Today’s issue of best relaxation techniques deals with anger management.

And here’s today’s technique for managing your anger: Count to 90. The old saying is that you should count to 10, but it’s actually 90. In 90 seconds your anger will be gone unless you choose to command yourself to stay angry. Staying angry, in other words, is hard work.

You can verify this “90 second rule” by reading a fascinating book called “My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Taylor Bolte. Dr. Bolte was a brain scientist at Harvard Medical School, “performing research and teaching young professionals about the brain.”

In December of 1996, Jill had a stroke that left her unable to perform the simplest physical or mental tasks. It took eight years for her to completely recover. In her book, Dr. Bolte shares the remarkable insights she gained from her stroke (watch the video below. It’s worth 20 minutes of your life).

Dr. Bolte points out that “Although there are certain limbic (emotional) programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than 90 seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body and then be completely flushed out of our bloodstream.” In other words, anger (or for that matter, fear, sadness and anxiety) is produced by chemicals (neurotransmitters) surging through our bodies. These chemicals dissipate within 90 seconds. In order to feel a strong emotion beyond this initial 90 seconds, we have to consciously choose to continue to experience anger.

I had a direct experience of this the other day as I was driving home down a two-lane road with very little traffic. At one point, the road curved and another road intersected the one I was on. The speed limit into the curve went from 50 miles per hour to 30 because there was no stop sign where the roads intersected and it was impossible to see beyond the curve.

Just as I was coming into the curve, a car coming from the other direction in the curve passed in front of me, heading towards the intersecting road, without slowing down or even seeming to acknowledge that we were within a few feet of colliding. Fortunately, I had reduced my speed and had avoided what would have been a devastating accident.

My limbic system went into overdrive. I was furious. My heart was racing. In my imagination, I chased down that driver, forced him (or her, I wasn’t sure) to the side of the road and screamed my rage into his/her face. In my mind, I could see that driver cowering and afraid of me.

Then I remembered Doctor Bolte and her anger management insight. The initial (90 second) experience of anger was gone, but I was literally commanding myself to keep it alive. Why did I do this?

According to Dr. Bolte, “when we feel intense negative emotions like anger, jealousy or frustration…(we feel) strong and powerful” (she seemed to be talking directly to me). She continued, “I have known people who consciously choose to exercise their anger circuitry on a regular basis simply because it helps them remember what it feels like to be themselves.”

In other words, certain feelings are so familiar to us that, if we don’t experience them, we feel as though we’re not “being ourselves.”

Dr. Bolte concludes by saying, “For all those years of my life, I really had been a figment of my own imagination.” When we feel anger beyond 90 seconds, we are all “figments of our imaginations” and, therefore, creating our own suffering. As I recall reading somewhere, while pain may be inevitable, suffering is optional.

So the best anger management technique may simply be a matter of arithmetic: Count to 90.