The Relationship Between Anxiety and Anger
Talking about anxiety and anxiety disorder we rarely think about anger. In most cases anxiety is related to fears and fear is the exact opposite to bravery. Bravery is one of the major ingredients of anger – people feel that they have to be brave to feel angry. Unfortunately there are cases when people actually feel angry as a result of their anxiety. Often when a person suffers from anxiety disorder he/she may feel hopeless which can lead to anger.
Explaining the relationship between anxiety and anger is difficult and it’s almost impossible to tell if anger causes anxiety or it comes as a result of it. It can actually be both the cause and the consequence from anxiety. Often people suffer from anxiety as a result of their issues with anger. The reason is very simple – person who experiences trouble managing his anger may also experience anxiety as a result of that. Often such a person can be anxious most of the time because he cannot handle that anger.
What Are the Symptoms of Anxiety and Anger?
No matter if anger is a symptom or a cause of anxiety it is important to be able to notice the problem quickly and take some actions to manage it. Often people with anxiety and/or anger issues tend to neglect the symptoms and rely on the thought that this is only a period and it will pass away. Not paying attention to serious conditions like that only aggravates them and can lead to more serious problems like chronic depression and more severe anxiety disorders. Here are some of the basic symptoms of anxiety and anger that you should pay attention to:
You lose control easily
Losing control is major part of anxiety and also a major lesson. People with anxiety issues often fear that they will lose control and like everything will fall apart. This loss of control is expressed strongly in panic attacks, during which the leading feeling is that we don’t have control over the situation or our life. Losing control naturally can lead to anger – we became angrier with ourselves and often with others because of our incapability to handle the situation. The irony here is that often to beat that feeling of losing control we should actually accept that this is normal and we cannot be in control of each aspect and situation in our lives.
Irritation has become your “best friend”
Irritation is an inevitable part of anxiety. People with anxiety issues have constant irritation as they always find something to worry about. Even if everything seems to be alright, people with anxiety can imagine different scenarios of how things might go wrong and this naturally irritates them. Irritation, as with most of the feelings that accompany anxiety, is a negative emotion which can make people more prone to experience many other negative emotions including anger. Often people with anxiety who are constantly feeling irritation get upset really quickly when other people “bother” them and this can easily make them angry.
The other people are responsible for your condition
One of the most difficult aspects of anxiety is to realize that the main reason for your anxious feeling is you. Often people with anxiety issues tend to pass the blame on other people or situations in order to explain somehow the way they feel. You can repeatedly hear people with anxiety tell you that their boss is responsible for their stress, or the job is not good for them, their partner in life is awful, their friends disappointed them. Here comes the difficult part where we have to realize that these situations in most cases are consequences of our own choices.. Passing blame to others can easily upset us and make us angry. However accumulating such amount of negative emotions and anger is never healthy and leads to anger outburst which can lead us back to anxiety because we are not capable of managing the situation.
