Intellectually, I have always known that there is good anger and bad anger, however, emotionally any type of anger would cause me a great deal of anxiety. This would be true whether I was the one who was angry or if it was someone else. Learning how to deal with my anger and the anger of others appropriately has been a life long battle that I have only managed to get a little ahead of since I have been seeing my counselor.

A few things I have learned about anger is that good anger propels us into action and promotes growth. Bad anger is destructive and stifles growth. Good anger causes us to protect ourselves from harm, physical or mental. Bad anger causes harm.

Expressing anger appropriately is a freeing experience. That is part of what makes it good anger. People who can express their anger appropriately can let go of what made them angry in the first place and then move on. They feel less weighed down because they are not carrying a bunch of anger with them every where they go.

Bad anger is expressed in an out of control manner. It is often the result of not expressing ourselves when we are angry about something and it sits there and simmers, finally boiling over and taking out anyone in its line of fire. People who express their anger in this way have a hard time distinguishing between what is something that truly makes them angry and something that just irritates them. In both situations they react with the same out of control behavior.

When I was growing up, due to how things were in my family at that time, I did not express my anger very often. I did not speak up to the person that made me angry. My anger would just sit there, it took on a physical feeling. It literally felt as if the anger was just sitting in the pit of my stomach. It helped contribute to why I was a sad and angry teenager. I can remember going weeks and weeks without really talking to anyone, even in school, and then someone doing something to irritate me. I would then react horribly and say things that were not very nice.

Through my whole adult life I have done that same thing. Stuffing my anger into the pit of my stomach, with it only coming out in an uncontrolled manner. Soon all that anger and perceived wrongs that I was stuffing away, started seeping out. I became a very bitter and angry person. Apparently, it was even noticeable to people who did not know me well. I would often hear comments, like I needed to smile more, or how pretty I looked with a smile. I just could not manage to smile though, not with what I had boiling inside me.

This bad anger allowed me to see the world and the people in it as ugly things. It allowed me to keep people at least an arm length away from me. It contributed to the anger I felt towards my parents. Bad anger made it easy for me to be a negative person all the time.

This bad anger did not cause my depression, it was just one of the contributing factors. One of the ways in which my depression manifested itself was a very nasty, hair trigger temper. The anger I would feel would be considerably out of proportion to what actually triggered it. It was as if all that anger I had stuffed inside of me needed to be let out and I would pick the first handy target to take it out on.

With the aid of my counselor and my medications I have managed to let a lot of my anger go. Most of that anger that I have had boiling inside me for over 20 years, is gone. I feel lighter and freer than I can remember having felt. before. Unfortunately, when this anger starting going away and my anxiety lessened as well, I initially failed to see the balancing act I would need to maintain

I was so pleased at not dragging around all that bitterness and anger anymore, that I avoided feeling angery at all costs. Even when someone treated me disrespectfully. I would allow them to treat me in a way that I did not deserve and not say anything about it as a way to avoid getting angry.

The other day I finally got it. There is nothing wrong with feeling angry. It is a valid emotion. It is how we manage our anger that determines if it is going to be a good anger or a bad anger. If we choose to let it sit and boil and then come out in inappropriate ways we are not managing it very well and we have allowed it to become bad anger. However, if we take the time to express it in an appropriate way and release it, and not allow it to reside in us, we are managing our (good) anger well.

In what ways do you express your anger? Would you consider it good anger or bad anger? Is there anything you would like to change about your own anger management?