HOW I CONFRONTED MY ANGER ISSUES

Anger is only one of the diverse human emotions. According to Charles Spielberger, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in the study of anger, anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage. Having said, what us humans naturally do to express our anger is through aggressive responses. In connection to such, Marlene Chism also stated that there are two types of people. Those who have anger and those who do not admit they have anger.

In the past, I would probably be the latter. I have been into situations where my anger outperforms my patience. Most of the time it was because I was triggered by something I am not comfortable with and things that does not adhere with my personal boundaries or agree with my opinions. I easily get irritated when people do wrong things and I fail to understand the reason behind these actions, then I blame them for these outcomes. I never admitted I had problems too, yet they did still try to understand me. Later I realized I was too much and me, being unable to control my anger, impacts them negatively. I noticed that my relationship with these people I have encountered with became aloof.

Recently, I came across to a course in LinkedIn Learning, which tackles about anger management. Upon watching the content of this course, memories of me overcoming my anger started to come back. Ms. Chism was indeed true with her words, that sometimes the problem with people like me is the act of avoiding, denying, and being afraid to admit what we did because we had problem dealing with our anger issues. I remember one situation where it clearly shows that I was the person mentioned in the latter phrases. I was in 12th grade, and it was the day of our defense. Our group was composed of four members, and we were all close friends. Four hours before our defense, we had to edit out some parts of our paper, thus, we need to produce it again in triplicate copies. All members were tired, but we still needed to do additional tasks. Together with one of our groupmates, we were tasked to do these things. It was really exhausting because we are located at 7th floor of our building and we needed to photocopy from outside of the University, plus it was raining heavily. We still did what we were supposed to do, but right after we finished these tasks, we had a terrible quarrel. We were both tired and so we were overwhelmed by our anger. We shouted at each other, said a lot of hurtful words, blaming each other for so many reasons, and forgetting that fact that we are friends, and we are just too tired.

“There are two types of people. Those who have anger and those who do not admit they have anger. ” - Marlene Chism

After that incident, we went back to our room and stayed silent until our other two groupmates noticed something was wrong. Our leader called me out and asked me about what happened, and I never admitted I was wrong. I told her the whole story but only highlighting the parts where my wrong actions were not evident, and it was really, wrong. At that time, I never admitted that I was wrong. And I do not have plans to admit it because all I know was, I am tired, I am hurt by the incident, he was wrong, and he invalidates my opinion. However, later that day, something unexpected had happened. He came to me, saying he was sorry, and he sincerely admitted the things where he was wrong. I was surprised, not because he said sorry, but because I actually witnessed a person doing the same thing I was afraid of doing since childhood, and that was acknowledging my anger and fixing the inappropriate consequences it had brought.

I stayed silent for a moment, and then I noticed that I am in tears, because I finally realized that I was the one who caused the fight and tried to intensify it by bringing up inappropriate words and actions. That was also the first time I admitted about how my anger made me the person I tried not to be for almost a decade. It was painful, but at the same time it was consoling, I lost to my prideful anger, but I still won our friendship. We were able to make amends before the defense and it was really touching to have a person accepting your flaws and giving you chance not to do the same thing again. Our defense was successful, and we were all happy that day achieving both success in our thesis and our friendship. Until now, I am still caught up in situations where my anger is tested a lot, but not like my previous story, I get to manage it a little better. And just like what this course had taught me, anger is part of the human experience. It is an act of courage especially when we overcome it and treat it as part of our personal growth. Hence, taking a step of confronting this flaw is already a lot of courage, especially from persons suffering from these situations.

Here's you can confront yours too!

My own way of dealing with my anger outbursts may not applicable to every person in the room. Hence, some of the things listed below might help you or someone you know handle this situation:

1. Relaxation. As opposite as it may sound, this has to be one of the most effective ways on how to prevent your anger outbursts. It is a proactive strategy that enables us to lessen the bundle of stressors that can cause potential outbursts. It may involve doing our favorite hobbies, exploring new things, or even simply chilling out on a movie night.

2. Talk it out. Sometimes, letting out what exhausts you can be very satisfying, especially if that burden took a long time dwelling within you. Having the right people around you will help a lot in making this strategy a success.

3. Avoidance. There are these stressors that we can not really handle, if this happens, probably one of our most effective and last resort is to avoid that person or situation at all costs. Oftentimes, doing so helps us to practice ourselves from distancing into the former and just hopes for the better days to come.

These tips are only a minimal percentage of what we can do as a response to our anger issues. We can always seek help from people we know we can trust and start reminding ourselves that we are just normal beings with emotions that are part of our survival.