Have you ever thought that anger can be a very useful emotion? If we discover the positive and protective dimensions of anger, then we will learn to accept a “difficult” emotion, to experience it in a safe and healthy way.
Think of anger as a dragon hiding in the garden of the soul, when something goes wrong, this dragon wakes up full of life and passion. We have been taught that anger is not a desirable emotion, that we should suppress it rather than experience it. This is because we know that an angry person is capable of doing terrible things, thus associating anger with dangerous behaviors. When we are around someone who is angry, we feel fear, for this reason we fear our own anger. In order to avoid reaching extreme situations, we ultimately prefer to do nothing under its influence and hide or deny it.
just because anger has the potential to lead us into dangerous behavior does not mean that it always leads there.
This dragon also has its protective side. It is like a guardian of our mental safety. When we feel that something precious is at risk, this dragon wakes up and guards our boundaries. He is the guardian that protects us from external threats, that warns us, that watches over us. So how do we recognize and manage paralyzing anger in an anger that motivates us to change our lives for the better?
The causes of anger are mainly two.
α) Something we want to happen but it doesn’t happen
- b) Something that happens but we don’t want it to happen.
Anger does not always come from conscious awareness of situations but rather, from the survival instinct, our body reacts based on the latter. In other words, it often acts reflexively and therefore uncontrollably, and this can cause problems.
We therefore need to be aware of where it comes from and what it means to us; what it needs and how we can manage it. We need to be able to make the unconscious conscious. To discover the deep roots of anger and become familiar with it. This can be done in the context of a psychotherapeutic relationship. With psychotherapy we can get to the point where we do not fear the dragon of anger but adopt it as a companion in our life journey.
Source: the Monitor on Psychology, the journal of the American Psychological Association
@Discover Growth Therapy/ communication and relationships
Georgia Kryparakou
Psychologist MSc-Psychotherapist
