Get Angry -- It's OK!

Some people are uncomfortable with the emotion of anger. Not only do they ignore or deny their own angry feelings, but they try to ignore and deny the angry feelings of others, as well. They believe that all anger is bad, and that people should strive not ever to be angry. Sometimes this belief is rooted in a person's religious background. Sometimes it's the result of a person's very bad experiences with anger in the past. If a person has never experienced healthy, not hurtful, expressions of anger by others, it would be difficult for them to imagine that anger can be anything but harmful and bad.

Another misguided message about anger is that it's "not nice." Many women heard this when they were growing up. Recall the rhyme that starts, "Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice." As a result, they learned to suppress their anger and other uncomfortable feelings in an effort to be likable. Some women (and some men) reach adulthood totally out of touch with their feelings because for so long they have been denying that certain feelings exist.

When anger is not accepted as a normal, healthy emotion, it's easy for people to reach the conclusion that there's something wrong with them if they get angry. This is far from the truth. Actually, there may be something wrong if a person never gets angry. What we need to monitor is not whether we become angry, but rather what we do or say when we become angry.