Anger...... Part 1

Anger can be a difficult emotion to experience and handle effectively. It is important to take care of our anger or it will come out in other ways- passive/aggressiveness, depression, irritability, self-medicating, etc. So often in my life I have had such difficulty expressing my anger, feeling like I didn't have a "right" to feel the way I do. I had a lot of passive aggressive behavior in my early years, such as agreeing to do something then backing out at the last minute, ignoring someone yet saying I everything was "fine", expressing my anger to others except the person I was angry with, among other ways. The good thing about getting older for me is that I do feel I have a right to my anger, and I take care of it better by listening to what it is saying, expressing it, and soothing myself when needed. Not all the time do I take care of my anger, but certainly much more often than I used to. There have been some times recently when I expressed my anger too aggressively (verbally not physically!) and caused some relational breakdowns that didn't need to happen. I see it as developmental growth that I am OK with feeling and expressing my anger, but my relationships are very important to me and pausing to express myself thoughtfully is necessary to keep the relationships healthy.
Next time I will write about being passive aggressive and ways we use those behaviors to express our anger indirectly.