How do you end up feeling when you get angry? Whether you dump your anger on another person or inwardly seethe, your anger is negatively affecting you both physically and emotionally.
On the physical level, anger triggers the body's fight or flight response, causing the adrenal glands to flood the body with the stress hormones - adrenaline and cortisol. Blood is taken from the brain and organs and put into the muscles in preparation for action. The constant flood of stress hormones can create many health problems, such as headaches, digestion problems with abdominal pain, insomnia, high blood pressure, skin problems, heart attacks and strokes.
On the emotional level, anger often leads to anxiety and depression. While expressing anger might feel good in the moment, in the long run anger expressed outwardly or inwardly repressed makes you feel awful.
Why Does Anger Lead to Feeling Awful?
Anger dumped on others is generally a form of control.
When you express your anger to others, your intent is to intimidate them into doing what you want or feeling the way you want them to feel. Repressed anger is also a form of control. By not speaking up, you hope to have control over how the other person feels about you. You don't want to run the risk of rejection so you keep quiet. The problem is that you are trying to have control over something that you cannot control. While you might be able to intimidate others into doing what you want, you cannot have control over how others feel about you.
Anger - other than outrage that leads to taking loving action in your own or others behalf - is generally a cover up for feelings of helplessness. When you are unwilling to accept your lack of control, then you try to control what you cannot control - and this is like hitting your head against a wall. You will always end up feeling awful.
Anxiety and Depression
Whether you express or repress your anger, you end up feeling anxious or depressed. And there are good reasons for this:
1. Anxiety results when you are out of alignment with your true self. Anxiety is your spiritual Guidance's way of letting you know that your thoughts and behavior are not supporting your highest good. When you get angry with others to try to control how they feel about you and how they treat you, the anxiety is letting you know that you are lying to yourself. You are telling yourself that anger works when it doesn't. You are acting as if anger will get you what you want when it will generally get you the opposite. So the anxiety is letting you know that you are off course in your thinking and behavior.
2. Depression results when you end up feeling helpless anyway because your anger didn't work. Depression also results when you ignore your feelings of anxiety that are telling you that you are off course. Depression is also the result of acting out or repressing your anger instead of learning from it.
3. Anger is a low frequency feeling that closes the heart. When you express or repress anger rather than learn from it, you cause your heart to close, which cuts you off from the love and peace of Spirit. Being cut off from love always causes anxiety and depression.
The way out of all the physical and emotional problems that are caused by anger is to open to learning with your anger. Your anger is always letting you know that there is some way you are not taking care of yourself. Rather than projecting it onto another person or ignoring and repressing it, you can learn about what your angry Inner Child is trying to tell you.
The anger indicates that your Child is angry with YOU, and if you listen and learn with your Child and your Guidance, you will discover how your are not taking care of yourself and what you can do about it.
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