Could you put your angry energy to better use?

In this article, I’d like to look at the amount of time and energy you may be spending on being angry, and how that time and energy could be put to more constructive use.

Anger can be healthy and appropriate

It is normal to feel anger and when felt for short periods of time, expressed appropriately and then let go it can be helpful.

Unhealthy anger 

However the following signs can indicate that your anger is becoming unhealthy:

• if you find yourself becoming repeatedly angry at minor things
• holding onto that anger for hours or days and allowing it to affect your thoughts and behaviour
• if you become verbally or physically aggressive
• if you experience ‘black outs’ when you become aggressive
• if you feel like you can’t trust your reactions and worry about when your next outburst may happen

Now think: What percentage of your time and energy do you waste on unhealthy anger?

When you’re calculating this, it may be useful to consider…

How many hours in an average day do you:

feel angry – emotionally and physically – and how this effects the tension in your body

think about things that have triggered your anger

act on your anger, either with aggression or withdrawing

show your anger in other ways, e.g. sulking

It may help to run through the day in your mind and include anger at:

• family
• partner
• friends
• children
• work colleagues
• your boss/ your staff
• clients
• service providers
• technical equipment
• news items
• public transport
• other drivers
• yourself

Then add time and energy spent feeling guilt or shame after angry outbursts.

Once you have a rough idea of time spent experiencing anger in one form or another, think about and list all of the things you could achieve if you invested that time and energy in a positive, constructive way.

It can be difficult to change these patterns alone, but with the right support, it is possible to change your responses and reduce the amount of time you spend feeling angry, leaving you much more time to devote to your own goals and ambitions.

In the next posts, I will describe why help with anger management is not always about helping people to calm down, but may sometimes be about helping people who never feel or express anger to start doing so in a healthy and assertive way.

With professional help you can learn to understand more about your own patterns and learn to change them and gain control of your anger.