Have you noticed you’re feeling angrier lately? Maybe you find yourself losing your temper over the little things, or maybe you’ve had this constant, low-level anger that seems to sit with you all day. Maybe the people around you have started to pick up on your anger, leading to them feeling hesitant to connect with you. Perhaps you’ve had enough of the classic cycle of anger—letting it build, losing your temper, and feeling horrible afterwards.
Whichever way anger is showing up in your life, there’s something you need to know: anger isn’t a flaw in your character. There isn’t some deep issue that makes you an angry person at heart. Anger is a signal, and it’s up to us as men to learn what our bodies and minds are trying to tell us when we feel this way.
Understanding Where Anger Comes From
Anger is one of the most basic human emotions, and that doesn’t make it a problem in itself. The problem lies in the way we process, deal with, and act on that anger. It’s these decisions that lead to those rough moments, whether you lose your temper and shout at a partner, break something out of frustration, or let the anger pull you into a longer-term cycle of anger and isolation.
If you’re ready to break out of the cycle of anger, the first step is understanding the source. For men, anger comes from many sources, but some are more common than others:
- Prolonged periods of stress
- Grief, either from a death or the loss of a relationship
- Discrimination and injustice
- Difficult challenges in life, such as relationship struggles
- Addiction
- Physical pain
Once you have a handle on where your anger might be coming from, you can start to take steps to reframe it in your mind, eventually transforming the way you behave when you feel angry.
Recontextualizing the Anger Signal
As men, many of us have been socialized to think of anger as one of the few emotions that is acceptable for men to feel and display. Anger leads to machismo, intimidation, or violence, which have long been viewed as masculine behaviours, especially when compared to sadness, vulnerability, or even joy.
Because of this socialization, men often do one of two things when they feel anger: suppress or react. Suppression means you’re pushing the feeling down, letting it sit deep inside you without really addressing the things that are making you angry. You might do this because you’ve reacted in anger before, and you don’t want to behave that way again. While suppression is less harmful to the world around you, carrying this anger inside of you can eat away at your mind and spirit, and inevitably, the anger will find its way out at some point.
Alternatively, many men allow themselves to react to their anger. We might yell. Become aggressive. Throw things. Say hurtful things to people we love. Some men lose the ability to think clearly, even resorting to intimidation or violence, depending on the circumstances.
Whether you’re more prone to suppressing or reacting to your anger, one thing is clear: anger leaves us feeling isolated, misunderstood, and often, ashamed. This just continues the cycle of anger, leading to a constant process of emotion, suppression, and reaction that can feel impossible to escape.
How to Start Rebuilding Patience and Control
We all feel angry from time to time, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The secret to controlling your anger, rather than letting it control you, is to learn to respond to anger, rather than to react or suppress it.
When we respond to anger, we remind ourselves that the feeling itself is not our enemy. It’s a symptom of the actual problem, whether that’s an external problem, trouble in your relationships, or negative feelings about yourself. This feeling is your mind and body trying to tell you that you have a need that is going unmet. By respecting this feeling as a signal, we can listen to it, and begin to respond to our own needs, finally breaking the cycle and addressing anger at the source.
When we develop skills to listen and respond to anger, we can gain new insights and perspectives on ourselves and our lives. This lets you understand what makes you angry, and more importantly, helps you find positive ways to address those needs rather than simply focusing on the anger itself.
Building Skills to Effectively Respond to Anger
Anger is one of the biggest issues that men face, especially when it gets the better of us and leads us to react in upsetting, scary, or dangerous ways. But by taking the time to build empathy for ourselves, we can begin to see anger as the simple signal that it is, and use it as an indicator of what areas of our lives need work.
If you’re looking for support to stop reacting to anger or bottling it up, The Shop is a good place to start. We create a judgment-free environment that helps you reconnect with yourself, identify the areas of your life that are creating these anger symbols, and start creating practical strategies that help you respond to anger instead of being ruled over it.
Many of us have been brought up to believe that anger is part of being a man. But really, there’s nothing stronger and more masculine than having the tools, skills, and discipline to respond to anger and address it at the root. If you’re ready to take the first steps to build patience and control where anger used to be, book your first session at The Shop today.
