Emotions
How To Manage Anger Constructively
I grew up in a home where anger wasn’t handled well. Let me take you back there:
Do Other People Push Your Anger Button?
Now, don’t get me wrong. My mother lets her anger flow freely, but she rarely uses the actual words “I am angry”. Instead, her anger comes out as hurtful criticism, put-downs and emotional bullying.
My dad isn’t any better. He bottles his anger up so badly that he often seethes with resentment so loud that I can hear him muttering under his breath when I’m playing in the next room. It’s frightening.
All it takes is for mum to walk in and say, “What’s wrong with you, you stupid creature?” and, bang, next round of World War III is back on again.
What I learned from all this was the idea that anger was somehow a bad thing, that it was a bad emotion that I should never feel, because it always seemed to be expressed destructively around me.
As a result, I learned to push down my anger very hard, to suppress it. In fact, I pushed it down so hard that in the end I barely even felt it.