How Do I Stop Being Angry All the Time?

Let's face it: 99.9% of us get angry too easily. We mask our anger with a smile, or perhaps we repress it and walk away. But we are angry. In fact, suppressed rage is one of the biggest emotional factors contributing to health issues.

Some say I'm not angry, but how about "irritated, exasperated, or peeved?"

Another thing we do is find a euphemism to describe our anger: we say we are "upset, nervous, tired, or disappointed." In marriage, years of suppressed anger can result in someone "suddenly" saying: "I need to find myself or I've changed. " What they really mean is "I'm resentful. In other words, sadly, "I'm harboring secret hatred and judgment toward you." Read about stress in marriage

Now let's get to the bottom line: if you have a problem with alcohol, drugs, food, or any other addiction, most likely it is a direct result of anger. How so?

When we are angry, we need something to distract us from the guilt and soothe our hurting and frustrated ego. We need something to take away the pent up hostility and drain us of tension.
.
Some people work off their hostility (which has its own problems). Many turn to booze, drugs, marijuana, or food. You see, when we become angry and full of rage, we become an animal. The beautiful human qualities of graciousness, kindness, reasonableness, and magnanimity go out the window.

Some of us are even more sneaky about our anger. We are secretly judgmental and resentful at others (especially our husband or wife). Sometimes we are even clever at making the other wrong and then hating the other with a superior hate. It's easy to upset your husband with little teases, nagging, insinuation, or confusion. He eventually becomes angry and then you can secretly hate him, judging his anger and failing.

It's easy to be bossy with our children, blaming and dumping on them until they become angry and express their anger. Being without the advanced manipulative skill that the adult has, the child is foolish and clumsy in expressing his anger. This permits the parent to up the ante and punish the child for what the impatient parent caused in the first place. This is injustice.

.But anger, impatience, secret hostility and judgment bring condemnation from conscience. And conflict with conscience brings pain and a need for comfort. Again, the person turns for comfort to food , drugs, alcohol or anything else that will "save" them from conscience.
.
I am trying to make you aware that anger and irritation are the result of resentment and judgment. While it is true that your spouse or coworkers may be imperfect, even irritating, if you really had love, you would not resent them. The truly human person has patience. This patience comes from not having judged in the first place.

Someone once said that when we are wronged we cry out for judgment. But when we wrong another, we cry out for mercy. As long as you are angry or resentful, you won't even see your own rudeness and inconsideration toward others. You are too busy judging others to see your own fault.

Recovery from food, drug, or other addictions means seeing, really seeing why you needed the false comfort of drugs or the misuse of food in the first place. If you were not angry and upset in the first place, you would not need comfort and tension relief in the second place.

.And if you did not form secret judgments in the first place, you would not become angry in the second place. If you were not playing God, and easily frustrated and angered when your will is not done, you would not become tense and needy of lowly comforts.

The problem now is undoubtedly that your wrong self craves and cries out for the false comfort and false deliverance of lowly things we have mentioned. You have fallen to become a creature that now craves the drugs and false comforts.

Change begins not with struggling with your lower nature and its lowly needs, but being able to stand back so that you can be objective to the lower self. By now you know that struggling with your own lower self, using anger, is just more of the wrong way of dealing with things that got you in trouble in the first place.

But I'm not telling you anything that you didn't already know.

You know that anger and secret hostility, even suppressed rage, are the cause of your needing alcohol, drugs or some other comfort. But then your comfort becomes a problem! You sense that being irritated is harming your health, your peace of mind and your relationships

The question is what to do about your anger. That's where I can help. I know that behind the anger is resentment. And resentment is also the basis for being irritated or just being too upset.

Resentment is the number one cause of anger. And once you become resentful over something, then negative emotions follow. Soon, through conditioning, you become upset and easily upset all the time. Ulcer or headache anyone?

Like I said--usually there is a good reason to become resentful in the first place, and angry. It is injustice. Beginning when you are a little kids, there are people pressuring you, nagging you, teasing you, and doing bad things to upset you.

But here is the secret. You must learn how to observe wrong and error without becoming resentful over what you see. You do not have to like the injustice. You don't even have to like another person. Just don't resent them.

Does this mean just clamming up and letting injustice prevail? No, of course not. The secret is to see the injustice, not become upset or resentful, and then, if appropriate, speak up about it.

What makes most of us into wimps is our resentment, for which we feel angry, and our upset. We feel guilty and we fear another round of upset, so we say nothing.

Learn the secret of not becoming resentful in the first place.

I can help. I've written 12 books on the topic of conquering stress and overcoming negative emotions. Start by checking out my meditation, which is designed to help you calm down.

Listen to some of my radio programs, free, where I talk about anger management all the time.


Many people are out of control emotionally. This loss of self sovereignty results in anger and a sense of loss of dignity. Usually their life is also out of control, which then is made worse when a host of outside forces and events begin to be dominate them, increasing the sense of being controlled or out of control.

I do not buy into the chemical imbalance in the brain theory. As a pastor, I see that there is a spiritual component as well as a relational one to our life issues--often beginning with childhood traumas; poor communication with a father; then school, peer and other pressures, exacerbated by a variety of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and even misdiagnoses.

Then to make matters worse, most people become resentful toward others who caused their issues or failed to help them, and this resentment destabilizes them and renders them exquisitely sensitive to those very pressures.

Resentment and the traumas to which we have over-reacted cause us to lose the center--lose touch with our center of dignity and innocence, and fall away from our Creator (to Whom we were once close when very little children). Thus I see that learning to let go of resentment is an important component in repairing one's life and restoring emotional balance and control.

A complementary mindfulness meditation has been found by some people to be helpful in facilitating the restoration of balance, control and a sense of dignity. It helps them calm down without feeling numbed, disconnected or dazed. Some also say that it seems to assist in them in re-finding their spiritual roots, and once a connection is re-established, there appears to be a power that comes into play that assists in holding back the pressures from overwhelming them.

For example, many were Christians, but just not quite Christian enough. Somehow this meditation permits them to become unblocked and to get in touch with their Christian roots in a wholesome way, so that now they can better appreciate what their good pastor or the Bible is saying.

Reason returns, calmness enters, and now reality becomes a friend. Real positive options can be explored, and now the door opens to a chain of good things happening, and the door closes to the negative thoughts, emotions and the negative behaviors they were once compelled to exhibit. Click here to read more about meditation.

If you are ready to see the role of resentment and secret hostility toward others (especially parents and partner), the meditation will very likely work for you. You will be given the power to stand back and observe what is wrong with you without being involved in it. The power of observation is sufficient to begin a change for the better.

You will discover that you have the power to observe the wrong without becoming upset by what you see. And with no more emotion added, reason and patience come to the fore. You will have the power to observe and to get better without any effort on your part. It will be a gift to you for being patient with others. And when you are patient with others, you will also be able to be patient with yourself.

.Once you reconnect to conscience and intuition, and once you are repented and experience a profound regret, you become a friend of truth, a friend of conscience, and a friend of God.

Suddenly conscience becomes intuition again--a welcome friend and presence we wish to walk with--not something to run from and avoid.

And when you are a friend of conscience and humbled, suddenly you no longer become tense in the first place or angry in the first place. Without the build up of tension, there is no need for unnatural relief. Suddenly you enjoy seeing the truth instead of wanting to run from it. And you become incompatible with the old consciousness lowering activities.



Anger is very destructive, and it can ruin everything: your marriage, your life, and your health. When we express anger, we say or do the wrong thing. When we repress it, it causes harm on the inside. An angry repressed person can also become a doormat, afraid to say anything because of the suppressed anger that comes out. Repressed anger may also be a contributor to stuttering and other physical symptoms.

I know what you want. You want emotional self control without repression. You want a return to spontaneity and a care free spirit. You want restored good relations with your partner, kids and others. You want stop doing foolish things or self medicating with drugs, marijuana or alcohol. You want help. You want positive solutions.

The solution to your issues lies in proper application of the meditation exercise along with realization of a few insights. You must, for example, see the role of resentment in your anger issues, and the meditation will help you see how to give it up.

If you are really serious about letting go of anger, then I recommend you explore the various resources we have available. Go to our help center and you will find the meditation, my new meditation for PTSD, relationship resources, and much more. Listen to my radio program there. Get started today, leave behind the baggage of the past, and go forward to joy and success. Make 2015 your best year ever.