Anger (Part Two): Healthy and Unhealthy Anger

John R. Ballew, M.S., L.P.C.

Everyone gets angry from time to time. Anger is a strong emotion that gets the attention of those around us and allows us to feel a bit better when we blow off a lot of steam. That sort of anger is normal, human and healthy.

But anger isn’t always healthy. In fact, it can be enormously destructive, both to us and to those around us. And expressing anger physically – throwing a punch, breaking something, aggressive driving – is an indication that we’re out of control and creating a dangerous situation.

Some of us grew up around parents who were “rage-aholics.” Their anger was explosive and out of proportion to whatever it was that set them off. Rage-aholics are often mean: their fury became emotionally abusive and left all those around them feeling attacked, rejected, diminished…. and angry themselves. Rage-aholics assault the other person and see him or her as worthless, a total loser. The person on the receiving end feels like a scapegoat.

Healthy anger is limited in scope and time and proportionate to whatever pissed you off in the first place. Unhealthy anger can go on and on and looks like nuclear war. Example: someone cuts you off on the freeway and you spend the next 10 minutes trying to chase him down to get back at him. Instead of seeing the other guy as a bad driver, you feel like your sacred honor has been violated!

Healthy anger is acknowledged and owned by the person feeling it. Unhealthy anger is often denied: “I’m not mad, you’re just a screw-up!”

Men who are prone to unhealthy anger often secretly feel weak, incompetent or ashamed of themselves. Their life strategy is that the best defense is a good offense, and they become expert at assigning blame. They have great difficult accepting their share of responsibility for problems.

Communicating with rage-aholics is difficult or impossible, especially around emotional issues. Nothing seems to get through their defenses. That makes a sort of sense, if you look at this as a defensive strategy. They’re afraid they are going to look stupid or worthless themselves, so they’ve become adept at keeping people at arm’s length so no one will discover their secret shame. In fact, they often don’t seem to be listening at all.

Unhealthy anger can come from growing up around rage-aholics. Maybe it’s our model of how adults communicate, and we decide that if this is the way it’s going to be, we’re going to be the powerful person and not the victim. And if we’ve grown up on the receiving end of all that rage, our own sense of self may have been undermined by those angry, obliterating messages. We secretly fear we’re worthless. So we learn to rage to keep others at bay and keep our fragile sense of self intact. All that anger is just a cover-up.

It’s tough living with all that anger. If you’re on the receiving end, it can take a toll on how you feel about yourself. If you’re the angry one, your body is constantly being exposed to a bath of powerful hormones that can affect your digestive and circulatory systems.

Next time we’ll look at managing anger.

John R. Ballew, M.S., is a licensed professional counselor in private practice in Atlanta. He specializes in issues related to coming out, sexuality and relationships and spirituality. He can be reached via the web at www.bodymindsoul.org or at (404) 874-8536.