Healthy or Unhealthy Anger – How to know the difference?

What is healthy or unhealthy anger? When do you experience anger? When you get angry, is it easy for you to express it? Or do you suppress it?

Some typical scenarios where anger is experienced would be when something or someone offends us, when we face or experience injustice in some form, when our appropriate needs are not met, frustration from not being able to fix the issue at hand, feeling powerless in a situation where we have limited or no control and so on. Anger could be about the here and now or from the past.

Anger in the here and now, commensurate to the situation

When our anger is at an appropriate level, commensurate to the situation at hand, in the here and now, it allows us to take effective, affirmative action to address the situation. This would be healthy for us and others. If the given situation is not in our control then we can learn to use that anger in safe ways that is productive in a different direction perhaps.

Intense anger expressed in an unbridled manner

What if the intensity of anger is excessive and expressed in an unbridled manner? What if our anger ends up hurting others, breaching physical, emotional,  or even legal boundaries that keep us safe and civil?  This unhealthy expression of anger can damage the basic social fabric of a civilized society.

What if the anger was suppressed for a long time and one day it erupts aggressively like a volcano, damaging everything on its path?  Close relationships can get damaged or strangers can be impacted, like road rage and aggression towards others. Or suppressed anger can seep out in a passive aggressive manner. The outcome can be as damaging as overt aggression.

Anger to coverup other emotions

Anger can also cover up other emotions that we don’t know how to express or process in a healthy manner like sadness, hurt, shame, fear, and so on. This would be an unconscious process. Then the real issue at hand will not get addressed. Healthy or unhealthy anger would depend on whether we are able to manage our emotions at an appropriate level to take effective affirmative action. The key is to know, whether my anger and expression is helping/hurting, me and others.

Inner Dawn counsellor Kala Balasubramanian’s views featured in Deccan Herald – 30-Aug-2024.