice of how to respond to someone else's anger (or their own anger at someone else's behavior), they'll typically either stand and fight back or run away. The old fight-or-flight response is built into your nervous system. Unfortunately, neither of these choices results in an effective resolution of whatever it is that underlies the emotional response.

Scientist Ernest Harburg at the University of Michigan classifies both of these extreme responses under the heading of resentful anger coping, which he contrasts with what he calls reflective coping (for example, talking to someone about your anger after you've cooled down). The same distinction, is believed, holds true when you get mad at someone else. You can express your anger immediately in some hostile, aggressive manner or you can simply walk (or stomp!) off without a word. Or you can choose a middle-of-the-road response — walk off until you cool down and then return later to the source of your anger and verbalize exactly why you feel the way you do.

Harburg found that people who tended more often to use the reflective anger coping style had lower blood pressure than those whose primary way of dealing with anger was resentful. He also noted that the tendency to utilize reflective anger coping was greater among women and middle-class respondents (those who had more education, higher family incomes, and higher job status). They appeared to be more immune from the unhealthy effects of other people's anger.

Try the following self-role-playing exercise:

1. Think of some recent situation where you felt you were treated unfairly or unjustly but didn't say how you felt at the time.

2. Write out the situation on a piece of paper in as much detail as possible.

3. Read what you've written down.
4. Write down how you felt about the situation — not what you thought or what you did, but how you felt (your emotions). It's okay to list more than one emotion — for example, "I was angry and hurt."
5. Write down the cause of your feelings ("She made an unkind remark about my weight").
6. Write down what you want to say to the person with whom you were angry. Be sure to use feeling-cause language, starting with feeling and then the cause. Avoid using inflammatory language (swear words).
7. Now, ask yourself how you feel — better, relieved?
8. Reinforce what you've done here with a positive self-statement — "Good for me! Couldn't happen to a nicer guy!"

Make this a weekly exercise until you get better at expressing your feelings on a day-to-day basis.