Anger Phobia

How dealing with your Anger Phobia can help you to gain confidence

When was the last time you got angry? Can you remember? When I get angry I don’t enjoy it but I am grateful for the fact that I can get angry, that I can recognise that emotion, feel it, and use it. Let’s talk about anger phobia.

What is Anger Phobia?

Anger phobia? Are you serious? Well, yes I most certainly am. There’s even a name for it: angrophobia, literally a fear of getting angry.

Like all phobias, Anger Phobia symptoms show up in tons of different ways. In extreme cases people can become reclusive and totally avoid social situations in case something happens that makes them angry. — If this describes you, I strongly advise you to seek out a professional councillor who can help you.

For most people just feel discomfort when something pisses them off, “I shouldn’t be feeling like this, I don’t like it”. I think that’s pretty normal.

I’m not a psychologist, just an enthusiast who has done a lot of research and work on dealing with my own personal issues. If you’re like me then you have a bunch of stories in your head that lead you to ‘bottle up’ your anger:

“anger shows lack of self-discipline”

“you shouldn’t get angry with people”

“you need to chill out mate”

“don’t get angry, just be patient”

I don’t know what your stories are, you have to identify them for yourself. It might help to ask yourself these questions:

- do you think anger is good or bad?

- how often do you get angry?

- how do you show your anger? Do you take it out on others or on yourself?

- how do you judge others when they get angry?

What causes Anger Phobia?

In psychology, anger is classified as a secondary emotion. That means that there is always an underlying emotion- usually fear or hurt. This is what leads us to believe that anger is inherently bad.

Some typical fears might be:

- fear of loss or abandonment: “if I get angry my wife/husband/friend/dog/(insert whoever is important to you here) will leave me”

-fear of being unloved: “if I get angry, I won't find a partner, make friends etc”

-fear of causing hurt (and the resulting guilt): “if I get angry with someone, I’ll hurt their feelings” (and then feel guilty about it)

-fear of retaliation: “if I get angry with this person they’ll come back at me twice as hard, slash my car tires, post poop through my letterbox, or worse…!”

Again, these are just suggestions that I’ve come across in my research, you have to figure out the fears beneath your own anger issues.

Fear of other people’s anger

As I mentioned before, some of the underlying fears that cause us to bottle up anger are really fears of how we might impact others. This may be a fear of making other people angry.

Anger Phobia leads to Conflict Avoidance

Most of the time, as in my case, an unhealthy relationship with anger results in:

-people-pleasing. Basically going out of your way to make sure people don’t get angry with you.

-taking a passive stance in arguments, not speaking up when something is important to you. This can eventually lead to becoming disconnected with your own opinions and beliefs.

-panic and physical avoidance. At it’s worst, in my early twenties, I would start to panic when I felt that conflict was unavoidable and I would literally flee, choosing the fastest way out and only returning when I had calmed down (and of course, never talking about it).

Other Effects of Anger Phobia

It’s probably no surprise that suppressing anger over the long term is proven to be a major cause of anxiety, depression, and feelings of self-doubt and low self-worth.

Bottling up anger takes so much energy and it can be exhausting, which can also lead to physical problems such as; headaches, insomnia, skin problems, high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes.

Anger Phobia in Business

If your an entrepreneur or leader, having a healthy relationship with anger is essential.

I remember a situation I had with a client. We had set up regular appointments and she would often cancel sessions giving me little notice.

When she called to apologise, I would generally say something like, “it’s fine.” “don’t worry about it.” “I completely understand”.

But on the inside I was raging, “she doesn’t value my service”, “it’s disrespectful”, “how dare she cancel my important appointments”, “I’ll go and find a client who values and respects me”.

Now would it have been a good idea to let my anger out and rage at her over the phone? Of course not! That would be the worst customer service advice in history.

But that’s where we get to the difference between being angry and being assertive.

Being Angry vs Being Assertive

The real key to overcoming anger phobia is not to become aggressive. When you are aggressive in business you take the no holds barred approach: my needs are important and I don’t care about yours. If you get I my way I will crush you beneath the heel of my designer shoe! This works for some people but I’m pretty sure they don’t feel good about themselves (and I’m certain they’re not reading this article).

Instead, use your anger as a fuel to be more assertive. What is assertiveness? Someone who is assertive behaves confidently and is not frightened to say what they want or believe.

To me, that means ‘I know what I want and I want to hear what you want. I’m open to discussion and finding a solution that suits us both. I want to work with people who I can truly help. I have a line that I will not cross, and if that means that we cannot work together, then we go our separate ways with no resentment.’

and my client who kept cancelling? When I took the assertive approach, I told her “when you cancel the appointments at short notice, I feel that you don’t value my service. Is there anything I can do to better accommodate you?”. It turns out she was incredibly stressed at work and by changing the time to later in the evening, it meant she could attend regularly and I was able to help her. She was “afraid to ask as she thought I would say no.”

Anger is important

Anger is an important and unavoidable human emotion. There are many unhealthy ways to express anger but choosing not to express it at all is just as dangerous.

Bottling up negative emotions like anger can lead to anxiety, depression, feelings of self-doubt, passivity and conflict avoidance.

Find ways to channel your anger into being assertive. I explore some ways of connecting with anger and other negative emotions in a post, connect with your dark side.

Thanks for reading.

Andrew ‘Wilko’ Wilkinson

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Originally published at https://mytimemylife.org.