Anger is an emotional everyone feels on occasion. It’s not one anyone wants to experience, for obvious reasons. It’s not the worst, though. Experiencing anger on occasion is healthy, and it helps many people feel better and think clearly in a situation that requires such. Of course, anger isn’t always a good thing. So many people want to avoid confrontation and conflict, and they hold their anger in. They say nothing. They do nothing. They sit on their emotional upheaval, and they wait for it to pass. It almost always passes, but it’s only temporary. When someone is truly angry, that anger might subside in the moment. It always resurfaces, however. It might be a few days, a week or more, or even longer.
Eventually, though, something will trigger that suppressed anger and the explosion will be far worse at this point.
Holding in your anger only works for so long before the negative effects begin. Anger turns to rage over time, and that rage causes you to lose your temper in a manner that has far more long-lasting health effects than most of the world realizes. Your short temper might change your life. It might make you lose people you love. It might ruin your reputation. It might kill you.
How Anger Affects Your Life
Anger and rage can kill you, and it’s not a joke. Your temper isn’t just affecting the way your friends and family think of you, it’s affecting your entire life. If you can’t get your temper under control, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. You’re killing yourself.
Your temper is causing health problems you never realized, including:
- Anxiety
- Stress
- Depression
- Ineffective immune system
- Heart disease
- Increased risk of heart attack
- Risk of clogged arteries
- Risk of stroke
Anger Causes Anxiety and Stress
It’s not exactly a secret, but being angry is stressful. If you’re already prone to worry and anxiety, your anger only makes it worse. It affects your day-to-day life, sometimes so significantly it stops you from being able to function as you should. It’s also a root cause of depression. If you’re already prone to depression, your anger only makes your symptoms more pronounced, causing you to find it nearly impossible to overcome your symptoms.
Rage Causes Weakened Immune Systems
Everyone has an immune system. It’s a fancy phrase used to describe the part of the body that produces good antibodies and other things that fight infection and keep you healthy. When you suffer from anger issues, rage, or a nasty temper, your immune system struggles. It slows down, causing your body to produce fewer of the things it needs to keep you healthy. Basically, your anger opens you up to bigger chances of catching a cold or the flu in addition to any other health issue that might be contagious. When you’re sick, you’re unhealthy. When you’re unhealthy all the time, you’re chances of living a long life decrease significantly.
Rage Causes Heart Problems
Medical professionals agree on one thing. In the few hours following a bout of road rage or anger, your chances of suffering a heart attack more than double. Losing your temper could literally kill you, and you don’t even realize it in the moment. Suppressing your anger isn’t any better, if you’re thinking you’ll just keep your anger on the inside to reduce your chances of suffering a heart attack.
Suppressed rage and anger causes heart disease. Your body uses so much energy and strength holding onto your anger, and it negatively affects your heart health. Your risk of heart disease increases significantly. Since heart disease leads to a myriad of other health problems, this is a risk you don’t want to take.
Rage and Anger Causes Strokes
The more often you become angry and lose control of your temper, the more often you cause damage to your arteries. For two solid hours following fits of anger and rage, your body no longer works properly. It all goes back to issues with your heart health. Your arteries are affected, and blood begins to clot. If it clots too much, it can cause the necessary flow of blood to your brain to stop. This is called a stroke. It might not always kill you, but a stroke often has a long-lasting effect on your overall health.
Anger Shortens Your Life
Living a healthy, happy life is the key to longevity. If you’re frequently unhappy, angry, frustrated, stressed, and sick, you aren’t healthy. These are all things that cause people to live shorter lives. It’s imperative you get your anger under control as quickly as possible. The key is not holding it in. Keeping your anger to yourself only makes it worse by increasing your chance of losing your temper later.
You must learn to handle your anger in the moment. It’s not always easy, but it’s also not impossible. There are a few methods you can apply at home to help you learn to manage your anger more effectively. When you learn to effectively manage your anger, you learn to live a healthier life. A healthier life is usually related to a longer life.
Handling Your Anger Issues
It’s time to learn about healthy anger. It’s an emotion, and you’ll feel angry from time to time. It’s not a problem in general, it’s only a problem when you’re unable to control your anger. The first thing to learn is to embrace your anger. Feel it, acknowledge it, and handle it.
Try one of the following methods to help control your anger:
- Speak up when you feel angry
- Stay calm
- Look for a solution
- Figure out your triggers
- Breathe deeply
- Take a time out
- Find an activity that takes your mind off your anger
Don’t hold your anger in when you feel it coming on. Stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and speak up. Tell the person who is making you angry what they’re doing. If someone is speaking to you inappropriately at work, ask them to stop. Explain that their words are demeaning, and you feel angry when they use that language. It might just work. Remain calm, and get your feelings out there. Even if the person doesn’t stop, you’ll be surprised how much less anger you feel after letting them know where you stand.
Instead of focusing on the problems you have that cause you to feel angry, learn to refocus your anger on searching for a solution. Let’s say it makes you angry when your kids argue. Instead of allowing that rage to overtake you at the end of a long day of ignoring their poor behavior, focus on finding a solution. Should they lose privileges or receive some sort of punishment? When you focus on a solution, you’re handling both the problem and your rage.
Look for your triggers. This is so important when you’re not feeling angry, Keep a journal. Write down everything you eat, everything you do, everyone you come into contact with, and every time you feel anger or rage throughout the day. Do this for a week or two, and then read the journal. You’ll notice little things that trigger your anger. Perhaps it’s more prevalent on days you didn’t get enough sleep the night before, days you were rushed, or even days you spent time with a specific person. When you identify what triggers your anger, you can take action to remedy those triggers by getting rid of them or avoiding them.
Sometimes your anger gets the best of you, and finding a way to remove yourself from a situation is the best solution. Take a time out to enjoy an activity that takes your mind off your anger. Physical activity of some sort is a great way to handle this kind of stress. It releases happy hormones that calm you down and make you feel better. Your anger subsides, and you get healthier at the same time.
Anger can kill you. It’s time to take control of your life. You might try it on your own, but it might not always work. If you find it impossible to handle your anger on your own, anger management is always an option. Consider getting help in the form of anger management counselling.
It could save your life.