At some point in time in our lives we have all felt anger. It could be for a few seconds of annoyance or a full blown outburst of rage. Anger itself is a normal, usually healthy, emotion. However, when anger gets out of control it can be devastatingly destructive. It can lead to major problems at work, personal relationships (romantic, family life etc.) and affects your overall quality of life.
In order to manage our anger, we need to understand a key principal. To me anger is a “secondary emotion”, it is a warning system saying something we are experiencing/feeling isn’t right. Our anger is what we see on the surface, the yelling or rage, clench fists, punching of walls etc. But anger is a secondary emotion. It is coping/dealing with whatever we felt first or our primary emotion. Often times we don’t even notice feeling our primary emotion because we move so quickly to anger but it is our primary emotion that drives the anger to the surface. Please see the diagram below for some examples of primary emotions. Like an iceberg, anger is what we see on the surface but our primary emotions are beneath the surface where there is a lot more going on!
Counselling is a great way to begin working through any anger management issue. At West Ottawa Counselling we will focus on develop coping strategies, explore your triggers, identify primary emotions and how to process those primary emotions by better communication and problem solving.
