How Does Anger Make You Feel?

Have you ever thought about how anger makes you feel? Anger is one of those powerful emotions that can get out of control if we don't know how to contain it. My name is Doctor Leslie Davis, and I'm a licensed clinical professional counselor and relationship expert. And sometimes we don't think about how anger makes us feel, but we see the effects of how anger makes others in our lives feel. So let's talk about it. Sometimes anger can make us feel powerful. If we're in a relationship where we felt like we lost control of a conversation or we've lost control over the relationship in general, we might use anger as a weapon.

And anger makes us feel powerful in control, not just in control of the other person, but in control of ourselves. And what we don't realize is that the anger that's expressed in those situations and really can be shown as verbal abuse or even physical abuse at times. Our anger might also make us feel shame. Have you ever felt ashamed of your behavior in response to your anger? Maybe you turned into the hulk and your emotions got so out of control, you didn't know what to do with them, so you expressed them in a way that was hurtful to other people in your life.

And because of that, you're ashamed of yourself. Anger can also make us feel frustrated. Now, we might express anger because we're already frustrated, but as we try to have a conversation with someone we care about and they just don't hear us, that makes us feel more frustrated because our anger is getting in the way of them hearing us and understanding where we're coming from. So anger is one of those emotions that will overpower us and make us feel bad about ourselves. And in turn, we. We're frustrated with our situation and frustrated with ourselves.

Anger can also make us feel exhausted. Think about how much energy you're putting out there when you're angry. It sometimes can take over our bodies. We might feel it in our head. We might feel it in our chest. We might feel in our stomach. We can even feel that energy of anger in our hands and our arms and our legs, and it makes us want to take action. But anger is one of those emotions that's so powerful, it can really take over our bodies, and that is exhausting. Have you ever considered that anger can make you feel lonely?

Think about the responses you get from someone when you're expressing anger in a way that might be really scary for them to receive from you. What you might notice is that people are starting to leave you or they don't want to engage in conversation with you, which is exactly what you want. You want them to talk to you, and you're expressing your anger because you're frustrated that there's no conversation, there's no connection. So anger might leave you disconnected, which increases your experience of loneliness.

One thing to remember is that anger is just what we see on the surface. We have so many emotions going on underneath the surface that if we don't learn the language to express ourselves with our emotions, we're never going to express ourselves in a way that's safe for ourselves and safe for others. And because we're not learning the underlying emotional terms, we tend to engage in anger and engage in behavior that is deemed angry, where we're getting labeled as an angry person. So if you're in a place where you're wanting to work on that, I'm going to challenge you to learn emotional intelligence, learn the words to express how you really feel.

Anger is, yes, it is an emotion, and it's a very powerful emotion, but what's going on underneath? Try it and let me know how that works for.