How do you deal with your anger? Do you explode?

"The embarrassment after the anger is biggest humiliation a person can experience."

"How do you deal with your anger? Do you explode? Does everyone around you know when and why you are angry? Or are you more subtle? Do you get irritated and short with those around you? Do you gossip and complain about your spouse, children, coworkers, and friends? What makes you angry?
Are they small things, like traffic jams, lines at the grocery store, not being able to find a shoe, a waiter’s mistake, or a friend’s inattention? Are they big things, like when someone betrays you? Experiences of injustice, meanness, violence, oppression, selfishness, or lying?

These are the questions you should ask yourself; for maybe you just turn your anger in on yourself and become depressed and bitter that which makes you run down the whole day.

You might have noticed that you can’t avoid dealing with your anger. Anger is an inevitable response to living in a troubled world where things can and do go wrong all the time or some of the time.

But if you don’t learn how to deal with your anger, you will constantly hurt others. You will poison your own heart. You will estrange yourself from God’s actual purpose of love.

Counselors have noticed how destructive people become when they express anger. They will counsel you to control your anger. Psychotherapy, medication, exercise, and meditation are just some of the different ways they recommend for defusing your anger and calming yourself down.

So which is it, venting or calming?

Actually, the Universe has different ways for you to deal with your anger. Stuffing your anger deep inside is destructive. And just by learning tricks for keeping calm you can discover the purpose for which you have been designed with anger. Anger needs to be acknowledged and expressed in a positive way, as a form of doing what is good and right.

At the same time, instead of expressing your anger in ways that hurt those around you, it is possible to express your anger in a way that actually redeems difficult situations and relationships.

How does this happen? It starts with understanding what anger is, where it comes from, and how you will actually change the way you view and express your anger.

So What is anger?

Anger is your God-given capacity to respond to a wrong that you think is important. It always expresses two things:
It identifies something in your world that matters to you.
It proclaims that you believe that something is wrong.

This could be something as minor as being served a cold cup of coffee at a restaurant. Or it could be something as serious as one’s spouse running off with the best friend.

So when you get angry, you are not necessarily wrong. But often anger does go wrong.

Think about the last time you got angry. Underneath your feelings, words, and actions is something you wanted but didn’t get. Such as respect, affirmation, power, convenience, cooperation, help, money, comfort, intimacy, peace, pleasure, identity, safety … what is it that you want? And how do you respond when you don’t get it? Anger going wrong loudly tells the world, “I want my way! My will be done!”

Sometimes you want good things. It’s not wrong to want your spouse to love and listen to you. It’s not wrong to want your children to respect and obey you. It’s not wrong to want your boss to be honest with you. It’s not wrong to want a warm meal and a hot cup of coffee, or to get to your appointment rather than getting stuck in traffic.

But when fulfilling your desires, even for a good thing, becomes more important than anything else, that’s when it changes into a “desire of the flesh”. You want it too much. When you don’t get what you want, you demand, believe you need and think you deserve it, that’s how your anger flares up.

Turning to scripture for advices is the first step I take. It is book where one get solutions to all our problems. James, in the letter he wrote to the early church in the Bible, said this about where wrong anger comes from: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you try to murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel” (James 4:1-2). When you want anything, even a good thing more than God, you will get angry when you don’t get it or even if it’s taken away from you.

And sometimes you are right to be angry because you are experiencing a true wrong. Then the problem is not the fact of getting angry, but how you express that anger. It’s not right for someone to tailgate you, recklessly and aggressively endangering you and your family. It’s not right when your spouse is indifferent or inconsiderate. It’s not right if your boss treats you unfairly or your child refuses to obey. It’s not right when you are abused or attacked.

I believe that anger has been given to us by God as the way to say, “That’s not right and that matters”, which makes more sense to me. In our broken world, you will have many good reasons to be angry. But, because we are part of the broken grief stricken world, we express our anger at true wrongs in the wrong way. We blow up. We get irritated. We gossip. We complain. We hold a grudge. We shut people out. We get even. We become embittered, cynical and hostile. Something really wrong happened … and we become really wrong in reaction.

What’s behind your wrong anger? When you get angry, aren’t you taking God’s place and judging others—and perhaps even judging God? Whether you are angry about something trivial or something serious, your wrong reaction reveals that you are living as if you are in charge of the world and believe you have the right to judge the people around you and the way God is running the world. In other words you are directly or indirectly judging the action of other.

When James talks about anger, it goes on to discuss why it’s wrong to judge and criticize others: “There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” in (James 4:12). God alone has the right to pass final judgment.

Think about this when you get angry. Aren’t you insisting, “My will be done; my kingdom come”? And when things don't go your way, don’t you judge those (including God) who are not doing what you want, as if you were God? You aren’t, but when you are angry, you often act as if you were."

Please watch out for my next post where in I write about how you can effectively control your anger!

Sending love, lights, peace and warm hugs to you, my dear friend!

Anthony Sunny Kunneth.

P.S. If you enjoyed this Blog Post "How you deal with your anger? Do you explode?" Pin It, Share it, Retweet and Comment

PLEASE CONNECT WITH ME