Lexington, NC -- Many people are guilty of letting their tempers get the best of them. Clinical psychologist Ed Dawson has solutions to keep from losing your cool.
Peggy Friedrich lives in Davidson County. She said what gets her temper flaring is dealing with the public. "I'm a manager at a fast food chain, and it gets pretty difficult sometimes, the rudeness of people."
Her advice to manage the anger is walking away from the situation for a few seconds to gather your thoughts.
Dawson's advice: "People do get angry because of the economy. If they don't have any money, if they're in a hurry, if they're worried about losing their job. All that stress just adds up so you don't have the ability to discount it."
Charlotte Higgins said for her, it's aggressive driving. "People passing you in the righthand lane instead of the lefthand lane and people that ride your tail. That is the biggest thing that aggravates me."
Higgins said she counts to ten. If someone is driving closely to her vehicle, she backs off to make some distance between them and laughs it off.
Psychologist Ed Dawson said whenever someone is overwhelmed with their life, they can easily be on edge with the least little thing setting them off.
"So often things that make us angry are not really about us. The person that cuts us off in line, or the person that may say something inappropriate, they probably have something that's happened that you don't even know about in their life."
Dawson said the best intervention is prevention. "If you take care of yourself, if you make some time for yourself to do some of the things that relax you, that can calm you down."
WFMY News 2