Don’t Let Your Anger Sabotage Your Relationships: Allow Yourself to Express it!

Anger is a natural emotion. However, there are those who, for one reason or another, don’t allow themselves to express it. By doing so they might harm their relationships. If you are a person who doesn’t express anger, you may want to understand why you don’t and teach yourself to express it when and if appropriate in your relationships.

Are you a person who seldom expresses anger towards your partners? Do you often agree with whatever they want or do? Does it happen that when you disagree, you tend NOT to say so, in order to minimize conflicts?

If that’s the way you behave, you’re not alone. Many are afraid to express anger towards their partners, fearing to lose love, to get reprimanded, to be abandoned and left alone.

WHAT MIGHT CAUSE YOU TO DENY YOUR ANGER?

Often you might not even know what drives you to repress your anger. There might be many reasons, which differ from one person to another:

* During childhood, you may have experienced criticism and punishment from one or both parents when you expressed anger towards them. As a result you might have unconsciously learned to repress and deny your anger.

* You may have had a sibling who exhibited uncontrollable outbursts of anger. In order to distinguish yourself from your sibling, you might have taught yourself – without being aware of it – to repress anger and not express it.

*You may have adopted the philosophical approach that an "enlightened person" is free of anger.

Whatever the reasons may be, as long as you repress your anger and not allow yourself to express it (while burning inside!), you won’t be able to cultivate a healthy and satisfying intimate relationship.

SELF-AWARENESS ENABLES YOU TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR ANGER – AND BEGIN TO EXPRESS IT

The best way to understand what withholds you from expressing anger is to develop Self-Awareness:

* Getting to know which fears might prevent you from expressing anger (such as: fear of being abandoned; fear of being reprimanded; fear of losing love; fear of not being appreciated, and so on);

* Finding out what past experiences – with your parents or others – have driven you to deny your anger (such as: being punished; being left; being approached with aggression; being threatened, and so on);

* Understanding which messages – if any – you might have received at home and the environment in which you grew up which “taught” you that expressing anger might be “dangerous” for you for one reason or another (such as: “never show anger”; “men don’t like angry women”; “anger gets you nothing”; “only simple people express uncontrollable anger” and so on).

Even if you don’t allow yourself to express anger, it doesn’t mean you don’t feel it. It is likely that it burns deep inside you and is being expressed in many different harmful ways, without your being aware of it (such as: 1. whenever anger is presence in your interactions with your partner, you project this anger into him/her. 2. You deny being angry yet are not willing to talk with your partner. 3. You become cynical and unpleasant, and so on).

Becoming aware of your anger, acknowledging and accepting it AS PART OF YOU, will enable you to develop a healthy and satisfying relationship.