Signs of anger: the vital skill of seeing your anger.

My response was not one of initiative and leadership in his life, my response was simply me spilling my emotions all over my son. My response to this situation was anger. I would like to call this frustration or irritation or something a little more antiseptic. But, the reality is, even if I wasn’t screaming uncontrollably at my son or punching a hole in the wall, the response of my heart was anger. 

The first step you can take in moving toward victory over anger in our lives is simply to SEE YOUR ANGER. Most dads told Manhood Journey one of their biggest challenges is learning to deal with anger. They said it in several ways. Here are just a few ways dads see the signs of anger in their actions:

• Being patient with my son and daughter. I loose my cool too often.
• Patience and accepting my son the way he is and not try to change everything he does.
• I am not patient and do not teach my children like I should. How can I expect them to know if they are not taught?
• I don’t have enough self-control with what I say before I think.

What do you think when reading these replies? If nothing else, understand that you’re not alone in dealing with anger. We have speed bumps on the small street leading to our house. All of the kids in the neighborhood play in that street with little regard to the cars coming and going. Those speed bumps keep us as drivers from accidentally turning a kid into a speed bump.

The art of slowing down and seeing the signs of anger.

When we slow down to SEE OUR ANGER it serves as a speed bump in the road toward sinful responses that bring harm to the ones we love and have been called to sacrificially lay down our lives for. Slowing down to see our anger is the first step to rightly process it.

This starts with being able to recognize and say something matters to our hearts, and when something really matters to us it’s usually hard to hide it on the outside.

“Slowing down to see our anger is the first step to rightly process it.”

What do your signs of anger look like?

It’s never acceptable to respond in violence out of anger. If you have had a moment like that, no matter how small, it’s clear anger is lurking below the surface, but anger manifests in other external ways as well.

Raising Your Voice

Sometimes we justify our volume in correction or discipline as a means to get attention or communicate the gravity of the situation and this isn’t always wrong. However, most often, when you are yelling at your kids, it just an emotional release, and your loudness doesn’t mean they’re listening.

Weaponized Silence

In a household of five children, I absolutely LOVE the sweet sound of silence. But, understand silence can be the weapon we wield to create distance between ourselves and others disguised as quiet patience.

Sarcasm

This can be the go-to way to communicate you are feeling something, while failing to say what you are ACTUALLY feeling by saying the opposite because it seems safer. This passive-aggressive communication is lazy.

Criticism

This outward expression can start small—but becomes a pattern we fall into as we believe we’re fixing the person or situation stirring up our emotions. This is an arrogant and self-righteous position that assumes your way is correct. It’s a focus on self to validate the depth of your feelings.

Taking stock in your anger patterns is a great start. But, seeing our emotions before they erupt into harmful responses is the real goal of SEEING OUR ANGER. Are you aware of when you’re feeling deeply about something? Are you willing to give those emotions names?

Seeing the signs of anger

Anger in particular is an emotion many of us would rather not acknowledge because it carries with it feelings of shame or embarrassment. A failure to SEE YOUR ANGER, to acknowledge you are feeling deeply about something, will keep you from rightly addressing what is really disordered in the world around you.

As anger comes to the surface, it becomes vitally important that we slow down enough to see anger for what it is. As you discover the patterns in your life and acknowledge where anger is coming to the surface, pray and ask the Holy Spirit for insight into SEEING YOUR ANGER with new eyes. You may pause a few times in the day and take an inventory of what is happening in your heart.