ANGER MANAGEMENT

Anger is not the problem. Out of control anger is the problem. Here is a quote from Aristotle “Anybody can be angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not easy.”

The purpose of your anger is to protect you. If you couldn’t feel anger, you would be at a big disadvantage. But like any powerful tool, you need to know how to use it. There are two general ways in which your anger can hurt you and those you love. I call these explosion and suppression.

Explosion is basically reacting while the angry energy passing through you is too hot to allow you to think. The part of your brain that can think, the cerebral cortex is kept out of the loop. You are actually operating from the early warning part of your brain, the limbic system, which is fast but not very smart about what’s actually going on.

That part of your brain is meant to give you a jump on things. It was never meant to handle anything complex. I help you get the cerebral cortex back in charge. Your first priority however, needs to be damage control by avoiding the explosion. Try a deep breath or two to avoid reacting before you regain control.

Suppression is where you are so unwilling to admit that you are angry, that you stuff your feelings down inside. When you do that, the anger does not go away, but only goes underground. You do not lose the anger, you only lose track of it. Even though you may have told yourself that what happened doesn’t matter, your unconscious knows better.

Suppressed anger can go several ways. It can cause you to turn off, to shut down as far as your feelings towards the people around you. It can also form into landmines which are prone to be triggered and to ambush the people around you. Chronic unresolved anger has been implicated in numerous serious physical health problems. Even though it can be very unpleasant to admit to yourself just how angry you are, identifying the depth of your feelings can be a major step towards ridding yourself of anger. A very important part of anger management is to sort through how much of your anger really comes from what is happening now and how much is baggage from your past. If you are carrying around anger from the past, people will trigger it now. You cannot solve that problem by beating on the current people in your life. You can solve it by learning what your triggers are and disarming them.