Everyone gets angry. Anger is an emotion that has a great deal of energy and power and there are some situations where anger is exactly the right emotion to feel. When you see cruelty or injustice happening in the world, anger can be the most appropriate response, it might just have enough energy in it to get you out of your seat to try and do something about it.
The problem comes when anger gets out of control and begins to affect your life and the lives of those around you. We may become aware that we sometimes use anger to intimidate or control people, we may take our anger out on ourselves, we may find ourselves sabotaging our relationships, perhaps we feel out of control and afraid of our own feelings.
About a third of people in the UK say they know someone who has a problem with anger, about 12% of people report struggling to control their own anger.
The book of proverbs has a surprising amount to say about anger - infact the bible often centres in on this powerful emotion.
Whoever is patient has great understanding,
but one who is quick-tempered displays folly.
Proverbs 14:29 (NIV)
The good thing is, it is possible to learn to control our emotions and sort out any underlying issues that might be fuelling the fire. We want to encourage you to go on that journey so that anger no longer hijacks your best energies for the wrong causes.
If you’re aware you have difficulty with anger, the good news is you’re not alone, and all things can be trained with a will.
Anger is powerful, used wisely and under control it is a key piece of our response where we see something wrong in the world. Anger can be the fuel that drives our response to make changes in those arenas.
However, anger is a double edged sword.
The world is a beautiful but damaged place, just read the headlines on any given day. Even if we were not imperfect people, during a lifetime we cannot hope to avoid some of the harmful effects of living alongside one another. We will all be wounded by some ill or mistreatment at some point or another. These events if not dealt with healthily and forgiven fully usually mean we do not wield anger with complete control and wisdom.
Our relationship with anger is coloured by both our natural imperfect nature but also and maybe more powerfully by the life we have experienced. Thus our personal agendas, selfishness, tiredness, memories, and pain all feed into how we handle those moments when we perceive something is wrong with circumstances or the way we are being treated. If we choose to disassociate from those feed ins we are at real risk of emotional hijack, and the “red mist”descending.
This basically amounts to being out of control, and depending on how you choose to exercise your dissatisfaction with circumstances, you are capable of causing brutal and very real physical or emotional damage on the object of your anger, or if you internalise it, to yourself.
The result is damaged people, relationships, things, or self. Nobody really wants that, right? This is our tool to protect those we love and choose justice!
Ultimately anger, in and of itself, is not bad. In his letter to the Ephesians, a church who clearly needed help with anger management, the Apostle Paul write these words:
In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry
Ephesians 4:26 (NIV)
There must be a way to be angry without falling into sin and causing pain to people we love. There is a way to choose a pathway towards healing and reconciliation in our relationships. There is a way to grow in self-control and inner peace. We want to encourage you to get on that path of healing.
Look out for warning signs.
Become familiar with what is happening to your body before you get mad. If you can recognise the signs you may give yourself the chance to think about how you might choose to react to a situation. The earlier you notice it the easier it’ll be to pull out of the spiral. Consider concentrating on your breathing rather than the anger when you notice these feelings.
Buy yourself time to think.
Have a couple of phrases in your quiver to excuse yourself from a situation or from having to respond immediately. “I need some time to think about that” or “I need to take some time out, I’m not in a good place to respond.”
Once you are out of the situation, there are some further steps that would also help.
Take some exercise.
Your body has just been flooded with adrenaline which is a hormone specifically released to prepare you for fight and flight. That’s useful if you’re confronted by a wild animal, less so if you’re super frustrated by a family member. Adrenaline wants you to do something, it’s there to promote activity. Do something with it.
Talk to someone
Talking to someone you can trust who is not connected to the situation really helps. Talk it out with a view to understanding why you are so angry. You can call the Samaritans 24 hours a day.
Count your blessings.
Consider the things in your life that bring you life and choose an activity that will lead you away from thinking about the things that are causing you to feel anger.
“Don’t be afraid of embracing the disappointment you feel, old or new. Don’t be scared of the unreasonable joy either. They are highway markers home.”
Here are some suggestions for how to begin thinking about where your anger has come from and what is feeding it. Anger rarely finds its start and end point in any one circumstance. In most cases there is a well trodden path of experience that is informing any given situation. We have to learn to live a life examined, and be merciful to ourselves.
We can snort with disdain at such quaint sentiments, and strike off down the path of discipline and duty. All can go well for a time, until we begin to realise that we’re not feeling much anymore. We find ourselves struggling to weep with those who weep or even rejoice with those that rejoice.
We suggest going to God with the problem, perhaps with the help of a counsellor or friend who can pray with you.
Where does this anger come from?
In prayer ask God the origins of your anger. Where did it get its beginnings, will you show me? Give Jesus permission, to help you remember events that have hurt you and are affecting the way you view your circumstances. Dreams, music, however it might be that he can show up for you. He is infinitely creative.
Invite God into your past.
Ask Jesus to come with you into the memory and show you where he was in that moment and what he was thinking of you? Remember He is a merciful God who wants nothing more than our hearts as they are.
Allow emotions to come
Get alone, get to your car or your bedroom or the shower and let tears come, they can be healing. Be kind to your self and acknowledge your life wounds. Allow yourself to feel even if you feel anger, remember anger is not a sin. You may feel remorse, fear disappointment. In fact there is no emotion you can bring up that Jesus can’t handle. (Look at the psalms - they are a raging sea of emotions).
As Augustine wrote in his confessions, “The tears … streamed down, and I let them flow as freely as they would, making of them a pillow for my heart. On them it rested.”
Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. That’s not the way life was supposed to go. There are unwept tears down inside many of us - the tears of a little boy or girl who is lost or frightened. The tears of a teenage boy or girl who’s been rejected and has no place to turn. The tears of a man or a woman whose life has been hard and lonely.
Rewind!
One expert on anger recommends this little trick to understanding how it works. Try tracing back to the few seconds before anger took over and try to understand what emotions were there in those few seconds, they are often uncomfortable emotions, coming out of our brokenness and past hurts. More to explore there, but suffice to say, whatever we may say about the justification for our angry outbursts and irritability, there is sometimes more to it than meets the eye, not least a vulnerability being obscured by the slightly addictive feeling of being on our high horses!
Contributor: Richard Hughes Jones, Woodlands Church Bristol
Featuring: Anger
