Awareness (mentalizing): Aggressiveness can be a learned response since childhood that is conditioned (associated) to certain situations by the meaning we give them, ie a child can learn to respond aggressively if this is what he sees in his environment (without this being an excuse). Generally, in its origin, aggressiveness was an adaptive response (it had a function) but it has probably been generalized to other situations in which it has lost its usefulness.
Philogenetically it was also adaptive in other times: to defend ourselves from predators, to protect the social group and to avoid threats.
It is important to understand the problems that this behavior causes today and its little usefulness in the present. We must be well aware of this in order to control it. Aggressiveness never (almost never) solves anything and will only lead us to feel worse and aggravate the problem. We must have this very clear to begin with.
We must try to know where our anger comes from, accept it as part of the human being that we are and understand ourselves with it, all this is fundamental to control it. Anger is a normal emotional response, we all feel it in certain situations, but we do not all know how to handle it the same. We must know how to answer the question why we feel so irritated before a certain person or situation and keep in mind that we can not make change the way of being, thinking or acting of others, we can not change their behavior (hence the frustration). Knowing that we will not be able to avoid those situations or those people that irritate us, so it would be smarter for us to assume it in part and work with our own reaction (which is within our reach).
Specific techniques:
If the situation is avoidable (it doesn't give us anything) we can simply avoid those situations.
Make a list of situations that provoke reactions of anger and aggressiveness and avoid them. This point is only useful for very specific situations and really implies avoiding the problem rather than confronting it. For example, specific cases such as in my case to avoid seeing images of bullfights because they make me very irascible. It is something I don't really need to do with what I can simply avoid. We must be careful and only apply this point in specific situations. We cannot go around the world avoiding everything.
In general my advice is to get used to the anxiety of these situations and not avoid the discomfort they cause. The more we avoid the discomfort or emotions caused by a situation, the stronger they become because we never get used to them nor can we look for alternatives to face them.
If the situation is not avoidable (almost always), we should train ourselves in coping:
Training ourselves in the detection of reactions in order to act before they take hold of us: detecting agitated breathing, frowning, tight lips, very open or very closed eyes, tightly closed fists, hand sweat, increased heart rate... and also looking at our aggressive thoughts, and our feelings. Here it is also useful to have a list of anger behaviors and the situations that provoke them (antecedents) in order to be able to detect the reaction early before it appears, in order to be "alert" to our reactions. This point is based on self-observation and recognition.
If anger takes hold of us, we can temporarily move away from the situation that provokes that feeling and return to it when we are calmer. This works very well in discussions. It is a "time-out" (or time out).
We must get used to these situations, accept them as part of everyday life and not try to control them, but measure our reaction to them. What surrounds us and people escape our control and it is something that must be accepted, one can only change oneself (and this in itself usually produces certain positive changes in the environment, although this should not be our goal). Be always in the present moment, which is where you can evaluate what is happening, so you can be aware of what is happening in the present, and not respond to old offenses or problems that may occur in the future (this distorts tremendously our ability to judge). Do not take out "the trunk of memories" in every discussion.
Cognitive restructuring is useful: modification of cognitive schemes (ways of thinking or perceiving things) that lead to disproportionate and inappropriate thoughts for situations and help anger appear more quickly. For example, we are very likely to think that people do it on purpose, that we are wasting time, that we are not valued, or that we are not respected. Attributing intentional actions to people without them being applicable will only cause the situation to escalate very quickly. We must try to avoid giving meaning to what others do. They don't come late to annoy us or change our plans because they don't respect us, for example, but rather they are everyday situations of daily life that we have to live with when relating to other people.
Sometimes it can be useful to try to put ourselves in the other's place, in the most objective way possible: How will that person be evaluating our reaction? How can she have come to behave like that?
When aggressiveness has already appeared there are some useful exercises to distract our attention from what we feel momentarily and regain control. The question is to distract attention from the distorted thoughts that cause aggressiveness and avoid aggressive response, whenever possible should replace this aggressive response with a more adaptive. Aggressive response should be avoided, but not the situation that causes it unless it is unavoidable because of the risk of doing something we regret. These techniques should be trained to automate and do them first when we are not angry.
Count to 10 and don't speak until we've calmed down, recite the alphabet backwards, think of something else. Breathe deeply and slowly a couple of times.
Instead of breaking things or arguing: taking a cold shower, hitting a pillow, exercising for half an hour, etc...
Look for something to do that distracts us: clean, read, watch a movie and resume the problem when we are calmer.
The ideal is to expose ourselves to the situation, analyze it as rationally as possible and think as another person would see it, put ourselves in the other person's place and consider alternative options to the distorted thoughts that cause anger. For example, making a list of possible answers or solutions, with their pros and cons (evaluating consequences, resources, probability of success...) and committing to the most appropriate one can help us to obtain a more rational control of the situation.
We can make a list of reassuring phrases and repeat them in moments of anger or write down notes or advice on what to do in these situations. Behavioral scripts are also useful: For example, when this happens to me, I'm going to follow this script that says I'm going to do this, this and this, regardless of how I feel. An example is, you have a discussion with friends and you lose control, the script says: I am not in control of the situation then I apologize for my behavior, I express my desire to postpone the discussion for another time, I manifest my disagreement but also that I respect the opinion of others. If that doesn't work, I can excuse myself to go to the bathroom and take a deep breath or say that I'm going out to get some air, smoke, etc... (everyone does the script as best they can). As we see, the key to success is to commit completely to the script, without letting anger make us reason at all.
Expectations are one of the factors most associated with anger. Avoid having excessively high expectations about others or about situations. Each person has different values. Everyone acts according to their values but cannot expect others to do the same.
Being aware of our interests in different situations, because impulsive behavior becomes an emotional discharge that we are not really interested in because it will not allow us to get what we want, it actually sabotages our control over the situation.
Meditation is a technique widely used in emotional control and to focus on the present and as a daily practice can greatly help people with problems of aggression and anger.
Relaxation techniques are the most effective both in prevention (daily habits) and in the solution or coping at the time of anger. The most commonly used are abdominal breathing, Jacobson's progressive muscle relaxation and Shcultz' autogenous training.
Thus, we will gradually begin to delay the aggressive response progressively. Trying not to obey the impulsive response. So until we manage to control it. At first it will cost a lot and maybe we only manage to spend short periods of time without it appearing or reduce its intensity but we should not be discouraged, all the way starts with a step, no matter how small it is.