Why Am I So Angry All The Time? 10 Possible Reasons Behind Your Anger by Catherine Pratt Life-With-Confidence Why am I so angry all the time? Do you find yourself getting so angry with people all the time? It can be frustrating and often youll feel bad afterwards for having been so out of control with your anger. But, you dont know why you do it or how to control it. So, where to start? A great place to start when trying to gain control over your temper is figuring out the real feeling behind the emotion. So, the next time you get angry with someone, take a step back and ask yourself, Why am I so angry? Whats really going on here? If you answer something like, Im so angry because my friend didnt do what I told him to youre not digging deep enough. The other person is just a trigger for your emotion. They do something and you feel an emotion in response (anger). Thats what you need to figure out. Its your reaction thats important, not what the other person actually did. A situation just is until you give it meaning. Something happens and you make the decision (whether youre conscious of the decision or not) as to whether its good, bad or neutral. And, that decision is often based on an emotional response. So, you just need to figure out why youre choosing the anger as your response. The reason why you choose anger can be for quite a few different reasons but this is what you need to figure out. You need to know where your anger is really coming from. Anger can be a tricky emotion because its often covering up other issues. Anger is used as a sort of mask. It covers up the true feelings like fear, jealousy, frustration, or annoyance. Its a way of dealing with the situation when you havent processed the real feelings behind it. Theres always something behind anger. Anger doesnt really come by itself. Its always attached to another emotion. In that sense, anger could be thought of as an intermediate emotion. An event happens, the brain doesnt have time (or doesnt want to) to fully process the situation and it needs a reaction, so anger is whats used until theres more time to examine everything in more detail. To help you figure out what your true emotions might be behind why youre feeling so angry, here are 10 different reasons and emotions that could be happening: 1. Fear Anger is often caused by fear. Something happens and it scares you in some way. You fear losing control, looking foolish, being in trouble, or maybe even getting hurt. But, your anger is in response to being afraid of something. Its that whole fight or flight concept happening. Anger is the fighting back at what scares you. So, ask yourself if youre really feeling afraid. 2. Powerlessness Theres a great quote which says, Anger is a chosen response to the feeling of powerlessness. Anger is how we attempt to reassert control over situations that baffle us. So, you may be feeling helpless or like a victim with something and you use anger to try and regain some sort of control in your life. Something to watch out for this one is that you could be feeling powerless in one situation and it will cause you to react with anger at anyone who upsets you. For example, say you have a health issue and youre feeling frustrated because you cant get in to see the specialist. So, you feel powerless in this situation, probably also a little scared and frustrated. Thats the feeling percolating in the back of your mind and you need a way to release that so as soon as someone or something annoys you, all your pent up feelings are vented on that person. They may have absolutely nothing to do with why youre feeling powerless. But, theyve become a handy way to release all those negative feelings youve bottled up. So, if you find yourself over reacting to situations, check and see if you are feeling powerless in a different situation. Again, youre figuring out where your real anger is coming from. 3. Frustration If youre feeling frustrated with something in your life, you might respond with anger. Youre just so frustrated with something that youre annoyed and angry. For example when youre learning something new like a software program. You just want the program to do something and its so frustrating because you dont know how to get the software to do that. So, youre feeling impatient and you respond by getting angry at the computer or the program. Or if youre stuck in a traffic jam and youre frustrated because theres nothing you can do. This one can also be caused by fear though. You fear that youre going to be late due to the traffic jam and your imagination starts going wild with all the bad things that are now going to happen (eg. lose your job because youre going to be late or someone is going to be mad at you, etc.) But, the anger starts with feeling frustrated or powerless with the situation. You dont know what to do. To deal with this one, it can help if you take a step back and just look at the big picture again. What do I want to achieve in this situation? How can I do that? rather than focusing on the obstacle or thing thats frustrating you. 4. Pain From The Past Often anger is associated with pain from the past. A traumatic experience happened in the past that the person has never really dealt with. Abuse as a child for example or feeling abandoned as a child. In this case, often the anger isnt even associated with the current event the person is experiencing. The person is just so angry at the entire world due to something that happened a long time ago. They hit out at everyone they come into contact with due to the constant pain they have deep inside. Or they feel so hurt that they dont want to let anyone come close to them. They use the anger as a way of protecting themselves from further hurt. Or a situation happens and it reminds them of that event that happened a long time ago and they automatically react with anger. 5. Bad Habit Sometimes anger comes because its easier to blame others for problems rather than taking responsibility for your own life or you dont want to come up with a solution yourself. Youre just used to reacting that way and its become a very bad habit. 6. Feeling Overwhelmed or Exhausted If youre overly exhausted all the time, you might be just too tired to mentally deal with situations that happen. You dont have the strength to have patience with the situation. This is one you often find with new parents but it can happen to anyone if theyre overly tired. Or you might just have too many things happening at once and it causes overwhelm for you. Youre at the limit of what you can handle at the moment. It can feel scary and you might react with anger at the next event that pushes you over your threshold of what you can deal with. 7. Jealousy You feel jealous about what someone else has or has done. It might remind you that you want that as well or it tells you that youre not following your own dreams. But, instead you get so angry at the person for having something you want when really you need to turn it around and start thinking Thats something Id like to have in my life too. How do I start to work towards getting that for myself? 8. Approval Seeking If someone is looking for validation or approval from others, they might go to incredible lengths to please the other person and when the other person doesnt react the way they want them to, they feel hurt but they respond with anger as a way to deal with those feelings. They dont feel good enough inside or they feel like a failure so they try to get others to tell them how good they are. But, it doesnt work and they end up feeling angry at everyone because theyve gone to so much effort and it wasnt appreciated. The answer to this one is that you need to deal with those feelings of why you dont feel good enough and start to approve of yourself first. Once you approve of yourself, so will others. 9. Hurt If you feel hurt by someones actions, a part of you might not want to deal with that emotion so you choose to respond with anger instead. 10. Manipulation Sometimes people use anger as a way to get others to react in a certain way. For example, they want the other person to do them a favor and if the other person hesitates they get mad so the other person will do what they want. Or they want to gain control over the other person and they know if they get angry the other person will back down. Or they want to make the other person afraid of them. Sometimes people even use it as a way to get out of doing things. Someone asks them to help them with something and they get mad at the other person not only to get out of the current situation but to discourage the other person from ever asking again. Why Am I So Angry Summary So you can see there could be a lot of different things happening behind your anger and thats what you really need to figure out. Right now, youre probably just reacting on automatic pilot to the various situations that happen to you. So, something happens and the first emotion you feel is anger so you just go with it and dont really think about it or choose how youre going to respond. By taking the time to understand where the anger really comes from will be so eye opening for you. Youll learn so much about yourself and you may start to let some things go. Often when you gain an awareness of why youre reacting the way you are, you no longer respond that way. Youve acknowledged the emotion behind it all and you no longer need to react that way. You understand it so you choose a more effective response for yourself. You see that its not helpful or getting you anywhere by just reacting with the anger, so youll stop doing that. Youll feel so much more in control of your life and be so much more at peace with yourself. I bet right now it can be rather scary when you get so angry at people. Like youre not in control, the emotion is. So, thats what youre learning. Youre learning to use your emotion as a tool you use rather than letting the emotion control you. And, it just takes a little practice and soon youre the master of your emotions instead of the other way around. Start by taking a deeper look at your anger and what its really telling you. Whats really behind the anger? Ask yourself, Why am I so angry? Take good care of yourself. Read more: life-with-confidence/so-angry.html#ixzz35CO9NopF
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 16:48:10 +0000
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