After writing “Living with Emotions“, I felt like I needed to expand on the different emotions. I am putting Anger and Disgust together because to me, both are kind of cousins. I will focus my attention on anger throughout this article as I said because both to me have the same outcomes.
So what is anger and why is it important? Why is it bad? We all start out in life with very little anger and as life happens we become angrier at the world and ourselves. The good part is that sometimes anger can spur us to take more action than we normally would. For example, sometimes you can get angry or disgusted with how your life is going so you decide to finally make some changes. Many times we won’t change until this happens. As I have always heard, people don’t change until staying the same is more painful than changing. Isn’t that so true? I am not sure why we as humans do that but, for the most part, we do. In that sense, anger and disgust are positive because they allow us to make some changes.
It is also positive that we see things in society that we know just aren’t right so we stand up to fight against the injustice.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.
MLK was very right on that. He fought and I’m sure deep down he was angry. He showed his anger by being willing to fight for injustice. We all have seen injustice in our everyday lives. Maybe we or someone we know has gone through one. Maybe we look at child slaves and wonder how can we make a difference there? Maybe we look at the young generation and just feel anger or disgust at how they are being raised and we want to do something about it? Either way this kind of anger or disgust is a very positive thing and we all need to feel this emotion. Anger can change a generation! Anger can turn something bad into something very powerful.
Now, let’s explore what happens if the anger goes unchecked. This will destroy you and everything around you. It will create so much turmoil inside you that people won’t want to be around you. This kind of anger has to be checked and let go of, because as long as you hold on to this kind of anger, it will creep into every area of your life. When that happens the day will come when you totally self-destruct. I have been there so I know from personal experience.
I was angry for many years and I was covering it up with my addictions. I didn’t realize this until I became sober, but a lot of my life, even destroying my first marriage came because of anger. I am not going to talk about what got me here at this point, but let’s just say I had a few injustices done to me when I was younger. One day I may tell that story but for now just know that I was a very angry man for many years.
When I got sober on December 26th, 2007, I thought everything was going to be awesome but I was wrong. Although I gave up my addictions what I didn’t give up was what those addictions were covering up and that was anger. I could not understand it but for 6-12 months after I became sober, I had so much hate in me starting to creep out because this was unchecked. I had to really do some soul searching to figure out what was wrong with me.
This was hard because most of my life I was the nice guy. Anyone that knew me knew I could and would not hurt a fly, but I had this rage inside of me because I never dealt with the anger inside of me. I only covered it up with my addictions which made everything worse. Not only did I have anger but on top of that I had addictions for many years and it almost destroyed my life.
I am here to tell you that if you have any anger in you, you need to check that anger and its source no matter what you have to do because you will destroy lives. You will lose everything and the day could come when you alienate everyone around you. You may even see your kids grow up to become angry. Don’t allow this cycle to continue.
I have watched so many people through the years and we have a lot of angry people out there. If you don’t believe me, just watch the things people say on social media. We used to hide all the anger we had, but since the invention of social media, we have seen that people will allow their anger to show and many times it’s not a secret who they are. They blast their intimate thoughts about things and spew so much hate. This is destroying a generation in my eyes. We have so many people filled with so much anger and don’t even let them get started on politics because they will crucify you!
So what do you need to do if you have a ton of anger? First, you need to ask if you think you and God can handle this together or is God guiding you to speak to a professional about it? You have to decide the direction he is guiding you.
Ask God to come back into your life. Ask him to help heal the anger in your heart. Ask him to show you the good and the bad anger in you. Ask him to help you discern whether you need professional help or if you can do this through your church or not by growing towards him. Ask him to give you the courage to make the changes necessary in order to become the man or woman he called you to be! AMEN!
Look for parts 3-6 coming soon too! I will tackle Fear, Joy and Sadness, then have a wrap up in part 6.
Living a God-Inspired Life,
Chris Benton
Part 1 of 6
Part 2 of 6
Part 3 of 6
Part 4 of 6
Part 5 of 6
Part 6 of 6