Anger is one of the most valuable guides you will meet on the road to recovery. Recognizing hidden anger can reduce anxiety. Expressing anger appropriately can be a powerful affirmation of the self. Although it may be a “no” to another person’s request or demand, it is a “yes” to the self.
Suppose that you recognize—or at least concede the possibility—that your problem with anxiety is related to the suppression of feelings of frustration, displeasure, or anger. What should you do about it? Throw a temper tantrum? Yell at people when they displease you? Become an angry, unpleasant, selfish person?
We are emphatically not advising you to create psychological stress for other people by acting in an aggressive or threatening manner. What we are telling you is that very few people who recover from anxiety conditions do so without accepting, understanding, and learning to express their negative feelings. Unfortunately, many people, largely through a lack of experience with assertiveness, tend to express their displeasure aggressively (threateningly), which more often than not provokes defensive responses and results in their own subsequent feelings of guilt. Such guilty feelings appear to confirm the idea that expressing anger does not work; so they go back to being passive and holding on to their anger. This is why assertiveness (which permits the nonthreatening expression of displeasure) is so vital to recovery. You need to learn how to express negative feelings occasionally without feeling guilty afterward.
Comments on this entry are closed.