What to Do When You Notice Signs of Anger Issues in Someone
Of all the emotions we feel, anger can be one of the most destructive and volatile when it gets out of control. It’s not always easy to know the difference between a normal angry response and an anger issue. When you aren’t used to anger, a person expressing themselves heatedly or passionately can seem alarming.
It can still be easy to miss the signs of anger issues in someone, especially if they are expressive or unfiltered in their communication. One of the challenges of confronting someone when you suspect that they have an anger issue is that they might blow up, and you could run the risk of damaging the relationship.
When it comes to recognizing the signs of anger issues, it helps to compare them to healthy expressions of anger. Not all anger is damaging or uncontrollable. Anger is often a rational response to injustice or unfairness, and it can be helpful or even feel therapeutic to express.
When you have seen this kind of anger, it becomes easier to see unhealthy, explosive anger. When you distinguish between the two, you can set some boundaries and confront the person with firm but caring words.
Anger can be an empowering emotion, and some people have learned to leverage it to their advantage in a bullying way. Whether they commit to therapy to manage their anger issues is their choice. The least you can do is make your feelings about their behavior clear and define the kind of communication you won’t accept. Hopefully, they will become aware of how their behavior is affecting those around them and agree to do the work to change.
Examples of Healthy Anger
Some people learn how to express their anger in ways that don’t damage people around them. They still get triggered in certain moments, but they don’t lose control or act impulsively. If they lose control or say harmful things, they take responsibility for it. To the person who knows how to regulate their emotions, anger is not an excuse to insult, shout at, or threaten others.
When people learn to channel their anger appropriately, the intensity of their outbursts is proportional to the situation. One of the first signs of anger issues is that people explode over relatively small things, with their anger burning for a long time afterward. You can sometimes notice them becoming more enraged as the situation escalates. What was a minor triggering event becomes a massive issue with collateral damage.
By contrast, a person who healthily channels their anger isn’t personal or hurtful with the things they say. They will use ‘I’ statements, rather than accusatory ‘you’ statements, taking ownership of their feelings in the situation and not blaming anyone else for the way they react. They know how to be honest in a respectful way.
When they do become overwhelmed with anger, they step away from the situation so that they can cool down and ground themselves. Once they have addressed the situation, their anger will dissipate, and they will regulate their mood accordingly.
Healthy anger is not silent and sulky, it is not repressed and passive-aggressive, and it does not pretend that everything is fine when it’s not. People who have control over their anger will express their needs clearly, but they are also willing to listen to another point of view if it means finding a resolution to the issue.
They are not set on winning an argument or forcing everyone else to accept their point of view. There is a maturity behind their outbursts. It’s clear that, although they are angry now, they ultimately want to find a solution.
Spotting the Signs of Anger Issues
Sometimes anger burns like a forest fire, consuming everything in its path. The signs of anger issues become obvious once you understand what regulated anger looks like.
Small things, like being inconvenienced, trigger a person with an anger issue. Their anger can go from calm to rage in a matter of seconds, and it is frequently disproportionate to the situation. Once they are in a rage, they will continue to yell, argue, or break things until they become aware of their tantrum and start feeling ashamed.
People with anger issues almost always feel embarrassed and ashamed after an outburst. Their apologies and attempts to mitigate the damage are not always successful, and their shame is seldom sufficient to break the pattern. In the moment of escalating anger, they feel helpless to the pull of their emotions, sometimes even blacking out during a fit of rage.
Another clear sign of anger issues is how long it takes for them to calm down and get back to their emotional base level. When you have no handle on your anger, it quite literally takes over and steers you toward disaster.
The final and most important thing to consider when looking for signs of anger issues is frequency. Everyone gets angry occasionally, some more than others, depending on their personality type. The person with an anger issue will blow up multiple times a day.
Triggers are often minor, their response is rapid, and anger is intense. It takes a long time for it to subside. People with anger issues have regular outbursts each day, to the point that people around them learn to read their mood, walking on eggshells if they sense danger.
Setting Boundaries and Speaking Out
Confronting someone about their anger issue can feel like a dangerous thing to do because you will likely be met with more anger. For this reason, you must pick your time carefully and prepare what you plan to say in advance. Pick a time when you are both calm and proceed with caution but determination. It might help to have a script or some bullet points written down to guide the conversation.
First, address their anger issue and follow it up by stating your boundaries in relation to their anger. Avoid making personal statements about their character. Instead, focus on the impact of their anger using ‘I’ statements.
You could say, “I get terrified when you blow up” or “I feel unsafe each time you yell.” Statements like these lower their defensiveness and help them to see the impact of their anger. You can also point out any patterns you’ve noticed, like the fact that they might target their anger at a specific person or blow up when confronted by certain topics.
This is your time to express yourself, so follow this by stating your boundaries. You can do this by making statements like, “I will not remain in the room when you start shouting,” or “If you start being aggressive, I will end the conversation.”
If they regularly become violent when they’re angry, consider finding a safe place to go each time they have an outburst, or involving outside support. If you plan to involve someone like a counselor, let them know that this is a part of your boundaries and conditions for continuing to engage with them.
It’s not always easy to tell when someone has an anger issue or to confront it. If you want to stay alongside this person and help them find the help they need, you must be prepared to speak to them openly, honestly, and gently. If they are willing to cooperate, you have an opportunity to lead them to the help they need.
If you don’t know where to start when it comes to helping someone with an anger issue, you could always speak with a counselor. They will help you find the words and courage to confront the situation, as well as provide long-term support for you. You can find someone in the online catalog or by talking with our reception team. Reach out to learn more.
“Stop Sign”, Courtesy of Anwaar Ali, Unsplash.com, CC0 License
Chasing endless perfection
Legal and other consequences Anger can lead to bad decision-making, like assaulting other people or damaging property. This can result in legal action being taken against you, as well as being arrested and possibly convicted. Anger can also lead to financial problems, especially when the anger escalates and results in losing work or facing lawsuits for damage caused to people and property out of anger.
However, it’s also true that our emotions serve a purpose, and that includes anger. It’s quite likely that you’ve experienced someone expressing their anger before, except that you probably missed it because it was a healthy expression of anger. A person can assert themselves and their feelings of anger in a calm and collected manner. These expressions of anger aren’t sensational, and they often go unnoticed.
Legal problems In the same vein, being angry and expressing it by shouting, cursing, hitting, or acting out anger on people or their property leads to trouble. That trouble could be in the form of getting arrested for causing injury to others or property. If a person gets into legal trouble for things they did because of anger, that strongly points to anger problems.
Your loved one’s anger affects them, but that anger doesn’t stay contained; it also affects you, in subtle as well as other ways. To begin with, anger affects your loved one’s health and well-being. The strain that anger puts on the human body can be problematic if a person is chronically angry. Anger can increase stress levels, the risk of heart disease, and the risk of conditions like diabetes, etc.
In the main, the role you can play in your loved one’s life is as a support. You can help them by gently and lovingly pointing out the problem to them. You can encourage them to talk about what’s going on and allow them to communicate their angry feelings. This should be done within limits; for instance, they can share how they feel, but that doesn’t mean they can shout at you and be abusive.
Learning to manage anger effectively will prevent anger outbursts and improve relationships. A qualified Christian counselor can help you rebuild and maintain positive and healthy connections with family members, friends, and other important people in your life.
Learning to communicate effectively when you’re angry is an important way to prevent an anger outburst from occurring. You may have suffered negative consequences for lashing out, hurling insults, or demonstrating aggressive behavior in past instances.
Taking a break when you’re angry is a great way to recenter yourself and calm down. Simply let the other person know you’re stepping away for a moment. Take a short walk and count to ten, and practice some deep breathing so you can come back into the moment with a greater sense of self-control.
Learning to manage your anger is a process. It can take weeks or months to see significant improvements. Rather than becoming discouraged, learn to be patient with yourself and show yourself compassion as you learn to manage your anger. Meeting regularly with a qualified counselor during this process can help it go more smoothly.
When I got older, I realized that my parents were repeating behaviors they had learned from their parents. After having my two daughters, I realized that if I didn’t change how I responded to my kids, I was destined to continue the same destructive cycle.
Temperament describes a child’s emotional and behavioral style. It’s their natural way of being and how they respond to others and the world around them. Temperament has a lot to do with how easily children can adapt to situations. Some children express anger more often than others. They may be more sensitive to how they are spoken to or looked at. If adults laugh at them or exacerbate them, they might withdraw, fight back, or cry.
As parents, we can help our children by shifting our focus away from the external behavior to what might be lying underneath. By exploring the cause of the pain and providing comfort so that they can regulate their bodies, we can help them become emotionally mature.
When my daughters were young I had quite a temper. I would get angry when I cleaned the house and others weren’t helping. I would get angry when family members were on the couch watching TV and I felt that I never had time to rest. I would get angry when my kids had tantrums because it was such an inconvenience to my daily routine. I got angry a lot, and I was usually in a foul mood most of the time.
Poor impulse control.
ADHD can also sometimes interfere with someone’s ability to plan and manage time. This means that they constantly miss deadlines which can be frustrating. They become angry with themselves and sometimes lash out.
This is a warning to us not to fly into a rage or harbor resentment over some incident, either at home or at work. It indicates a lack of self-control, exposes weak character traits, and is not godly in attitude. We need to refrain from anger and instead honor God in our hearts.
Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. – 1 Timothy 2:8, NIV
The death of a loved one or the loss of a long-cherished dream break you up inside, and gush forth tears, sadness and anger intermingled. Our emotions alert us to what’s going on inside of us and how we’re experiencing the world, so they are helpful for everyday life.
Have you ever scared yourself because of how you reacted to a situation? For example, your child or spouse did something that annoyed you, and your reaction was so over the top that you found yourself shocked and scrambling to apologize and figure out where that reaction even came from.
However, because anger has a physiological effect, being angry a lot because you have a low anger threshold means that you’re putting your health at risk. Chronic anger increases your risk of stroke, it weakens your immune system, not to mention higher risks of high blood pressure, heart problems, headaches, skin disorders, and digestive problems.
Some people struggle with deep-rooted anger that is just constantly bubbling under the surface and is invisible to the naked eye. However, this is also very damaging to emotional and physical health, and will eventually lead to a massive outburst, or long-term issues, that will fail to be resolved until the underlying anger is taken care of.
Perhaps you can see that your anger is affecting those closest to you, or that your underlying issues are causing you to burst out in irrational behavior on a regular basis these could be clear indicators that it would be wise to seek out help in this area. If you feel as if your anger is growing uncontrollably, it could certainly be time to reach out to a counselling service for assistance.
As Christians, we should have our anger in check at all times. Of course, there are things in this world which may cause you to feel “righteous anger” of some kind, but this is not the most common type of rage that people struggle with.
One way of tackling anger is to really get to the root of what is triggering such a visceral emotional response. Some triggers may be more avoidable than you think, and may simply require a bit of extra forethought.