The misdirected anger

Anger manifests itself in scowling, screaming, and at its worst in shoving. The person who becomes the target of your anger is not solely responsible for stoking its intensity. Our minds are simmering cauldrons. The stresses of the daily rigmarole keep building up the heat. Sulking at things not in our hands - be it chaotic traffic, late working hours, imposing boss, parking woes, nagging spouse, and so on - becomes our habit. 

Oblivious of the smouldering in our minds, we hardly make efforts to release the tension. Finally in the heat of the moment the anger boils over. The confronted person at that moment becomes the target of your anger accumulated over a period of time. There is overreaction, disproportionate to the provocation at hand. Subsequently you regret and even repent. 

On another plane there are scenarios when you have to suppress your anger because the adversary is stronger and superior to you. The anger, emanating from perceived oppression, remains pent up as you feel helpless to raise your voice. However, the lid on the suppressed anguish blows off from slightest annoyance caused by someone weaker. Again, you heap your anger disproportionately on someone whose guilt is not commensurate to the venom you pour.

Most of the time that we lose our cool, our anger is misdirected and disproportionate. When anger stems from past prejudices, stressful circumstances, frustration, helplessness etc, we usually react disproportionately. The victim of our anger is left shocked and confused. Misdirected and disproportionate anger spoils relationships, health, image etc.

Anger per se might not be bad, but misdirected and disproportionate anger is definitely deleterious. The anger needs to be released but in right direction and in balanced dose. Manage your anger. Beware of anger going awry.

To resolve the phenomenon of misdirected and disproportionate anger, we have to understand and analyse past episodes of our bursting out in anger. Every time, we react disproportionately, we should calm down and ponder over our behaviour. We will realise that our reaction was either misdirected or disproportionate. To apologise to the person who became target of our unjustified anger is the minimum we can do. If we delve deeper, we would go to the root cause of the tantrums that we threw. The finger will point towards our own unsteady and volatile state of mind.