For the longest time, I believed there were only two types of people in this world. People who felt anxiety and people who felt anger. I was a person who got anxious. But the more I journaled for anxiety, the more I was surprised to see a theme. Yes, I was nervous. I was also super-duper mad about my anxiety. The two feelings were linked.
You know me, I won’t go into specifics. I just wanted to share that little nugget to say—anxiety and anger are cousins, not opposites. In fact, they are often one in the same.
What is Anger?
You’ve heard it all before. Count to ten. Meditate. Take a deep breath. It’s all infuriatingly simple advice. Sometimes you just want to rage and rage. Any why shouldn’t you? Everything sucks. And….
Getting outraged is an easy trap to fall into. It is our body’s natural defense system. In fact, some call it a “secondary emotion” because it alerts you to other hurt like sadness or stress. For example, you might be furious that your boss gave you work to finish over the weekend. But ask “why” that makes you angry. Maybe it is because you are already stressed (anxiety), or a boundary was crossed (fear) , or you were looking forward to other plans (sadness). That “why” speaks to other emotions. This is part of the reason that anger looks so different from person to person.
Make no mistake. In this house, we love anger. Who doesn’t need a natural defense system? Without that feeling there is nothing to protect our boundaries or physical safety. We all need a little rage.
Anger’s Bad Side
I know you are not reading this article because you have a perfect, healthy relationship with anger. For most of us, anger is terrifying. Anger can be punching walls, screaming fits, and revenge. It can be dangerous and (like all other emotions) unhelpful at times.
This kind of angry is not what I mean when I say anger is your best tool for self-defense. No, there is a big difference between healed anger and uncontrolled wrath. When we open our journals, the aim is to capture anger BEFORE it turns to rage. That way you can respond to the problem rather than react to it.
That said, your journal is NOT the place to just vent and vent and vent. Your journal can only give back the energy you feed it. Feed it only anger and you will fly off the handle.
That’s why anger is best paired with guided journal prompts (more on that below).
Repressed Anger
At this point you may say, “welp, I don’t need this article. I NEVER get angry”. Hate to break it to ya babe, but that is a sure sign that you are repressing your feelings.
Everyone gets angry. If you don’t identify with the emotion, you’re gonna have to look at what you’ve been bottling up.
But let me be clear, I don’t blame you for bottling things up. Society tells us from a very young age that most anger is unacceptable. This is especially true if you are a woman or from another marginalized group. In fact, only 40% of women of color report being free to express anger. Not to get too political, but there are a lot of people who stand to gain from you not knowing your boundaries. Coincidentally, those groups tend to be the people who DO feel more comfortable expressing anger.
Still, Google how to handle anger and you’ll see scary headlines like “Control your anger before it controls you”. This is great advice if you fall into the easy-to-anger category. But some folks struggle to express their feelings at all. Their problem is the exact opposite—they are over-controlling.
Just like any other issue, I truly suggest seeing a therapist if any of this resonates with you. There is likely a lot of stuff underneath that cool exterior. Journal too hard about it and you may just spiral. A notebook is not clinically trained to handle that.
Asking About YOUR Anger
Truth is, it doesn’t really matter if you react to anger by over-expressing or under-expressing the feeling. Both are bad coping mechanisms. Both require the same journal prompts.
This may come as no surprise to my regular readers, but I’ll be releasing a Journal Jar Filler Kit on Anger later this month. These prompts are designed to help you no matter how you get mad
I found that a lot of journal prompts for anger are so heavily focused on how you can stay calm. They don’t explore the source of the rage. They certainly don’t explore the validity of it. When I made this Filler Kit, I wanted to make sure that there was space to look at those things without judgement.
If you want access to this filler kit early, sign up for the Write Your Wellness Newsletter. I will be releasing all Journal Jar Filler Kits to my subscribers for FREE in next Monday’s email.
