Honor Your Anger

Still others experience anger as an imaginary wall that comes up to protect them from someone who has hurt them.

Some people experience anger physically as an overwhelming feeling that seems to take them over. Within seconds their body feels tight and hot and they feel that they will literally burst with emotion.

• Your anger is eating you up inside

Your overall anger style includes the way you tend to experience, process, express, and communicate your anger—in essence, how you feel and what you do when you get angry. In order to discover your particular anger style, you need to become more attuned to your anger, how your body responds to it, and how you cope with it once you feel it.

Women who do not acknowledge anger or who are prone to high levels of anger are also vulnerable to headaches, stomachaches, asthma, arthritis, elevated blood pressure, insomnia, back pain, and obesity. Rates of diagnosed breast cancer are found to be higher in women who have openly expressed their anger only once or twice in their lives and in those who display frequent temper outbursts as compared to women who display less extreme expressions of their anger.

Avoiders, for example, ignore the signal that something is wrong. Blamers can’t let go of their resentments and aren’t able to move on. Abusers won’t or can’t use their anger in moderation.

Holding in Anger
It is also unhealthy when you take the anger that should be directed at someone else and turn it against yourself. Let’s say someone criticizes you or falsely accuses you of something. What do you do? Do you remain quiet, believe what he or she is saying about you, and begin to feel bad about yourself? Or do you get angry and tell this person that you don’t appreciate his criticism? If what he is saying isn’t true, do you confront him with the truth or do you begin to doubt your own perceptions and believe his lies? In this case, anger held in can be very negative.

s. But when we misplace our anger on a regular basis, when we consistently avoid dealing with the people with whom we are really angry by discharging it on innocent people, it becomes a real problem.

is defined as a stress response to internal or external demands, threats, and pressures

Conversely, if you deny your own anger or are afraid of your anger, you may be attracted to those who openly express theirs—even when that expression is abusive. It is as if your partners were acting out your repressed or suppressed anger for you.