THOUGHTFUL THURSDAY ~ Dealing With Anger ~ March 3, 2011 by Dolores Ayotte

On Thoughtful Thursday, February 17,  I recently wrote a post titled “Dealing With Depression”.  In this article I expressed the view that depression could be a result of anger turned inward. There are many reasons why a person might experience depression but this is merely the one that I am choosing to focus on again today. In my opinion, there is also a genetic predisposition to depression but I won’t be discussing that view today.  A comment was left by Hope after this post that inspired me to address the anger issue which I referred to in the above post. This is the comment almost in its entirety.

“I agree whole wholeheartedly that moving past anger is a decision. Sometimes I think the things that are at the root of our anger are out of our consciousness, much as you have stated here. I had a very wise person once tell me that when the reason is out of your consciousness, you are still a victim of it. But once you are aware, but still acting in the same self-destructive way, you are no longer a victim, but you are choosing to be that way and blaming someone else. I think her point was, once you are aware of the self-destructive behavior, then you are wholly responsible for moving on or not. But no longer is there room for blame. So that took me a while to digest, but I think now, that it is very true.

It’s amazing how powerful you feel, once you realize there is a choice to be angry or not. Simple solution, very difficult to live by. With a daily commitment to think otherwise, there is proportional reprieve of the burden in that day.” (Hope)

I was extremely moved by this comment left by Hope after my post. I read it over and over again to get the full scope of its meaning. It also made me do more soul-searching and inspired me to write more on the topic of anger. I know a person who has suffered from severe depression for many years. This person has been on a heavy regime of medication for depression and although it helped somewhat, it never totally eliminated the depressed state. 

After many years of suffering, a therapist managed to finally help her get to the bottom of her severe depression. Through counselling and extensive therapy, she was able to finally peel back the layers of what was causing her deep and often times, debilitating depression.  What appeared to be the main cause although there were other factors, was the consistent bad behavior of her husband throughout their marriage.  After this realization, her depressed state turned to outward anger toward her husband.  Her anger toward him was so great that eventually they had to part ways.  Over a span of several years, what was bottled up inside her and coming across as depression was really anger. It was her inability to accept what was really going on in her marriage and her inadequacy or reluctance to address the real issue.  This is merely just one case that depression can be a result of anger turned inward.

According to Mike Hirn, “if you are angry, there are three ways you can approach the emotion: express the anger, suppress the anger, calm the anger. Expressing anger in a controlled manner, is a healthy approach. However, this approach is often difficult to do because it involves a balancing act — getting your needs met without hurting others. In short, controlling anger involves respecting both yourself and other people, especially those who are the cause or object of your anger, while still being able to express it. The second approach is suppression. Suppressing anger can backfire. When a person tends to suppress his anger, he can develop high blood pressure, hypertension or even depression. The last approach is calming the anger down. A person who is able to calm his anger down is able to control his outward behavior. However, if he is unable to calm down, he may hurt someone or even himself.”

As you can see it is no easy feat to deal with anger however;  it can have many devastating negative emotional and physical consequences if we don’t.   No matter what, we all experience anger now and then.  Do you agree? How are you dealing with your anger?