Being stuck in a relationship of abuse or neglect can cause you to suppress anger. Suppressed anger, in time, will break out of your weak restraints and display itself in many self-destructive ways. It can turn into resentment or bitterness, gradually simmering to the boiling point-at which time it can have severe debilitating effects on your mental health. This can result in low self-esteem, withdrawal and isolation, difficulty maintaining relationships, suicidal thoughts, sexual promiscuity, and/or dysfunction. Even physical problems such as migraine headaches, colitis, high blood pressure, substance abuse, lupus, and arthritis can all be caused or aggravated by repressing anger.
*Feeling anger is neither good nor bad, but is rather a natural reaction that occurs whenever your self-esteem or your self-respect is hurt or threatened.
*Anger is a sign that you are alive.
*Hate, on the other hand, is a sign that you are sick and in need of healing.
Healthy anger can drive you to do something to change what makes you angry. It can actually help to make things better. The main difference between hate and anger is that hate does not want to change things for the better; it wants to make things worse.
Anger can mask feelings of helplessness, disappointment, insecurity, grief, and fear. Some people fear the possible consequences of revealing how they really feel.
*Anger can also feel safer than intimacy and genuine communication.
It can act like a shield to protect you from deeper pain and hurt. When you walk around with your defenses up, holding onto your anger, you are in effect keeping yourself from hurting too much and you then are not so fearful of being hurt again.
Anger projected toward others will keep them away. If they can’t get too close, you’re not so vulnerable. You may use anger to end a relationship, but instead, the anger can actually cause you to maintain the relationship emotionally because you remain bound to the person with whom you are angry.
Many kids leave home at an early age to escape from anger and resentment they feel towards their parents. Sadly, if they don’t come to the place of reconciliation and forgiveness, they will be shackled to their family by the very anger that caused them to leave home.
Think about this: some people are even too scared of anger to get angry! They think that anger is bad because they’ve seen what uncontrolled anger can do. They’re afraid to be angry about things that maybe "God’s will" for their life-that they brought it upon themselves.
Maybe your parents expressed their anger with loud violence. Perhaps you grew up in an alcoholic or another type of dysfunctional home where displaying negative feelings of any kind was against house rules. Therefore, feeling anger toward someone may leave you feeling guilty and ashamed. You may have been physically or verbally abused by angry adults and then not allowed to vent your anger back at them.
As a child, you may have been the victim of someone getting angry with you for no apparent reason. Maybe their day went bad, or they had to wait in line too long at the grocery store, or they were cut off by a bad driver or had a bad day at the office. As a result, you may have been left with the impression that anger can take over at any time and make a person do things that they would not normally do.
*Anger can mask feelings that are at the root of the problem.
Because you dread feeling the fear and sadness underlying the anger. When you forgive, God’s light illuminates the truth, and gives you grace to confront the root of the problem.
*Anger is also used to avoid dealing with hurtful past experiences.
We have all been ridiculed or humiliated as a result of something we did. You may have been put down in front of others, or told "You’re stupid," or "You’re a geek!" This can lead to repressed anger-not only toward the tormentor, but toward yourself as well.
I remember that my parents wanted me to wear clothes that I knew no one else on the face of the planet would be caught dead wearing in junior high school! Later, during my high school years, I bought my own clothes and put them on at school so I wouldn’t feel like a jerk!
One day in the fourth grade, I was participating in the painting of the various states on our playground. While bending over to paint, I remember hearing everyone laughing, and as I turned around to see what they were laughing at, I realized they were laughing at me! When I returned to the classroom, the teacher asked me how much I weighed-in in front of my classmates! I’ll never forget the hush that fell on the room as everyone turned their eyes on the "fat boy."
I stood there, trapped by the teacher. I had to tell him something, so I lied: "I only weigh 120 pounds." (However, I knew the truth was that I weighed a lot more, and from that point on I never felt good about my size.)
Events such as these can have long-lasting effects on how we view ourselves, or how we think others view us. In order to cope with them, we build invisible walls around ourselves that cling to us far into adulthood.
*Some even become secure in the insecurity that may be at the heart of anger.
They create situations that can cause anger because they are more afraid of the unknown-what life might be like without the problems to which they are accustomed. The security of living with those very problems becomes safer than the insecurity of not having the problem anymore because they fear the unknown the most.
In the business world, I had a talent for finding a problem and fixing it, or at least putting a program together that could overcome the problem. Perversely, I thrived on the crises and high-stress situations that caused me to be angry.
One day while I was working, my immediate supervisor said, "Craig, I’ve noticed that although you’re doing a great job fixing problems that arise, you’re also creating additional crisis situations so that you can fix them, too."
It hurt to hear this, but in other words, he was saying that I was creating my own problems unknowingly so that I could do what I do best! I discovered that I worked better when things were haywire than when things were running smoothly! I was more at home working in stress than without it, so I unconsciously kept allowing problems to happen so that I could fix them!
*Anger is a powerful emotion that can consume our energy.
It is a strong emotional reaction to threatening situations. When it rears its ugly head, it can be expressed openly and directly, or it may be kept hidden inside expressing itself as resentment.
*Resentment can be defined as the feeling of constant discontentment that persists even after that which caused the anger is gone.
Some will show outwardly how angry they are by yelling, slamming the door, throwing things, making threats, kicking the dog, kicking the cat, or even punching a hole in the wall. They might put others down, drive on the road like a maniac, use abusive language, or hit their spouse or kids.
There are also ways in which you can show your anger unknowingly.
*"Suppressed anger" is used to control others through guilt or fear.
Suppressed anger may get you your own way without having to acknowledge that you are angry. You may (unknowingly) be showing it by being habitually late, using sarcasm, forgetting things, accidentally damaging or losing things that belong to others, annoying someone, sulking, not paying attention, embarrassing people, being silent, and gossiping.
Such behavior is infuriating because your anger manipulates and control others, and then they, in turn, feel angry and resentful.
*However, anger can also be a powerful motivator for change.
-such as when Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple! In a rare display of emotion, we find Jesus showing righteous anger.
"In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, ’Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!’" (John 2:14-16)
*Positive anger can cause you to make a dramatic change in your life.
You may even get angry enough to quit a dead-end job, or leave a terrible relationship, or help right a social or moral injustice, such as Jesus did. However, beware! It didn’t go over too well with the Jewish leaders, and was one of the reasons they crucified Him!
In Abraham Lincoln’s biography, Carl Sandburg tells the story of Lincoln as a young boy arriving in New Orleans after having traveled down the Mississippi River. As Lincoln and his companion were walking around the city, they came upon a slave market-the first he had ever seen. Families were being torn apart as their loved ones were sold like cattle at an auction.
Lincoln, enraged and horrified, said to his companion, "If I ever get the chance to hit this thing, I’ll hit it hard!"
For Lincoln, his anger was a motivating force to change the history of our country and right a terrible wrong. But when anger is the primary motivation for change, it creates resistance to the very change we are trying to bring about because it engenders fear in those we are trying to influence. As a result, it often generates opposition rather than resolution.
*Anger left unattended can turn to hate-
a dangerous, deadly emotion when directed toward the people who have hurt you. It is destructive to those to whom it is directed but, more importantly, it is destructive to yourself as well.
*It can become a cancer that slowly destroys your body and your soul.
Hate can give instant energy and empower you to run when attacked, but ultimately,
*Hate will turn its power against the hater.
It will sap the energy of the soul, leaving it weaker than before, too weak in fact to create a better life beyond the pain.
*Anger that is not dealt with will consume your time and energy as you fume and mull over your painful experiences.
Holding onto your anger makes it impossible to forgive people who hurt you, even when they have changed and want to reconcile.
James, the brother of Jesus, taught that we "should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires." (James 1:19-20)
Anger can only be set free through forgiveness. Then you will learn how to be "angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath." (Ephesians 4:26 KJV)
