4 Ways How to Use Anger to Fuel Change in Your Life

For those learning to manage their anger, the important question becomes: “How do I use my anger, heal it and process it in a healthy way?”

Growing up in a household with a chemically dependent parent, experiencing domestic violence, or being bullied at school (just to name a few examples) may lead to lots of anger and resentment later on.

Most of it happens during our childhood and teenage years. Since many of us aren’t equipped with healthy coping mechanisms, we do what many children and young adults do so well – we suppress it.

Eventually, it starts to show up in our lives. We may become highly reactive and sensitive to triggers. We find ourselves going from 0 to 100 in no time and later feeling guilty because we lack self-control.

Although this may feel like a vicious cycle, I encourage you to keep exploring this part of your life. Your anger is sending you messages to care for yourself a little more. Here are a few practices and tools to use while dealing with your anger in a healthy way.

1. Become conscious of your anger

When my mum placed me in a detention center at 14 (hello, anger), I learned one simple but valuable skill. When you get angry and are about to react, count to 10. Although you may not always stop there and get it right each time, it will help you develop more awareness and be mindful of your patterns.

Healing and managing your anger is a process that requires patience, understanding but also dedication. Instead of resenting it, befriend it. Over time, you will become more conscious of these emotions and spot them before they take over.

2. Accept your angry self

You are angry. So am I. I invite you to accept it without judgment while knowing you are here to get better and healthier.

More than likely, you resented your anger for many years. Did it go away? I doubt it. Ironically, often when we resent something, it persists like the flu.

Next time, when your anger arises, observe what you feel. You don’t have to identify with it. Honestly, you shouldn’t. Instead, see it as residue emotions that are pointing towards healing. Then, ask yourself these three questions:

What is causing me to feel angry right now?

What is this anger trying to tell me?

How can I soothe myself and become calmer and more in control?

3. Observe it and feel it

In the past, I identified myself with and put my value on everything I felt. Therefore, when I didn’t feel good, I internalized it as not good enough. The breakthrough in my healing happened when I understood that I was not my emotions. Eventually, I learned to step back and reevaluate whether what I feel needs attention or reaction.

A powerful exercise that helped me was to visualize myself standing in front of me, while observing my emotional self from the distance. I could see myself being angry and I certainly felt it, but I chose not to identify with it. By observing myself from the 3rd person view, I learned to understand the difference between who I was and what I was feeling. 

One of the self-regulatory skills you can learn is to manage your emotional state and use what you feel to rise higher instead of feeling defeated. This moves me to the last but the most powerful step.

4. Fuel it

Have you been settling for relationships that are less than mediocre? Good. Use your anger and decide you will do anything in your power not to repeat this.

Have you been accepting jobs or opportunities that are less than what you know you deserve? Awesome. Get angry and fuel this feeling into doing something you dream of doing. Use your rage to fuel the change.

Have you always been a people-pleaser, exhausted from giving as a way to validate yourself while feeling empty and down? Fantastic. Use all this build-up anger and promise yourself that you will do things differently this time. Fuel your inspiration with your anger.

I know this sound very abstract as advice, but unless you get mad at the place in life you are currently at, you will hardly move. Sometimes, this angry feeling is the fire we all need to stop letting fear stop us.

Many of us fear our anger because it betrayed us in the past. But what if you can find a way to use it as fuel and transmute it into healing while living the life that’s worth living?