Are you Someone who Struggles with Anger Issues?
Have you ever felt like you may have anger issues? Do you constantly blow up on people for little things? Do you react impulsively by cutting people down with your words? If this sounds like you; someone who struggles with anger issues, I can assure you that you are not alone.
Anger is defined as a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility. One of the most common triggers comes from this place of annoyance. If you have anger issues, one of the things that may set you off is things that you may believe to be “dumb, stupid, or universal knowledge.
Frustration that can Lead to Anger
There is the belief that people are dumb because they don’t understand common sense. I’d be the first to tell you, common sense isn’t always all that common. What that means is, not everyone thinks alike. Just because things were done a certain way and looked a certain way in your life growing up, it doesn’t mean that it is an identical experience for the next person.
It’s not fair to place a belief that things that makes sense and is understood by you, is universal knowledge; information that should be known by everyone. Those who have anger issues react on these type of occurrences with a heightened level of anger, on a scale of 1-10 they’d be in the range of 7-10. If someone falls into this category, their anger ranges between sever anger and explosive anger. Everyone expresses their anger differently, however, there are anger types that have a common thread.
The Walking Volcano Anger Type
- Stuffed Emotions:Have you ever felt like cursing someone out or physically harming someone, but hide your true emotions at the time? Have you ever been so upset that you didn’t want to engage because you know you could explode, so you don’t show your true anger?
If this sounds like you, you may be a volcano waiting to erupt. This is typically the makings of a “stuffer” anger type, someone who pushes their emotions down until one day they explode uncontrollably with emotion.
When we push our feelings down we leave ourselves susceptible to building up an enormous emotional energy that can cause great harm if unchecked. It’s easy to push our emotions away, however, there are residual effects as a result of doing so; each decision to push away erodes at your sense of self
The Projector Anger Type
- Projection of Emotions: Do you know anyone who seems to be upset about other things, but seems to heave all that anger toward you? If so, you understand the “projector” anger type.
This is a person who is dealing with upset feelings about a particular thing, but does not communicate those upset feelings during its occurrence; however, this individual waits for someone outside of the situation to explode upon. Quick example: someone gets really upset because they were chewed out at work, but doesn’t communicate their anger at the moment.
In fact, they bottle it up until said person arrives home and unleashes the anger out on their spouse. When you carry the anger from a previous environment into a new environment you might be setting yourself up to react impulsively; often times we don’t respond from our best selves when we react to situations as opposed to responding to them. Responding as opposed to reacting implies that there has been a processing of thought before engagement, allowing one to pause for a split second, and respond from their greater self.
How Did You Learn to Express Your Anger?
- Learned behavior: All behavior is learned behavior. We don’t just arrive here on planet earth knowing how to do things, we learn them from the people and things we see around us. Same goes for anger.
Anyone who struggles with anger issues have learned over time how to deal with angered emotions in a distinct way. Often times, their method of expression is directly correlated to those in which they were raised with. That could be friends, family, or television.
Just as we have learned to express our anger issues in a particular way, we can also learn the tools to effectively manage our anger.
What Holds Us Back
- Lack of awareness: As it pertains to our anger issues our level of awareness is not universal across the board, it varies. Some of us believe that they may have mild to moderate levels of anger issues, but in fact, have a moderate to severe level of anger issues.
It is all determined by our ability to be aware of ourselves and our anger. In order to determine your personal level of awareness it might be helpful to elicit the help of a trusted person you know and ask for some honest feedback.
In addition to the feedback, utilize your personal beliefs about your anger issues, as an example, think of a barometer and determine where you are on a scale of 1-10, and if your belief is identical to that of the trusted individual’s feedback you may have a good understanding of the level to which you have anger issues. From there you should now be able to apply attention to this area and make adjustments if necessary.
How to Effective Manage our Anger
The behavior might vary in range of expression, sometimes It may look like a shouting match, other times it might be a full on physical confrontation leading to a fist fight. The goal for us all should be to effectively manage our anger issues by utilizing tools that have been predetermined. Meaning that you have already determined your struggle with anger issues and have put a plan in place to manage any potential anger outbursts.
Most of us do not have an effective anger management strategy, in fact, most of us do not believe we have anger issues at all.
We Can Learn Coping Skills
- Coping tools: Coping tools/skills are imperative to effectively managing our anger issues. Coping tools is essentially, how we manage our emotions, and in this case our anger issues.
A number of people manage their anger by utilizing distractions like: drugs, alcohol, sex, television, and food. These are not the best way to handle our emotions, especially when we may be emotionally hijacked.
What these distractions do is allow us to not address or think about that very thing that may be bothering us, and push down the emotion we’re experiencing until it passes. Possessing proper coping tools is the hallmark of a well adjusted emotionally regulated person. Effective coping tools are things like: exercise, eating healthy, hobbies, journaling, meditation, and talking to a trusted individual.
Each individual should have a least five coping tools at their disposal because you never know when you will be triggered, but you can always be prepared beforehand in case difficult situations and emotions arise.
Take a look at the video below and learn more about anger issues and the massive impact possessing anger issues can cause on someone’s life.
Anger is something we all deal with, some of us handle this emotion better than others. If you are someone who struggles with anger and no longer want to feel out of control; click here to learn more about seeking additional assistance from a trained mental health professional.
Here’s a short reminder: there are people out here who understand your experience and want to assist you to overcome powerlessness. There is someone who can help you work through life’s challenges and assist in propelling your life forward in a way that allows you to regain control of your life and your emotions.