Anger Problems: How They Affect Relationships and How to Overcome Them

Would you consider yourself a person with anger problems? Most of us probably have a mental image of what we think an angry person looks like, and it probably isn’t us. There are some well-known ways to express anger that are often understood to be what anger is all about. Incidents of road rage that go viral, instances of domestic abuse, or fights breaking out between sports fans often come to mind when the word “anger” is mentioned.

Anger is a lot more nuanced than we often think, and it can manifest in various ways that can undermine one’s physical health as well as interpersonal relationships. There are good reasons to try and understand how your anger works and how it affects you. When you understand it, you can also find ways to handle it better so that you and your relationships can flourish.

Anger is never neutral

Anger is an emotion that can be positive or negative – righteous or unrighteous. Most people don’t want to feel angry, just like most people don’t want to feel sad, lonely, or disappointed. Considered abstractly, feelings of anger are reactions to what we may consider a negative or unpleasant experience, so on the surface it may appear morally neutral.

However, anger is never experienced merely in the abstract. Once anger is considered in a concrete situation it becomes good or bad depending on several factors such as:

• Its cause – is it driven by danger or mere pride?
• Its object – is it directed at the right person or situation?
• Its degree – is the anger way out of proportion to the cause?
• Its control – is the anger in control, or the person?

Additionally, all anger – even our most righteous anger – is stained by human sin. For all of these reasons, we must never make the grave mistake of thinking that anger could ever be neutral.

The Different Manifestations Of Anger

A person’s anger can manifest in several different ways. Anger may be a response to a threat or danger. That threat or danger may be imminent or past, and it can also be either real or imagined. When we feel threatened or interpret actions, situations, or words as a threat to us or our loved ones, anger is the result. Anger helps us to protect our boundaries when they are violated.

How we handle our anger varies widely depending on its context, our personality, or even how we’ve seen anger being expressed by others around us in our formative years. Some people are simply more expressive than others, and that goes for all of their emotions. Others have been exposed to toxic expressions of anger such as domestic abuse or other forms of physical and verbal violence.

Anger can be expressed outwardly, but it can also be directed inwardly. A person can express their anger by shouting, cursing, hitting, punching, making threats, or sulking and giving someone the silent treatment. These are all sinful expressions of anger because they cause harm to the person they’re directed toward.

Though there may be extreme exceptions, most anger can also be expressed outwardly in healthy ways, such as calmly, clearly, and assertively communicating your position.

When anger is directed inward, it can manifest itself as self-deprecation or name-calling, punishing oneself by withholding comfort or even food, or engaging in self-harm. These forms of expressing anger are also unhealthy, primarily because they are harmful ways of relating to yourself. You’re made in God’s image and deserve to be treated with dignity; self-directed anger often violates that.

How Anger Problems Can Affect You And Your Relationships

Anger evokes a deep physiological response. When we encounter danger, it triggers our fight, freeze, or flight response (though admittedly it is usually the “fight” response). When that response is triggered, the adrenal glands flood the body with stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol.

Certain changes will then occur in the body, including an increased heart rate and blood pressure. Anger propels your body to physically prepare itself to fight to defend itself or flee from danger.

If you are angry a lot, or if your anger is intense, it means you’re stressing your heart out more, and you’re increasing your risk of heart attacks. Anger can also increase your risk of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Additionally, anger can also lead to digestive issues. When you’re stressed, you’re more likely to compromise your immune system, leaving you more vulnerable to illness.

In addition to the physical and other ailments to which anger makes you more vulnerable, anger can also affect your relationships in several negative ways, such as:

Fomenting antipathy Anger will often lead you to feel antagonism toward the person or thing that inspired it. If you often feel angry toward your loved ones, you won’t want to spend time with them or think kindly of them. This could disrupt the relationship.

Hindering effective communication Anger can prevent you from communicating effectively. It’s easier to jump to conclusions, to sabotage conflict resolution, to escalate conflict, and to say and do regrettable things when anger is in the driver’s seat. Unless harnessed well (even when it is righteous), anger raises the temperature in the room without increasing clarity.

Confuses issues Anger can sometimes mask other things that you’re feeling that are driving it. Imagine that you’re having dinner with some friends, and your partner makes an off-color remark about you or your job. At that moment, you feel your anger flaring up, and you might respond with a snarky comment or perhaps with a cold shoulder and the silent treatment for the rest of the evening.

In such a situation, if you dig a little, you might find that what’s at the root of your angr is wounded pride or embarrassment. Anger can be driven by other feelings like fear, a lack of control, shame, and guilt. It can confuse issues and have you dealing merely with the anger on the surface issue and not what is driving it.

Strains relationships Sometimes, anger is directed at someone who has nothing to do with the situation. This sinful form of anger can needlessly put a strain on the relationship. Your anger can also make you more hostile or cynical toward your loved ones, which can take a toll on those relationships you’re your ability to form meaningful bonds with others.

Anger outbursts can make a relationship feel unsafe. Explosive anger can result not only in verbal, but physical abuse. When people need to tiptoe around you because of how you react when you’re angry, it makes for a fragile existence and sense of connection that hangs by a thread. That slender thread is at risk of being broken each time you lash out in anger.

It sets sinful examples If you have children or other dependents who look to you for guidance and for whom you’re a role model, your sinful anger creates unhealthy examples for them. They won’t necessarily know when anger is good or bad, or how to express it in a way that doesn’t cause damage to others or themselves.

Dealing With Anger In Relationships

Anger can severely undermine the health of a relationship, and the well-being of the people in the relationship itself. There are things you can do to deal with anger problems and begin to overcome them.

Deal with arguments In your relationships, you must deal with issues that come up. Instead of staying angry at someone, move to resolve the issue so that you don’t stay angry at them, and so that you don’t give resentment a foothold in your relationship. Dealing with arguments also means learning how to humbly resolve conflict, and how to communicate clearly and assertively without being aggressive.

Understand your anger Some people journal to help themselves to try and understand how and why they get angry. When you know what triggers your anger, when you know how that anger progresses, and when you know how it affects you and others, you’ll be better prepared to identify it as either righteous or unrighteous and thus know how to deal with it.

Take self-care seriously Self-care can look like exercising regularly and learning relaxation techniques. Regular exercise helps you to relieve stress and elevates your mood. Relaxation techniques like meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, and deep breathing can help you deal with anger in the moments when it’s threatening to overtake you.

Seek counseling There are many reasons why we feel angry, and sometimes it takes the help of a professional to help us unpack our experiences. Trauma experiences that are left unresolved, and conditions such as depression can all result in anger. Talking with someone like a counselor can help you process your experiences and begin getting a handle on them.

Christian Counseling For Anger Problems

A counselor can also help you with tools so you can analyze and cope with anger. They can teach you how to express your anger in a healthy way, and to begin to recognize when your anger is sinful and requires repentance. If you struggle with anger, know that there are effective strategies you can implement to bring it under control.