Do you feel “bad” about feeling mad? When you’re angry, do you back off from doing or saying things that might hurt someone’s feelings?
Bill Cornell, a Training and Supervising Member of the International Transactional Analysis Association, outlines how you can choose to either think negatively or positively about healthy anger. In fact, some people feel priceless and others feel worthless, simply for experiencing the same very real feelings that all humans are supposed to feel.
If you don’t manage your anger well, chances are some of these whacky negative beliefs are causing the blowouts:
1. Good feelings make you good.
2. Bad feelings make you bad.
3. People who make you feel good are good.
4. People who make you feel bad are bad.
5. Anger is a bad feeling.
6. When I feel angry, I am bad.
7. People who are angry with me are bad.
8. When I’m angry, there’s something wrong with me.
9. When you are angry at me, something is wrong with me or you.
10. I must hold my anger back because no one will tolerate it.
Would negative beliefs about anger cause you to stuff anger inside, stress out about anger, or fail to communicate your anger effectively? You can bet on it. If such a thing as a negative shoe of anger existed, would it be on your foot right now?
Using those 10 anger-related thought processes from Bill Cornell as a base, here’s a more effective way to think about your feelings when you are mad or otherwise thinking of yourself as a “bad” person:
1. Good feelings don’t make me good.
2. Bad feelings don’t make me bad.
3. People who make me feel good have positive and negative traits.
4. People who make me feel bad have positive and negative traits.
5. Anger can be a positive feeling.
6. When I feel angry, I am good.
7. People who are angry with me are good.
8. When I’m angry, there’s something right with me.
9. When you are angry at me, something is right with you and me.
10. I must express my anger assertively because everyone will welcome it.
So many times each day, my clients say: “Something’s wrong with me. I shouldn’t be feeling so much. My back’s pressed up against a wall because if I express what I feel, it just creates conflict and I don’t want conflict.”
Perhaps you can learn to use your anger in assertive ways that sets boundaries while allowing personal growth.
Bad feelings, be they guilt, anxiety, confusion, depression, frustration, shame or whatever, don’t make you a “bad” person, do they? After all, you can’t enjoy your relationships for very long when you are emotionally shut down, constricted or tied up in knots.
Dr. Dennis O’Grady is a communications psychologist from Dayton, Ohio, and the author of TALK TO ME: Communication moves to get along with anyone at www.drogrady.com