Anger is a natural defense against emotional, psychological, physical fear or pain.

But, unaddressed, unexpressed or unmanaged, it can be a terrible thing.

Anger can debilitate us.

Control us.

Warp us.

On occasion make us unrecognizable to ourselves.

In its worst form,  it can kill us.

If it doesn’t, anger can surely keep us from experiencing genuine happiness or fulfillment as so eloquently put by Kahlil Gibran – “If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?”

So, what to do?

First, don’t bother denying it. Everybody’s got it.

Understand that anger has many sources. Focus on identifying them in order to address, dismantle and become free of them.

Accept that anger inhabits us.  It collects in our organs, tissues and muscles. Causes pain and disease.  Has a debilitating physical effect on us and, in fact, can kill us.  Decide to address it.

Get to know your trigger points. Noticing a rapid heart rate, harder, faster breathing, tension in the neck, pains in the chest, headaches or stomach pains can help you calm and protect yourself.

Don’t blame others for your anger. Stop being a victim and deal with it.  Carl Jung said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

Start using your anger as a valuable source of self-discovery. See it as helping you recognize that something inside needs attention. Pointing to some hurt from the past that has simply been activated by a person or situation in the present.

Anger can shed light on needs, desires, rights or core values that are going unaddressed. Help us see that we may be compromising something of ourselves or failing to attend to an injustice or prior harm. Writing out angry feelings not only helps us feel better but improves the body’s immune system.

As we learn about the sources of our anger, we can begin to be more assertive about setting personal limits and maintaining healthy boundaries for ourselves that will guard us against anger-producing offenses. We can learn to reduce our irritations by more candidly informing others of our likes, dislikes, wants and needs.

We can begin to positively re-channel the vast energies that we have been using to suppress our anger – using that energy, instead, as a catalyst toward addressing and solving problems.

When we are willing, we can, instead of remaining angry, successfully redirect our thoughts and open our minds to other ways of looking things.

Taking long walks, listening to music, doing artwork, deep breathing or meditating are some of the methods for achieving calm and self-understanding.

Iin short, getting to the bottom of and dealing with our anger is not only eye-opening, it’s life-saving.

For the full article on The High Price of Anger, email jreynolds@jkr.net with ‘Anger” in the subject line.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2011 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Rage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.