| What is anger?
Anger is a strong emotion that stimulates aggressive action. Anger is a physiological and psychological reaction to pain, suffering, threat or danger. The threat can be real or imaginary.
People have social sensitivities, desires and needs. When they are not met or are harmed, we experience frustration. And frustration is the “father” of anger and aggression.
We can see many examples of anger if people don’t accept our opinion, if our baby constantly cries and we are overcome with fatigue, if somebody hurt us, insulted us etc etc…
The sensation of anger and the emotions do not constitute a problem or a negative factor. How we cope with and express our anger is what matters.
In many cases anger makes us strong and motivates us to solve problems. And, on the other hand, anger can also cause us to become irrational and say things that we didn’t really intend to say.
Various ways of expressing anger
Every person has a different character style and therefore a different response to anger.
There are people for whom anger doesn’t constitute a problem, they get mad, solve the problem relatively quickly and move on.
There are those who talk about anger or who confront the cause of that anger.
And there are people who defuse their anger by means of activity that calms them, such as physical exercise, sports and the like.
In contrast, for other people anger constitutes a problem and is difficult to cope with. Anger can lead to frustration, depression, outbursts of rage or stressful situations.
As we can see, anger does not constitute a problem in itself, and the important thing is how we cope with it.
What situations arouse a feeling of anger?
There are many situations that arouse a feeling of anger. For example – adolescents are more prone to feelings of anger and to outbursts of rage. The hormonal changes and the great pressure have a significant effect.
Additional situations that lead to anger:
Fatigue
Hunger
Hormonal changes
Illness
Physical and chronic pain
Insult, injury
Anger and its effect on the body
Bottled-up anger is liable to affect us both physically and mentally. When we get angry, the body prepares itself for a change: There is a rise in blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, a large quantity of adrenalin is produced, the pupils dilate and other physical functions are mobilized, as needed.
If we bottle up our anger and don’t express it, we are liable to harm our bodies.
Apart from the physical harm, there is also mental and psychological harm, in the case of mental illness, outbursts of rage, frustration, anxiety and the like.
Children and anger
Children are emotional beings and therefore it’s important to display openness to anger on their part. We should not suppress their anger since doing so automatically means suppressing their imagination and creativity, although we must, of course, set limits.
So what should we do? How can we cope with anger?
We can try to restrain our outbursts of rage insofar as possible, but it’s also OK to yell sometimes, but afterwards we must explain why we were angry and start over.
What is important is not to keep it bottled up inside, and not to let a little ball turn into a big balloon. Because the moment it bursts, the anger will turn into hatred.
And if the anger wasn’t justified, and we made a mistake, it’s important to apologize and ask for forgiveness.
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