By 
LET’s be honest, we all get angry from time to time, even greatly angry that can last for a period of time.
Jesus himself got angry on a number of occasions. When the Scribes and Pharisees accused him of being unfaithful to the law of Moses he lashed out at them and said, Matthew 23: vs 25-27, “Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of cup and dish and leave the inside full of extortion and corruption. Blind Pharisees! Clean the inside of the cup and dish first so that it and the outside are both clean. You hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of corruption.”
The most famous example of his anger is found in John 2:14-18, “In the Temple he found people selling cattle and sheep and doves, and the money changers sitting there. Making a whip out of cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, sheep and cattle as well, scattered the money changers’ coins, knocked their tables over and said to the dove sellers, ‘Take all this out of here and stop turning my Father’s house into a market.’”
Instead of flying off the handle from time to time, we should try to look more closely at what’s making us mad – and why.
My anger is always trying to tell me something. Anger always carries information, but its message is seldom immediately clear. Befriending anger includes finding ways to retrieve this message.
The first step is to interrupt our typical pattern of response. For some of us the automatic response is finding a scape-goat, someone we can blame for our rage. Finding a culprit shields us from facing our own part in the problem.
Or our customary response may be to give in when we are angry. Perhaps we have learned that anger is totally against the teaching of Christ, or seriously sinful or downright immature.
Maybe we should keep a log of our anger experiences, recording with whom you become angry, how long does it last, and what thoughts accompany it. Soon patterns will emerge, giving us a better sense of what our anger looks like.
In befriending anger the response to be nurtured is our readiness to learn something about ourselves.
To learn what? Something very important about ourselves: The risks we sense to our self-esteem.
When people get violently angry you can be sure that they feel threatened. There are three areas where this might happen; power
control; security
survival; affection
esteem. When some of these areas are threatened by external forces we are definitely going to have a very forceful reaction.
Anger erupts when deeply held convictions are threatened. Anger is always a reaction to threat, either real or perceived.
Our self-esteem is under threat or we see how our personal histories have made us vulnerable to hurt. We will continue to react habitually in all the old familiar ways until we die unless we try to understand why we are angry.
Being angry may be a response to frustration. For many of us the frustration is a lack of time: Our irritability stems from a sense that we’re falling behind. We strain against the endless demands of workplace and family responsibilities.
For others, anger reveals the weight of other people’s expectations. My anger is trying to tell me something. Discerning this message requires effort. We must stop and reflect on what triggers our angry feelings; you may feel threatened and angry in a situation where others do not. Evaluating our anger inserts a pause in what sets us off initially, leaving space for anger’s wisdom to emerge.
Many of us learned early that “feeling angry is bad,” a lesson that leads to denial and repression of our legitimate feelings. In close relationships, letting the person who has made us upset know of our distress often helps.
Expressing anger in a measured way relieves hurt and provides relief for ourselves. When anger arises we have a couple of options, we can ignore, avoid, condemn or blame, or we can begin a real process of hearing and speaking to each other. If it is done skilfully, this honesty makes change possible.
Anger exposes us, revealing where we feel vulnerable. Telling someone how they have hurt us risks giving them information that can hurt us more. But in a safe relationship our vulnerability in a strange way strengthens us.
We can let someone know that we are angry and why, without attacking them verbally or physically. Let your communication style be, “this is how I am feeling now,” rather than insulting or blaming the other person and shouting at them.
So back to the basic question, “What is my anger trying to tell me?”
