We Get Angry When We Lose Control of Ourselves

Anger isn’t always bad. Anger serves a purpose just like all other emotions. However, there is a very fine line that divides managed anger with rage.

It is this second, more negative facet that we are going to discuss below: this is when we show the darkest side of ourselves. In this sense, when we get angry, we are behaving with an voluntary reaction – and as such, avoidable – in the face of an outside provocation: nobody makes us angry, we get angry.

The anger that leads to rage confuses us

Anger stops being positive when it becomes toxic due to a lack of control that we can exercise over it. When you stop having control and you give this over to anger, the problems start: this feeling invades us and clouds our reason.

It is able to cloud our reason to such a degree that it should not seem strange for a situation in which discussion makes us lose ourselves and go down other paths. We end up forgetting the real reasons why we had been bothered. Anger and rage turn into guides for our emotions and this makes it possible for us to fall into error.

The error that may mean regret about saying more than we meant to and also doing it badly. The error of growing apart in favor of our arrogance and selfishness (we do not listen and we contemplate our navels). In short, by getting angry, we end up finding ourselves in a position without exactly knowing how we got there, or why. A place where we also did not want to be.

Trust the possibility that there may be another way

What do we do then? This question comes up once we are aware that the negative side of anger is difficult to neutralize. So then, we have to be able to trust that there may be another way to understand events. Due to certain circumstances – like constant stress – we can get angry on a regular basis. Whether we are in this situation or another, one possibility is to look for tools that prepare us for a conflict psychologically and emotionally.

The main thing is to know that at some point, something may happen that changes us. We should accept it as a possibility. Arguments cannot stop existing, just like that sensation of irritability that comes into us when we get wrapped up in one.

Nevertheless, really knowing our weak points – the ones that hurt us – will help us manage them when this is necessary. For this, we can find a release in writing, blow off all of our steam with techniques like yoga, or by cultivating a more positive perspective of the world in which the protagonist is humor, etc.

The paradoxical lack of control of the controllable

As we commented above, it is true that in a conflict with another person, there is an action-reaction situation and it is difficult to control ourselves. But we said that in the end, the master of anger is us. In this sense, we observe that each of us is the master of his own emotions and attitudes and paradoxically, we do not manage to control ourselves.

On the one hand, it seems like there are people who are more inclined to get angry with others. They get worked up in a more intense way than most (they yell, show their bad mood, and insult more easily). On the other hand, it is common to use anger to express other negative feelings that are seen as worse by society, such as envy.

We make mistakes: anger is part of our human nature, but it is beneficial for us to control ourselves so that the master of our behavior does not become someone else. In summation, the best thing is to try to avoid anger and its synonyms, products of frustration.