In personal development, one of the main goals is to achieve happiness. What often stands in the way are “negative” emotions that linger on. Most people have some of these emotions, either repressed or lasting with no outlet. Some are low level, some are strong.

Recognising that you have this sadness or anger bottled up inside you, or dealing with lower level emotions are articles that can be found on the Urban Monk website. I am focusing on letting out anger on this article because I feel it is one of the worst. It is crippling; it colours everything you do in your life and is often linked with depression.

Anger is crippling

I used to suffer from massively pent-up emotions; while I was often described as a teddy bear guy, I had massively pent-up anger and to a lesser extent, sadness. When I blew up, I blew up. I became verbally abusive and irrational - often this would only be shown to, and therefore unintentionally hurt, the people who love me the most and are the closest to me. This led to a deep depression that lasted for more then a year – and badly deteriorating physical health.

So trust me; be honest with yourself, and find out if you have anger issues. If you do, take steps to fix it - for yourself and those who love you.

Besides being a major step towards happiness, there are other benefits to dropping all that emotional weight from your shoulders. Self-esteem, confidence, and courage are other parts that develop as you deal with anger.

Understanding Anger and Sadness

The first step to dealing with it is to understand anger. Anger is not “negative”. It is simply an energy; an emotion. It serves as a protection system. When you get angry, it is a sign that something or someone is infringing on you or your rights.

It is not to be confused with blind rage; blind rage is when you start being abusive; when you start being violent towards inanimate objects, or worse, other people. That is not healthy.

I heard a great analogy once; emotions are like vegetables. When they are fresh, they are fine, when you hold it in for a long time, that’s when they become toxic. They explode to the surface and manifest themselves in unhealthy ways. It could also lead to cancer, stress, and several other nasty conditions.

How to deal with Anger

There are a few universal exercises for releasing anger across all the different sorts of methodologies and therapies I’ve researched. I’ve captured the essence here.

Often times you need to do this a few times. Pain comes in waves, and often times one such exercise won’t be enough to release all that pent-up energy.

There are many causes of anger or sadness; bad parenting, childhood bullies, and so on. Try to trace it back to the roots, understand it, and try to give it a voice. As you’ll see below, this is vital, as the vocal component is the most important.

Note: If it is something that you cannot handle, please do not feel ashamed to seek out professional help. And avoid self-destruction; numbing of the pain with alcohol, drugs, or other risky behaviour. I went through a whole year of this and paid for this behaviour physically and emotionally for nearly a year after. And I’m one of the luckier ones.

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