Are you Angry?

Do your find yourself getting mad over little things? Yelling at the person on the other end of the phone? When you’re angry, do you punch the wall or throw things? Is your anger affecting your marriage and other personal and/or work relationships?

Anger has a funny way of controlling you. It controls how you think, what you say, and most importantly how you respond or react. When you are angry you tend to feel more impatient, hostile, and/or irritated. You may even become aggressive and/or violent. You also engage in negative thinking that can be constant with the focus being only on the negative experience. If you want to gain some control over your anger, you must first understand what it is. So, what exactly is anger?

Anger: What is it exactly??

Anger is a feeling or emotion that resides in all of us: men, women, child. I is a natural response for when you feel threatened/wronged or when people you care about are being threatened or harmed. Anger typically starts as a mild irritation and can intensify into an extreme rage. For example, imagine your friend is persistently poking you in the arm and you ask her to stop because it is irritating you, you are now mildly irritated. Imagine that she does not stop even after you have asked her to several times. You may then slap her hand and angrily yell “I told you to STOP!”  In that moment, your anger has intensified and you have lost your patience and have acted impulsively and/or aggressively.

When you do not have an understanding of your anger and the way you respond to it, then you may constantly lash out, where you are not only hurting yourself but those around you including your husbands/wives, children, friends, etc. It is important to understand that anger can stem from frustration when your needs, desires, and goals are not being met, personal problems, unexpected events such as being stuck in traffic, and memories of traumatic events. What’s most important to understand about anger is that responding aggressively or violently is not always necessary.

Remember: “He who angers you, conquers you”

~Elizabeth Kenny