Q: I have an anger problem, even though I grew up in a loving home. What can I do?
A: I think to understand your own experience with anger you might begin by exploring what anger is about. Anger is pervasive. It goes everywhere. If one person in the house is angry, the whole household is disturbed. It takes only one child having a tantrum in the grocery store to bother everyone who is shopping there. One kid acting out in the classroom gets the whole class upset.
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The more that we understand how pervasive anger can be, the greater we will understand how some people can have an angry disposition.
Negative as the attention is, the bottom line is that the person who is angry is commanding a lot of significance. People are responding to them, the same people who might otherwise ignore them.
There are, of course those who are angry because of their life circumstances. These are those who are caught up in frustration/aggression models.
As children, they did not have all that they wanted or needed, they did not get the love they deserved and some of them were physically, sexually or emotionally abused. One would expect that they would enter the halls of maturity with a few chips on their shoulders.
The irony of this is that statistically the numbers of people coming out of dysfunctional households carrying the burden of anger are remarkably low. In fact, many people raised in deprived homes are more likely to be depressed and withdrawn than angry. It is as if they buy into their insignificance, that they believe they deserve nothing more.
In your case, where your anger likely has a lot to do with your need to be significant, or in fact, for parents who are raising angry children, your best bet is to arrange your life into strict and demanding routines.
Supper is the same time daily, as are bed times and household chores. The more you have solidified your routines the less opportunity your anger will have to influence either you or your family.
Anger becomes a non-issue, not at all significant and therefore of no value.
I trust you will consider adding some intensive personal counseling onto this. Your anger disappears even more as you learn to appreciate and love yourself and you no longer seek to be personally significant in the watchful eyes of your friends and neighbours. Good luck.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
