Fury Within: Understanding Intense Anger

What have you been taught about anger?

Perhaps anger has been described to you as a monster that lives on the inside. Somewhere deep down where nobody else is supposed to see it: a monster that rears its head when stress or anxiety are at their peak, when a friend or relative disrespects you in front of others, or when you are deeply frustrated that you’re still struggling with the same issue despite asking God numerous times to take it away.

Maybe you have come to picture anger as something you’re supposed to keep in a tightly sealed bottle. A bottle kept far away from sunlight and other people out of fear that if you begin to lift the lid, it could wreak havoc in your own heart and your relationships.

Do you ever feel like you have a monster living on the inside? What do you do when you sense that monster coming to the surface?

Anger is an incredibly valuable emotion. It communicates to us that there is a need for something to move or for something to change in us and our surroundings. It tells us when a personal boundary has been crossed as well as when we have experienced a sense of injustice. In most instances, our bodies produce physical symptoms in response to feeling intense anger.

For example, you’re eating dinner with your family, and your father begins to openly criticize you for your performance in your most recent baseball game. As he speaks, your jaw starts to clench, your shoulders start to tighten, and you want to yell at him to stop.

Or you’re out with a group of friends and one of them starts bad-mouthing a friend of yours who isn’t present. Your stomach begins to tighten, your brow furrows, your face flushes, and you speak up telling them to stop.

The physical symptoms such as a clenched jaw, tight shoulders, wanting to yell, knots in your stomach, a flushed face, or a furrowed brow are all signals that you could be experiencing anger in a given moment.

In our adult lives, what we do in response to our anger often mirrors how we’ve witnessed our parents or other authority figures handle their anger. Suppose a child grows up in a home environment where anger was perceived as threatening, unacceptable, or even dangerous. In that case, it can lead the child to internalize a narrative that says, “Being or feeling angry isn’t allowed.”

The more the child witnesses this narrative repeatedly play out, the more they are forced to find other ways of regulating their anger. Instead of finding healthy ways to cope with the intense experience of anger, anger gets repressed or suppressed. However, while the repression may be “successful”, it does not excuse the individual from ever feeling angry again.

The Physical Side of Anger

Intense anger releases a massive amount of energy in the body. Emotions are a full-body experience with physical and somatic sensations. The act of repressing anger actively prevents a person from being able to recognize that they are angry at all.

Dr. Anita Phillips in her book The Garden Within says this, “Learning how anger shows up in your body will help you to acknowledge and process it rather than ignoring or repressing it. Just because you don’t feel it doesn’t mean it’s no longer there.”

Beginning the journey of processing anger can often feel overwhelming. This is because anger is not like other emotions with which we are more comfortable.

To quote Dr. Anita Phillips again, “Anger is painful and highly approach-oriented. In fact, ‘according to the motivational direction theory, anger is similar to arousing positive emotions…and should be associated with approach tendencies’. Sadness and fear play defense, but anger plays offense, so angry feelings are much more likely to result in a regrettable act than other emotions…Anger makes us more vulnerable to behaving in ways that contradict the values we normally adhere to, but anger itself is not wrong to feel…Anger draws our attention to what’s important to us.”

To reiterate, anger communicates to us that there is a need for something to move or for something to change in us and our surroundings. In other words, anger begets action or movement. What if your intense feelings of anger are meant to propel you toward change?

Often our feelings of intense anger are paired with other feelings such as fear, sadness, guilt, and shame. The most common of these is fear and sadness. This is because anger is what’s known as a secondary emotion. Another way to think about it is that anger is the secondary impact of a situation while fear or sadness is the primary impact. When we experience fear or sadness, anger appears and attempts to protect us from that pain.

Dr. Anita Phillips continues, “Anger arises from sympathetic nervous system activation. It’s the fight response. Ignoring your anger or refusing to express your anger does not release your anger. Once the rush of anger energy that the fight system releases into your body flows in, it will stay there if you don’t release it. When it comes to anger, better out than in.”

Processing Intense Anger

This can make the journey of processing intense anger seem daunting since you will also have to encounter these other unpleasant emotions along the way. Because anger is so tightly linked to our instinct to fight and protect, the act of stepping into our experiences of anger can leave us believing that we are unsafe or unprotected.

Internally this might create a sensation of panic or feeling out of control. In the discomfort of panic, one can easily run back to well-known strategies of repression or denial. However, if the goal is to move through and understand why anger is present, then the choice must be made to endure that discomfort while resisting repression and denial.

This of course is much easier said than done. The reality of building this type of emotional resistance is that it takes time. Grace, compassion, and patience toward yourself will be required.

One way to identify places where you are feeling angry in your life is to think about moments or situations where you have experienced sadness or fear. Some of these situations may be happening in the present. Some of these situations may have happened in the past. Fear and sadness are like hyperlinks to anger.

Our anger is frequently associated with other people, ourselves, and God. As we’ve established, experiencing anger produces a mass amount of energy in the body. When this emotional energy gets produced it looks for a place to go. Our anger can go outside of us toward other people. It can go deeper inside of us, and we can become angry toward ourselves. Our anger can also go toward God.

The Bible and Intense Anger

The writers of the Bible and Jesus himself, actually have a lot to say about anger. Upon doing a quick search, “Anger” is mentioned in various forms about 200 times throughout the Old and New Testaments. “Wrath” appears about 150 times and is primarily mentioned in the Old Testament. “Vengeance” is mentioned 20-30 times primarily in the Old Testament.

What can this tell us about anger? While these words may appear in various forms throughout Scripture, we can observe that anger is not an anomaly in the human experience or in the ways humanity interacts with God. In other words, God is not surprised by the fact that we experience anger.

Since we do not have the time to do an entire biblical survey on the topic of anger, let us focus our attention on three ways it appears in the Scriptures. (As a side note: The Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job are great places to begin looking at how we can experience our anger, handle our anger, and express our anger to God.)

In Genesis 4 we are provided with a cautionary tale about what happens when anger takes control. This is the story of Cain and Abel. It is the first act of murder in human history, and the root is anger.

In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. – Genesis 4:3-7, ESV

What is important in this story is God’s warning to Cain. God sees that Cain is angry and calls it out. He doesn’t ignore it. God’s warning to Cain illustrates the danger of leaving intense anger unaddressed as well as what to do in response to it. “…But you must rule over it.” God is giving Cain a way out, and the instruction is to “rule over it.”

When we leave our anger unattended for too long we run the risk of walking into the same trap Cain did. What if we were meant to rule over our feelings of anger and frustration instead of letting them rule over us?

In the gospel account of Matthew, Jesus speaks to his disciples about anger in the Sermon On The Mount. Jesus addresses anger in Matthew 5:21-26. He says this in verse 22, “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” (ESV)

What can we learn from this passage? What we can see in this passage is that Jesus cares enough about anger to address it. He doesn’t skip over it or pretend that it doesn’t exist in the human experience. Jesus knows that we are affected by anger, and he also knows that if we do not properly address anger it has the power to cause strife in our lives.

What we see in this same section (verses 23-26) is the heart of God in response to anger. Jesus does not want anger to simmer within us. Instead, he provides us with a practical example of what to do in response to anger. This response to anger is reconciliation.

Paul also addresses anger in his letter to the Church of Ephesus:

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. – Ephesians 4:25-27, ESV

What is important to note here is that this section of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is instructing the church to remain unified. Why is this important? Anger has the potential to cause division. If anger is expressed in an unhealthy way it can divide relationships, and it even has the potential to divide us internally in our own heart, mind, and soul.

Another important note about this passage is that Paul never calls anger a sin. He’s instructing his readers to be angry, but not to let anger lead to sin. In the same sentence, Paul’s instruction continues, “…do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”

Dealing With Intense Anger

What we can learn from this harkens back to Jesus’ instruction on how to deal with anger. Here, Paul is rephrasing a similar idea which is this: “Do not let your anger go unaddressed.” When our anger is not responded to properly it can lead us to do things, think things, or believe things that completely go against our sense of morality.

Anger that is left unattended in our hearts and minds can lead us into pride, self-hatred, contempt for others, an easily offendable heart, denial, or even the construction of a false self. Are you willing to explore, understand, and confront how you respond to your anger?

If anger is something that you have wrestled with throughout your life, the thought of going to counseling to understand it will likely present you with two feelings. The first is a sense of weakness for seeking help due to shame or guilt around feeling angry.

The second is a sense of powerlessness or fear about what could happen if you start to let your anger out (even in healthy ways). While either of these experiences may surface emotionally, the reality is that you have a choice about what you want to do with your experience of anger.

Addressing anger in counseling provides a space to bravely and vulnerably explore, understand, and process how it has impacted your life. If you would like to take the next step in your healing journey, please visit seattlechristiancounseling.com to find a care provider that’s right for you. I am also accepting new clients at this time for in-person or virtual sessions in Green Lake and Bothell.