Anger can undeniably be a dangerous emotion. The actions and words that stem out from this feeling are often regretted and leave a sense of guilt. Anger is meant to be a defense mechanism that serves as protection for one's feelings.
Yourdictionary.com gives this definiion, "A feeling of displeasure resulting from injury, mistreatment, opposition, etc, and usually showing itself in a desire to fight back at the supposed cause of this feeling."
This definition fits well with a diagram I was shown in grief counseling two years ago. Imagine a fire: the oak limbs below it a crackling and have caught fire quickly; the flames are twisted with bright red, yellow, and orange heat; and a wide column of dark smoke swirls towards the sky. With this in mind, compare what you see with the feelings associated with anger. What causes this anger? The definition I previously quoted states that anger is formed by and injury or mistreatment of some kind. Therefore, the oak branches below the fire are the action that has hurt them. The bright flames are the pain caused from that hurt and the swirling smoke is the anger set off because of the pain.
The diagram manifested so many things to me. When I was upset I was defensively attacking someone else because I was in turn hurt by something else. I put a lot of thought into the idea that when other people lash out at me, there is a good chance that I had hurt them in some way or other. Knowing this helped me try to discover why they were hurting and in turn being angry.
Somewhere along the way I lost that as my focus and now no longer handle agitated situations in a peaceful manner. I can't help but believe,though, that if we all approached anger this way that the world would be a much happier place.
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