When is it acceptable to display anger? After all it is an emotion and we all can feel it at certain times. We know it’s healthier to accept and show exactly how we are feeling, yet, when is too much anger damaging to your health and on the people around you witnessing this emotion?
You may already know if you have a problem with anger, those times when you feel out of control and you are actually frightened by your own behaviour. There is a good chance that you are aware that the level at which you display your anger is having a detrimental effect on your health, life and relationships.
What is anger anyway?
Imagine a line, at one end of the line are the words ‘slightly annoyed’ and at the other end ‘furious’, that should conjure up a scale for you.
At various points in between could be words such as: upset, frustrated, and irritated. They are all on the ‘anger scale’. However, there are some people that live towards the furious end for the majority of their waking hours.
If that’s you, (or you know someone who lives like this) you don’t need me to tell you how frightening this can be.
There are biological and physical changes when we ‘feel’ anger. Anger is a surge of adrenalin, like ALL emotions if the energy has been created it has to be used, the energy can be so great it can be describes as ‘I exploded’, no you didn’t explode however the energy you had in anger did.
Anger is like a cloak, if you were to look at the areas of your life where you display anger, you may find that when you remove the cloak there is a more accurate assessment of what you are feeling, jealousy, pain, hurt, injustice.
If you did not release the anger that negative energy can turn back on you, in others words it can be ‘pent up anger’. At some point that energy must be released, it must come out, have you ever ‘saw red’?
Are you a driver? Are you ‘normally’ a calm, assertive person? Yet, has another driver ever cut you up and you have tooted the horn, shouted, caught the other drivers’ eye and mouthed words you do not normally use?
Perhaps you are in a relationship and you and your partner communicate in anger. It’s a daily activity, it’s normal behaviour, to perhaps your children and family you could be describe as the ‘that’s just the way they are’ couple.
When was the last time you actually moved along the scale? How did you get to this place? When did you both give the permission to say ‘let’s not be honest and really describe how we are feeling, lets exist in anger’?
There is not the scope here to delve into all the cause of why the above to cases are happening. Anger is acceptable to display, as long as the anger is not a misdirected and excuse for other emotions.
So, are you are too angry?
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