Resolve Conflict in Your Relationships

Anger is a common, normal, healthy response to real or perceived threats to ourselves or to those we love. The way we handle this emotion, however, can be healthy or destructive. Anger is incredibly powerful, but many people do not understand it. They assume all anger is wrong, mainly because they have seen the great damage caused by unrestrained expressions of it.

This emotion can show up in many different ways, including explosions of rage, cursing, violence, sarcasm, blaming, and withdrawal. When anger is left unresolved, it poisons the person and his or her relationships. Eventually, the body reacts to this pent-up emotion resulting in a wide range of physiological problems.

The first step is to understand that feeling anger is not wrong. Expressing anger in a healthy way leads to setting proper boundaries, speaking the truth, and resolving conflict. If not, anger will become destructive. When a person holds on to anger to punish the offender, it only grows. Prolonged, unresolved conflict and unrelieved anger is one of the chief causes of depression.