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Rage is ugly, but maybe the problem isn’t your anger.
Emotion is a vital part of being human. You need to feel happiness, sadness, anxiety and, even, anger—emotion is part of the weather system of our inner worlds. If you punch holes in walls, though, or scare your significant other when you’re mad, anger can seem like a bad thing and you might try never to feel these.
Managing anger is the subject of seminars and self-help books, but a more accurate concern is managing behavior associated with the emotion. It’s not that you shouldn’t feel angry; you just need to handle it differently.
The key is to understand what’s happening with you when you’re angry. Why are you mad? It’s easy to see the person who cut you off in traffic or the lover who cheated or parents who prefer your older brother as making you angry.
The answer is more internal. Anger typically masks fear. Road rage or random stranger anger are usually displaced emotions, but individuals who have issues with their anger are really scared. Bullies generally struggle to feel their own power in general and beat the heck out of smaller, weaker people to have some sense of this.
If you have anger management problems, you struggle to know how to make happen what you feel you need to happen.
In relationships, you might try to control your loved one’s behavior so you don’t feel threatened. You might tell her that if she wouldn’t flirt with other guys, you wouldn’t get mad, but it’s the potential loss of her love that triggers you. You might tell yourself that, when you yell at co-workers or threaten others, you’re just standing up for yourself.
Anger generally equals fear and individuals who frequently get into fist fights are really defending themselves from what seems like to threats. Either to physical safety or emotional “respect.” If you have anger problems, you need to learn better ways to feel safer.
You need to learn to believe in yourself and your capacity to handle life. If you feel stronger and more able to successfully move through relationship and job challenges, you won’t have the urge to whip out an uzi.
Powerlessness sucks. Every individual needs to see how their behavior matters and can yield them what they what. If you struggle with the destructive behavior associated with anger, maybe you need to learn better ways to get what you need.
