WELLBEING

WHAT IS ANGER?

Feelings of anger are a normal and healthy part of being human. Learning to avoid all anger would be an impossible goal. Instead learn to avoid negative reactions to anger, while learning new healthy habits. 

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The first step in anger management is to begin learning about your own anger. To start, you will learn about triggers, how you respond to anger, and how anger has affected your life. 

 

Anger can cause many different symptoms. It might affect how you feel physically or mentally, or how you behave.

 

Some people become aggressive towards others when they're angry. Other people hide their anger and may take it out on themselves.

 

It's not always easy to recognise when anger is the reason why you're behaving differently.

 

Anger only becomes a problem when it gets out of control and harms you or people around you. This can happen when:

 

• you regularly express your anger through unhelpful or destructive behaviour

• your anger is having a negative impact on your overall mental and physical health

• anger becomes your go-to emotion, blocking out your ability to feel other emotions

• you haven't developed healthy ways to express your anger

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WHAT DOES ANGER LOOK LIKE?

Not everyone expresses anger in the same way. For example, some unhelpful ways you may have learned to express anger include:

 

• Outward aggression and violence - such as shouting, swearing, slamming doors, hitting or throwing things and being physically violent or verbally abusive and threatening towards others.

• Inward aggression - such as telling yourself that you hate yourself, denying yourself your basic needs (like food, or things that might make you happy), cutting yourself off from the world and self-harming.

• Non-violent or passive aggression - such as ignoring people or refusing to speak to them, refusing to do tasks, or deliberately doing things poorly, late or at the last possible minute, and being sarcastic or sulky while not saying anything explicitly aggressive or angry.