Anger

“Anger is empowering emotion if used constructively”  

Anger is a natural emotion that is essential for our wellbeing.  The physiological effects of anger provide us with a boost of energy usually when we perceive a threat or challenge in order to help us make a flight or fight response.  However, anger can cause us difficulties when it either becomes too frequent, too intense or when it lasts for too long.

Although it feels as though we have an outburst for no particular reason, this is not the case.  There is always a trigger.  Some event or comment will be perceived by us as an attack, or will push our buttons because of some other event in our past.  This will then trigger the physiological responses and we become angry.

Anger causes us to be stressed and the more stressed we are the more easily we become angry.  This can lead us into a downwards spiral where we find we are constantly shouting, or losing our temper.  We tend to vent our anger in relationships where we feel safe, so often our closest family suffers the most.

How can counselling help?

A counsellor can help you to identify your particular trigger(s) and help you to understand why that event has such an impact on you.  They can help you to see the event from a different perspective.  They can help you to look at your core beliefs, for example if we think that all people should be polite we will be angry when someone is not.  If, on the other hand, we can understand that people are too preoccupied, or distressed to be polite all the time, we will not get angry.  A counsellor can also help you to explore how you could deal with the situations that make you angry more effectively.