[The Other Guy]

I'm having anger issues and all it gets me is hurting my friends, cab someone tell me how to manage

Hello The Other Guy: Yes, I hear you on this one. I won't go into details, but I'm struggling with some anger issues at the moment too. I'm just seething & trying to figure out to what extent my anger is justified & to what extent it is a by-product of my craziness. I know I do have allot of long-standing anger issues. And sometimes these long-standing anger issues can spill over into current issues that have nothing to do with them.

Some things that can sometimes help include: therapy, meditation, exercise, avoidance of caffeine, etc., all the usual stuff. Sometimes writing a l-o-n-g fiery letter with regard to the reason for your anger can help. Don't send the letter. Just write it. Then destroy it & let this be symbolic of letting go of your anger.

Some writers I have read suggest that anger over something, or at someone, is really anger at some aspect of yourself that is projected outward. If you buy into this idea, then the anger that is causing you to hurt your friends is really about something you dislike about yourself. In such as case, what is necessary is for you to figure out what it is about yourself you are dissatisfied with & work on changing that. Here again, therapy is the way in which something like this is typically accomplished.

An additional thought, with regard to anger, is that the problems it causes can be mediated if the person who is experiencing the anger can simply stop momentarily, be with the anger, breathe into it, & let it float away like a dark cloud in the sky. Creating that moment of self-awareness, that pause, at the moment just before anger bursts forth & causes hurt feelings, can short-circuit the anger-reaction connection.

Yet another idea is that anger sometimes can be fueled by pent-up depression & / or anxiety. So if one struggles with allot of these two problems the internal stress they cause can manifest itself as outbursts of anger. In such a case what is needed is for the person to resolve the depression & / or anxiety they carry around. This will then lessen their tendency to "pop off" sometimes at even the slightest provocation.

[The Other Guy]

I use to have really bad depression and was suicidal, could this also affect me?

Originally Posted by The Other Guy

I use to have really bad depression and was suicidal, could this also affect me?

Hi, The Other Guy: You say you "used to have" depression & suicidal thoughts... That would suggest you no longer have depression & / or suicidal thought problems. Personally, I find that odd. Really bad depression & suicidal thoughts don't typically just disappear, in my experience... unless they were caused by some specific circumstance that is now gone.

If you truly no longer feel depressed or suicidal, then I would say no they are unlikely to be causing your anger now. The fact that you, at one time in the past, felt depressed & suicidal wouldn't cause you to be struggling with anger issues now, I don't believe. My perspective would be there is something going on with you currently that is causing you to have the anger issues you're experiencing.

The other possibility here, though, I suppose is that some of the tendency to be overly angry could have a genetic component and / or it could be something you learned from your parents. If you grew up in a home where the adults were always angry & arguing, I suppose it's possible you learned this behavior from them.

There is a sense in which, though, it doesn't really matter what the origin of your anger issues is. What's important is that your anger is hurting your relationships with your friends. So you need to learn anger management skills. This is where the possibility of therapy might come in. Also, there are professionals who specialize in providing anger management training. Depending on where you live, something like this may be available to you. (The courts will sometimes order a person to participate in anger management training, if he has ended up in front of a judge as a result of doing something illegal due to problems with anger management.)

One additional thought... have you thought about what provokes your anger? What are the situations you're in, or the topics of conversations you're having, that cause you to become angry? If you can begin to develop an understanding of what's typically going on when you become angry, you may be able to figure out some ways to "short-circuit" this "provocation-angry response loop". Keeping a journal, where you write about what was going on at times when you became overly angry, might be helpful.

[Thunder Bow]

Why are you angry at your friends?