What Is Anger?
According to Collins Dictionary, “Anger is the strong emotion that you feel when you think that someone has behaved in an unfair, cruel, or unacceptable way.” There are many levels to anger that can be caused by anything from a range of little inconveniences to life changing disturbances.
The feeling that comes from being angry is one of the most intense emotions you can feel. It can effect your body in forms of extra anxiety, high blood pressure, feeling sick or even pain. But anger can be most damaging on your mind. Anger can cause overthinking & depression, affect your way of thinking, and create toxic patterns of behavior.
These reactions I named before about anger are by no means great; no one wants to feel these negative things. Ideally, we would all like to feel amazing all the time, but not a single person on this earth can say they don’t feel negative emotions.
It is important to remember the difference between anger and rage. Anger is an emotion that often a reaction to experiences with other negative feelings like embarrassment, grief, anxiety, or frustration and is completely an internal struggle.
Rage is an uncontrollable form of anger that often presents itself in a violent physical form. Rage produces more irrational, unforgivable, out of character acts than anger because the person is in almost an untamable state of unconscious mind.
We cannot excuse toxic abusive behavior as “they are just so angry”. Anger can be controlled. There is no reason a completely mentally stable person should be showing act of violence and absolutely no reason for us to let them get away with it. If a person is continuously allowed to do toxic behaviors over and over, they will never learn what expressions of their emotions are acceptable and what aren’t. Leaving this unchecked can have extreme consequences and could even lead to fatal incidents.
We do not condone rage. We want to use our anger to help our lives and control it before it becomes rage.
Why is it okay to be angry?
To me, anger gets a bad reputation. When it’s controlled and used correctly, it can be a good thing. Ever since I started letting myself be angry instead of denying my feelings, I have found it’s a way better to channel my energy into changing the circumstances rather than being sad and giving up. There are many reasons I think anger is a much needed and beneficial part of life.
The easiest reason to explain is that anger is an exceptional tool of motivation. In my experience, there is nothing more powerful than the will of a pissed off woman. The same could be said to anyone who uses one of the most intense emotion a person can feel to complete a goal.
The urge to change the situation, whether it’s to prove someone wrong or even just to prove something to yourself, is a force to be reckon with. The determination that can come from accepting that anger and channeling it is unmatched and can be so productive if you let it be.
The best to not silence your anger has to do with self-love. Anger comes from “believing someone has behaved in an unfair, cruel, or unacceptable way.” In order to think someone behaved in an unfair, cruel, unacceptable way you have to believe that you deserve better than the way they are treating you.
Society has taught us since we were young that “the world doesn’t owe us anything” and we have to “earn everything in this life”. This mindset has a lot of times made it difficult for people to accept how their feeling because they aren’t sure they have “earned” the right to deserve anything.
Understanding that everyone has the right to get upset, feel hurt, and think they deserve more, is a huge struggle for some people. They bottle up feelings because they think they have no entitlement to be treated any differently than the way others choose to treat them.
This has a huge negative impact on self esteem and mental health. It is important to recognize and make others recognize that you are good enough to be treated the way you want.
On the flip side, sometimes we do recognize we have a right to be angry but let things go or let others get away with treating us poorly because we think we are strong enough to handle the treatment.
Letting others get away with treating us poorly is actually us treating ourselves poorly too. This enables people to continue the cycle of treating you badly. Being strong doesn’t necessarily mean letting others treat you like garbage and being silent about it Sometimes being strong means standing up and expressing your feelings even when it’s hard.
Making others acknowledge your worth and you personally acknowledging your worth by sticking up for yourself is so important to your mental health. Expressing that you are angry is the first step to making sure you’re treating yourself well.
How Can I Regulate and Balance My Anger?
If you find you are struggling to understand or control your anger there are many options that can help you feel more regulated. The most obvious answer is therapy. There are multiple forms of therapy. Therapy can be through email, text, calls, video-chat, and in person with a professional. Therapy isn’t for everyone. Some people would like to find solutions more privately and that is where I recommend finding resources in books, articles and podcasts.