Managing Our Anger - 2

All of us have experiences of anger. All of us have the personal responsibility to manage our anger, and other emotions. They are our emotions, they reside inside of our personhood, and therefore it is indeed our responsibility to learn to guide their expression through appropriate healthy channels.

Some years ago, psychologist George Sanders gave an interesting illustration to explain how we can develop techniques to constructively manage anger. He compared anger to rain runoff flowing down the canyons of a mountain. Many incidents (rain-showers) come uninvitedly into our lives that can contribute to the flashfloods of anger that pour forth from our lives. While we may not be able to prevent rainfall (i.e., anger causing events), we can control where the runoff will go, and its rate of dispersion.

The way some of us deal with anger is similar to the way water runs off a mountain. Some people just take the “wilderness preservation” approach in anger management. This might also be called the “Popeye” method, expressed in his “I yam what I yam” philosophy. This is a fatalistic approach to life and anger. It purports that since anger happens naturally, we should just be let it flow out wherever and however it wants.

If a person lives as a hermit, this approach might work. A person who encounters no other people can just let the anger gush out like a raging flashflood, because there are no people around to get hurt. However, most of us live in relationship to others and we cannot just let our anger rage wherever or however it wills.

Another approach used is to dam up the anger. People who do this just bottle up their anger and never let it out. This seems to work for a while, but eventually too much anger will build up behind the dam, it will break, and once again people will be washed away in the ensuing onslaught. Furthermore, it is not psychologically or physically healthy to hold anger in indefinitely. Pent-up anger begins to poison our hearts and minds, which makes us bitter, gives us ulcers, high blood pressure, headaches, and even produces dental damage from teeth-grinding. It also makes us very unpleasant people to live around.

James 1:19-20 admonishes: “…Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (NIV). We should listen well, think twice before we speak, and manage our anger so that it flows out under control. This admonition is for everyone. We each need to take personal responsibility for how we personally manage our own anger, because expressing anger inappropriately does not accomplish God’s will, and hurts others.

Like rain runoff down a mountain, we all have well-used channels through which our anger normally flows. If these channels are channels that prevent the anger from hurting others or ourselves, then we should encourage the anger to flow out through those channels. Some examples of healthy channels include: physical exercise, releasing our anger and the situation to God’s control through prayer, listening to soothing music, walking around the block until we cool off, etc.

If our normal approach lets anger gush out too quickly, or if we dam it up and hold it inside, then we need to create some new channels through which our anger can flow out of our inner being. Why not take some time to discover some non-destructive ways you can dispose of your anger without hurting yourself or others? Choose to use those channels the next time you get angry.

While anger occurs in us all, we are still responsible for how we allow it to come out of us and to impact others. Each of us should work on ways to reduce our need to get angry, and develop healthy ways to deal with anger when it occurs. Since anger is closely associated with a thwarted self-driven agenda, anger’s frequency and destructiveness in Christians should diminish as we learn to fulfill God’s will for our lives. As we live to please God rather than self, and live under the power of His Holy Spirit, God can give us the power to manage ours responses to anger when it does occur.

Controlling our anger is not an easy thing, does not happen overnight, and requires lots of conscious effort and practice. However improvement can be achieved. May God give each of us the grace and pragmatic power to make progress in this important area of life.