Is Your Anger Making Life Harder? Make It Work for You
Anger is often misunderstood. Many people see it as something to be avoided, suppressed, or feared. But anger is not inherently bad - and it can even be a powerful ally.
Quick Read Summary
Anger isn’t inherently bad — it’s valuable information about what matters to you. Left unchecked or suppressed, it can fuel people-pleasing, passive aggression, or explosive outbursts, but used constructively it can protect, empower, and help you set boundaries. Techniques like mindful breathing, naming your anger, and reflecting on what lies beneath it can transform anger from a destructive force into a helpful guide for action and self-understanding. Therapy can support this process, helping you work with anger rather than against it.
In this post, I explore ways to help you harness anger so that it works for you rather than against you. Techniques are part of this, but they’re not usually enough on their own. Curiosity and reflection about what underlies your anger is also likely to be needed.
1. Anger Is Not Inherently Bad — It’s Powerful Information
Anger can be defined as a strong feeling of frustration or hostility, as “an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage.” (APA).
Fury and rage can take a person to the brink of violent action. A step further, it can result in violent action. Anger can terrorise, destroy, and mobilise a person to inflict wrongful harm. Yet intense anger can also be a force for protection. It can help marshal violent action in legitimate self-defence, or in defence of others against unjust assault.
At the other end of the scale, irritation and frustration can lead a person to fruitless spite.
Anger can satisfyingly sharpen the tongue. But regret can quickly follow. As a famous quip says: Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
But supressing such anger can at times be just as damaging as expressing it in a reckless way. As Shakespeare puts it:
My tongue will tell the anger of mine heart,
Or else my heart, concealing it, will break.
And Dr. Joyce Brothers wrote:
Anger repressed can poison a relationship as surely as the cruelest words.
So it’s not a question of eliminating anger (if that’s your aim — good luck with that!) or of always freely letting rip. The more helpful question is: How can you use your anger constructively, for reflection and action?
2. Mindful Breathing Helps Calm the Body’s Fight-or-Flight Response
Anger is not just an emotion. It’s a physiological response — a surge of energy triggered by the body’s fight-or-flight mechanism.
When we feel threatened (physically or emotionally), the sympathetic nervous system kicks in. The “reptilian brain” (amygdala and brainstem) takes over, and the rational, reflective part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) becomes less active. This survival response is automatic, but it can cloud our thinking.
Unless your life is genuinely at risk, mindful breathing is one of the simplest and most effective ways to calm your body and reclaim your capacity to think clearly.
Try this simple breathing technique:
- Sit or stand comfortably.
- Inhale slowly through your nose for a count of 4.
- Hold your breath gently for 2 counts.
- Exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of 6.
- Repeat for 1–3 cycles, focusing on the breath.
There are different variations — find what works best for you. The key is to breathe slowly and deeply from your diaphragm (belly) rather than quickly and shallowly from your chest.
When I first came across mindful breathing, I realised how unhelpful my breathing style often was. With this technique, it felt like I could send calming drugs through my body at will. That’s not far from the truth — breathing this way activates your parasympathetic nervous system, telling your brain: I’m safe.
In stressful or agitating moments, this is harder to remember. But if you practice regularly, it becomes more instinctive — even when your anger flares up.
3. Name Your Anger and Be Curious About It
Instead of trying to push anger away or act on it immediately, try to name the emotion:
“I’m feeling angry.”
Accept it. You don’t need to judge or suppress it — just acknowledge that it’s here.
Then, notice where it shows up in your body. Is it in your chest? Jaw? Hands? Doing this creates a small but powerful emotional distance. You’re not being angry — you’re feeling angry. That creates room for reflection.
Anger, like all emotions, contains useful information. The trouble is, emotions don’t always behave. You can’t legislate for how you’re going to feel across a day. You might want to be the picture of patience and essence of calmness at the family barbeque, the work-meeing, or night out with friends. But your emotions may have other plans! That's what makes them so valuable. They’re giving you information. They’re telling you what at heart matters to you.
Ask yourself:
- What is this anger trying to tell me?
- Is something happening that I don’t want?
- Is something not happening that I do want?
Anger is your body and mind trying to mobilise you — to protect yourself, assert yourself, or signal something important. It may be trying to mobilise you to protect someone else. But if you’ve grown up with the message that anger is always bad, you may struggle to hear that message clearly. You may not even allow yourself to fully acknowledge your own anger.
This is where the difficulties can begin.
4. Suppressed Anger Can Lead to People-Pleasing, Passive Aggression, and Blow-Ups
If anger is pushed aside too often — especially if it was discouraged or punished in early life — it doesn’t just disappear. It tends to re-emerge indirectly, or explode when you least expect it.
Here are some common ways that suppressed anger can show up:
Chronic people-pleasing:
Anger helps signal what you do and don’t want — and without it, it’s much harder to assert your needs. If you learned early on that it’s risky to upset others, you may be overly anxious to please them. This can create a vicious cycle where your own needs are overlooked and resentment builds. Working on personal boundaries can therefore help a lot with anger management.
Anger turned inward:
When expressing anger feels too risky, it may get redirected toward yourself. You might become a stand-in for the person you’re upset with, blaming yourself, perhaps feeding a harsh internal critic:
“I don’t deserve good things.”
“I’m a bad person.”
This internalised anger can be painful and deeply damaging. In some cases it can contribute to depression. For more information see my blog on depression.
Passive-aggression:
Anger sometimes leaks out. You might say you’re fine, while your tone, actions, or body language say otherwise. One of my go-tos for passive aggression is banging dishes loudly when clearing them away, or becoming more heavy footed than usual when walking about the house. It’s a sort of compromise between needing to express something and anxiety about what might happen if I do so more directly. This may simply be disapproval or an escalation of the siutation in some way. It may be a fear of rejection.
Passive-aggression can act as a pressure valve, but it’s rarely helpful in the long run and can seriously harm relationships.
Explosive anger:
If you constantly suppress your anger — along with your needs — eventually, it may erupt. This can take you (and others) by surprise. That’s your anger getting louder in an attempt to be heard.
People often feel guilty and contrite after these outbursts. That’s a healthy response — but curiosity is just as important. If you don’t explore what’s behind the anger, you risk repeating the cycle: suppression, then explosion.
Recognising anger as legitimate and useful helps create space to be assertive — not aggressive — about your needs.
5. Sometimes Anger Masks Deeper, More Vulnerable Emotions
It’s not always easy to recognise what’s really going on when we feel angry. Sometimes, anger isn’t the primary emotion - it’s the one sitting on top of others that feel more painful or risky to express.
You may feel rejected by a loved one and react with anger. But underneath, you might actually feel hurt, ashamed, or sad. These feelings might tap into deeper emotional schemas — like “I’m not good enough” or “I' always get left out”.
I may feel very attacked by someone's criticism. Feelings of guilt and shame for making a mistake and hurting someone may lay beneath my anger. Guilt and shame may well be more painful emotions to experience than anger. It may be the anger that gets more fully experienced and expressed. If I believe at some level that I should never make mistakes and should be perfect, that can be an infinite source of shame and anger.
These underlying emotions can be harder to face. In some environments, anger is seen as more acceptable than vulnerability. It’s not uncommon for people to grow up learning that showing sadness is weak and shameful. These messages may linger even as we get older.
If your anger often feels disproportionate to what triggered it, that may be a sign of these deeper layers — sometimes referred to in therapy as “unfinished business.” These are unprocessed emotions from earlier experiences or relationships, now surfacing in the present.
Anger in these moments isn’t just about what’s happening now - it’s also about what happened then. But when it’s misdirected, it can damage trust, shock others, and make you feel disoriented. Exploring what lies underneath can lead to growth, more strength and much more authentic responses.
Getting Help
If anger feels like a destructive force in your life, it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Therapy can help you:
- Understand your anger and where it comes from.
- Learn how to calm your physiological responses.
- Explore and work through the emotional layers beneath your anger.
- Find healthier, more assertive ways to express your needs and boundaries.
Anger can become a force that protects, empowers, and strengthens relationships - rather than damaging them.
If this resonates with you, and you’re curious about your relationship with anger, talking it through in a therapy space can offer insight, relief, and change. Anger doesn’t need to rule you — but it doesn’t need to be your enemy either. You can work with it.
I offer a free 20 minute chat/ consultation. Get in touch to see how I can work with you on problem-anger and any related issues you’re currently experiencing.
Intro Photo by Alexandra Mirgheș on Unsplash
