Anger 16 Its Gift

We are using anger as an indicator light on the dashboard, encouraging us to look under the hood. From a quarter of a century of counseling and my 67 years of living, I can comfortably say, 95% of our anger is not holy anger or healthy anger but unhealthy anger.
So how can unhealthy anger, as destructive as it is, be a signal for a person’s good? Answer: it can teach us about ourselves.

Anger often reveals how we feel and think about ourselves and how important we have made our own ideas and insight.
Anger usually has a destructive underlying issue, that once we identify, can be worked on for change. For those of us who desire personal growth, anger has something valuable to teach us.

It can help us heal.
If there is an inordinate amount of anger surfacing in a present situation or toward a particular person, chances are that we’re either experiencing a generalized stressful time and are more easily agitated or the extra amount of anger surfacing signals to us that the current person is hooking into something unresolved from the past. Face the wound. Forgive. Ask God for healing. Learn and grow through the wound.

It can reveal a threat.
The question: is this kind of anger indicating a real threat or is it imaginary? Misunderstanding another’s intentions or misinterpreting their actions, may lead to anger at an imaginary threat. The Bible says: “speak the truth in love.” It is at times appropriate to communicate something like: “What you said came across to me as a real put-down. I don’t know if you meant it that way or not. I don’t want to be angry with you. May we talk about it?”

It can reveal exaggeration
When anger has built up inside of a person, he/she tends to think in exaggerated terms that can cause undo relational conflict. Examples: “He is always late. He is never a thoughtful person.”
Though tardiness and thoughtlessness can be real problems, to use the words “always” and “never” usually inflames the communication and the exaggeration leads to greater conflict, harder to work through.

It can reveal an out-of-control lifestyle
Stress can be used productively. It can help us prepare for a test. It can heighten the senses to perform in tiptop shape. But too much stress, especially that which our culture encourages, can be very debilitating.
Many families are either single-parented or child-oriented. Most single parents are under great stress as they try to be mom and dad to the child. Parents who operate a child-oriented household usually are so involved in pleasing their children, that they have little time for themselves or for each other. The stress is great. Being easily irritated or raging over minutia is anger’s signal: bring control into your life. Rearrange your priority structure.

Reveals a hidden vow
Often the counselor hears, “I’m never going to be an angry person like my father.” This is an inner vow that is often made as a child. I don’t understand the dynamics of it, but that kind of vow seems to link that person to the perpetrator and the child becomes like the parent - angry.
An inner vow must be faced and broken by a prayer that renounces that mindset, or the anger problem will continue.

More tomorrow on the gift of anger.