Unleash Emotional Freedom: How Anger Holds You Back and How Anger Management Can Set You Free
Short on time? Take a moment to give the audio recording of this blog post a quick listen.
Do you find yourself struggling with anger? Do you fly off the handle or find yourself ruminating for hours without ever finding resolution. Does it ruin your relationships or compromise your career opportunities? Do you feel crippled by shame from your behaviour 鈥� from either over-reacting or not asserting yourself enough? Essentially, is your anger holding you back from experiencing emotional freedom?
If so, you’re not alone.
Anger is a powerful emotion and if left ignored, can significantly impact your personal and professional life. The truth is, it doesn鈥檛 just disappear. We often experience our clients calling us out of desperation because they鈥檝e had an outburst. Then things settle down and they think everything is fine again. On average, we hear back from them 3-6 months later. We are all human and subject to getting angry. It鈥檚 not that we get angry that鈥檚 the problem 鈥� the problem is our coping or management strategies are ineffective. Not like we鈥檙e given classes at school diving into this thing called anger. However, the good news is that effective ways to address and manage anger exist. In this blog, we’ll explore how anger can hold you back and how participating in an anger management course can give you the emotional freedom you may be looking for to lead a fulfilling life.
How Anger Holds You Back
1. Damaged Relationships: Uncontrolled anger can lead to strained relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. It can lead to conflicts, hurt feelings, and a lack of trust, ultimately hindering your ability to maintain healthy connections with others. This increases a sense of loneliness and shame which can lead to depression. It also isolates you from the very thing that helps you to regulate distress in life, and that鈥檚 human relatedness and sense of connection. The more severe the aggression, the more it separates you from relationship. The longer you ignore anger, the more you increase the tendency to act your anger out. This is never more devastating than when individuals are faced with being denied access to their children or can only have supervised contact with them.
2. Health Impacts: Chronic anger has been linked to a range of health issues, including high blood pressure, heart disease, and weakened immune system. The physical toll of anger can hold you back from enjoying a healthy and vibrant life. The rush of stress hormones and cortisol running through your body over long periods of time is simply not healthy. You may think you feel great and powerful after an outburst, but this is an illusion. Not only that, the people you鈥檙e dumping on – it takes them 7 days longer to get rid of the cortisol in their bodies which is often expressed as illness since their immune systems are so compromised too.
3. Career Setbacks: Anger outbursts in the workplace can lead to professional setbacks, such as strained work relationships, decreased productivity, and even job loss. It can hinder your professional growth and limit career opportunities. If you are on the other spectrum, of needing to assert yourself but have fear of conflict, it equally sets you back.
4. Emotional Turmoil: Unmanaged anger can contribute to feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression, leading to emotional distress and hindering your ability to experience genuine happiness and peace of mind. The price we pay for shame that comes after anger is enormous and it often lies hidden and sometimes we may be even completely unaware of it; other than for the subdued sense of self, negative thinking and punishing or critical thoughts.
How Anger Management Can Set You Free
1. Self-Awareness: Anger management courses provide a safe space for individuals to better understand their triggers and the underlying reasons for their anger. Through self-awareness, individuals can recognize the signs of anger and develop effective coping strategies before it gets too much to handle. It helps to catch the triggers sooner.
2. Healthy Communication: Anger management courses often focus on improving communication skills, teaching participants how to express their emotions in a constructive and non-destructive manner. Effective communication can help resolve conflicts and strengthen relationships. This immediately increases your self-esteem and encourages connection between people.
3. Stress Reduction: Learning anger management techniques can help individuals reduce their stress levels, leading to improved emotional well-being and health. People under-estimate how stress fuels anger. Stress has become such a ubiquitous word that it has lost almost all meaning. In an anger management course, you start to understand how these two are inter-related.
4. Improved Decision-Making: By managing anger, individuals can approach situations with a clearer mind, leading to better decision-making and reduced impulsivity.
5. Enhanced Relationships: Anger management can help individuals build and maintain healthier relationships, fostering trust, respect, and empathy. With healthier relationships, life becomes easier to manage because we become emotionally available and capable to support one another. At least for one thing 鈥� there would be one less angry person to have to deal with! Be part of the solution.
Anger can hold you back in various aspects of your life, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Participating in an anger management course can provide you with the tools and strategies needed to break free from the constraints of anger and experience emotional freedom. Developing self-awareness, improving communication, and reducing stress can pave the way for a more fulfilling and harmonious life. If you’re struggling with anger, consider seeking out an anger management course 鈥� it could be the first step towards a more emotionally liberated future.