Anger is an emotion that can range from mild annoyance to intense rage. While everyone experiences anger from time-to-time – in itself, anger is not a problem unless it is expressed in harmful ways.
When people feel angry, they often display angry behaviour, such as yelling, throwing things, criticising, ignoring, storming out, or refusing to do something. Anger is not the same as violence, however, anger can lead to violence if not properly controlled.
Feelings of frustration is often associated with anger. Anger may arise when things don’t happen the way we anticipate, or when people don’t behave the way we expect them to. Additionally, it may even be a response to a perceived injustice or unfairness, or be caused by worrying about personal problems.
Interestingly enough, anger typically transpires from other negative emotions. For example, a person may be feeling depressed, anxious, disappointed, worried, embarrassed, frustrated, hurt, or frightened, however, express these feelings as anger.
Males and females often express anger in different ways. Males typically find it easy to express anger as they may feel it is the more legitimate emotion to express. This is because males often find it harder to express the feelings underneath the anger, such as sadness, hurt, or grief. For females, the reverse may be possible: their anger is concealed by tears or other emotions.
When is anger an issue?
Some signs that anger is a problem include:
- Your anger is expressed as verbal, emotional, physical or psychological abuse.
- You feel angry most of the time
- You believe you have to get angry in order to get what you want
- Your anger seems to get bigger than the event that initially trigger the emotion
- Your anger lasts for a long period of time, and well after the triggering event has passed.
- You are becoming anxious or depressed about your anger
- People close to you have expressed their concerns about your anger
Anger, when unmanaged, can create problems for you or others around you, and can lead to more problems. The team at MindTree Psychology can help you better understand and manage your anger.