The Angry Pattern by Jay Earley

The Angry Pattern Jay Earley, Ph.D.

Anger presents an interesting dilemma in relating to people. On the one hand, when you act out your anger, it is frequently destructive. On the other hand, if you suppress your anger, it undermines your strength. The Angry Pattern means either feeling excessively angry or acting out your anger in a destructive fashion. If you have the Angry Pattern, you may get triggered into anger easily, and you may get intensely angry too often. Anger has a certain healthy role to play in our interactions with people. It tends to come up when we need to be strong enough to protect ourselves or those we care about, to set limits on someone who is being harmful to us, or to move through blocks that someone puts in the way of something we want to accomplish. However, if you have the Angry Pattern, you express your anger in ways that go overboard and create problems with people you are relating to. Instead of just setting clear limits, you tend to hurt others and they often respond with anger of their own. This can quickly escalate in a fight that no one is happy with. Anger can create enemies that will make your life miserable. In its worst form, it leads to violence and destruction. What's needed is to maintain the strength that often comes from anger without the unnecessary destructiveness. This helps you to be firm in setting limits, powerful in protecting yourself, and forceful in moving through obstacles. Ideally this would be done from a Centered place, so that you could have all the benefits of strength without the problems that come from anger. Most people get angry from time to time. But some people get angry more frequently and act it out in harmful and destructive ways. If you are one of these people, you may have and want to work on your Angry Pattern. When we get angry, we tend to blame the other person for whatever they did to trigger our anger. However, don't kid yourself in this way. The other person is responsible for whatever harmful action they took that triggered you. However, you are responsible for your reaction to it. If you channel your anger into strength from a centered place, you are acting in a healthy fashion and you are most likely to get what you want. However, if you let your anger get out of hand, it will cause problems, which you are responsible for. If this happens to you very much, then you have an Angry Pattern.