Can anger make you stronger?

            Thank you for this question, reader. We often talk about anger negatively, like it is not a valuable emotion to feel. Maybe we have been taught to devalue anger for different reasons. It can feel unpleasant to experience anger; outbursts of anger can cause problems, hurt relationships, lead to violence, and anger in excess can lead to health problems like heart disease. However, anger is natural and can serve important, adaptive purposes. Anger can, in fact, make you stronger in certain contexts, both physically and mentally.

What Anger Can Do for the Body

            People have a natural anger response to feeling threatened. When we feel threatened, the body can go into what we call the “fight or flight” response in preparation for having to protect ourselves. That response can involve a feeling of anger so that we are compelled to fight back in response to an attack. When this bodily response is triggered, several things happen in the body that can temporarily increase strength. The brain releases stress-related chemicals that temporarily increase heart rate, your rate of breathing and tense your muscles. These reactions can be helpful if you are trying to fend off an actual attack; however, people who get angry often can build up to unhealthy levels of stress chemicals in the body or develop conditions that can lead to serious health problems, such as high blood pressure.

What Anger Can Do for your Mind

            People can often feel anger in relation to negative past experiences or traumas. In these cases, it can be beneficial to tap into that feeling of anger to recover from the hurt or damage that people have caused you in the past. Expressing and healthily processing that anger and directing it to the appropriate people can help people regain their power and finally let go of anger rooted in past pain. If we do not acknowledge that anger and express it productively, we can get stuck in that past pain, contributing to more anger (you guessed it).

            In short, anger is an important human emotion that can serve us in healthy ways. However, an excess of anger can be detrimental to our physical and mental health as well. If you are concerned about feeling angry often or have difficulty identifying and expressing anger in a non-aggressive way, I recommend talking to a mental health professional about tools to help you handle this intense emotion.