Anger has been the focus of many counseling sessions. It has taken focussed effort to deal with the underlying misconceptions and confusion about anger over a period of decades. I have no idea the number of separate personalities who each had to come to resolution with personal understandings and issues revolving around the topic of anger. For reasons only God knows, each personality had to do their own work dealing with personal issues of anger – both within themselves and as it was displayed by others to them. We had to learn to recognize anger when it arose, to process it in healthy ways and respond to it appropriately when encountering it in others.

One illustration a therapist has given to many of us is to think of anger as a stream of water. It was designed and intended to flow freely – to warn us when something was wrong and needed to be dealt with, and then dissipate without much effort. However, when anger is ignored or denied, it is like damming up the stream. The natural flow is interrupted and a back-log of energy builds in intensity and destructive power. It can become increasingly difficult to contain and can erupt in undesirable destructive ways that only serve to make matters worse instead of resolving anything.

Dealing with anger in a healthy way involves listening to the warning that the anger is being generated for. That means discerning what the anger is there to alert me to, and then forming a strategy to respond to the underlying issue in healthy, appropriate ways. When I do that, the anger has served it’s purpose and it dissipates automatically and without much effort. It sounds so logical and easy, but when you have a lifetime of history negating these realities it can be frightening and unsettling to apply it when the need arises.