Anger Management

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Anger is one of the most powerful and common emotions while remaining one of the most misunderstood. We need anger sometimes to address situations and realities that require energy and movement.  Anger at real injustice and negative treatment is anger that can be used to motivate people to change a bad situation. That is good. 

However, anger is often misused by those who are at the mercy of too much anger, too much of the time, directed at the wrong person or thing because they have not learned to master their emotions.  

Basic emotional intelligence means the ability to recognize emotions and regulate them. That requires some Anger management.

Anger is a kind of prison

The three main areas to look at if you think you have an anger problem are these:

* frequency  (how often do you get really angry?)

* intensity  (when you get angry, do you get intensely angry?)

* duration  ( do you STAY angry for long periods without the ability to 'let it go'?)

See if you have an anger problem by asking yourself these questions: 

Is my anger too intense? Does it get triggered too easily? Does it get triggered too often? When I get angry, do I get extremely angry? Do I stay angry for a long time? When I get angry, do I yell and break things?   

If you answered yes to more than 2 of these, please consider doing the work to change the way you handle your anger. Then at some point some therapy or process has to take place to actually reduce the amount of anger you have to deal with.      

This is where we see the wisdom of the concept: We live in a world of our own making. The results of angry behavior make up the conditions of our lives.  The ability to accept negative emotions and handle them confidently, in the moment, is a vital skill that can be learned.

Many abuse survivors have an intense unconscious fear of reliving those experiences so the tendency to fly off the handle quickly may be a sign of someone who is unconsciously panicked at reliving painful feelings or has not developed the ability to handle difficult situations without extreme emotions.

Too much expression of anger in the wrong way does this to our lives:

* physical health is degraded

*careers and jobs suffer

* people we love slowly lose more and more affection for us after each outburst

*more and more strain on our relationships with each round of emotional turmoil

*we will lose focus on what is actually important to us

* we may actually treat others in an negative way without intending it

"Anyone 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."  

 -  Aristotle