Chronic anger: What is hidden at its root?

There are people who are permanently angry, as if anger were their natural state. And they do not hesitate for a second to unleash that anger on everyone they meet on their way. These people behave like real garbage trucks, they do not want to acknowledge the load they carry on their backs but they are willing to place it on the first person who passes by.

At other times, we are the ones who experience phases of chronic anger. Sometimes we can even spend entire days angry without being fully aware of it. We feel irritated and explode at the slightest stimulus, overreacting to situations that would not otherwise have bothered us so much. In such cases, we find it difficult to control our behavior and negative emotions are on the surface.

What is chronic anger?

First of all, it is important to clarify that in some cases, it is perfectly understandable that we react angrily. In fact, having small outbursts can even have a cathartic power, as they allow us to release the accumulated tension and move on. Obviously, we must try to ensure that these outbursts of bad mood do not harm other people and that they do not lead us to do or say things that we may later regret.

However, chronic anger is not simply a passing frustration, it is a much more complex state.

A person who experiences chronic anger is almost always in a bad mood, and this state lasts for weeks, months or even years. In fact, we all know people who could be described as “perennially grumpy”, eternally angry people who almost never smile and who are annoyed by everything.

These people have made anger a habitual way of dealing with life, they have turned it into a coping strategy. Because of this, everything annoys them, even the most trivial situations, they lose control easily and become difficult to deal with.

The curious thing is that their anger is not usually directed against a person, situation or event, but against the world and life in general. These people experience a permanent feeling of annoyance and weariness. They develop an intolerant and uncompromising attitude, and are hypercritical of others or resort to disqualification.

Of course, chronic anger also has profound implications for health, as it can cause everything from hypertension to emotional headaches or aggravate existing illnesses. On a psychological level, it has been linked to depression, as anger ends up causing a deep sadness that, in the long run, turns into hopelessness. A person who is permanently angry has more negative feelings than positive ones on their emotional scale, so it is not surprising that disillusionment and depression are common.

Obviously, chronic anger also causes problems in interpersonal relationships. People who are constantly angry are difficult to deal with, so they often violate the rights of others by reacting violently. Arguments are a daily occurrence, so those around them gradually begin to avoid contact and leave them alone.

What underlies chronic anger?

Anger is simply an attempt to reduce the tension we perceive in a situation that is difficult for us to handle. By reframing the situation, we are able to put into practice a simpler solution: anger. For example, if a person jokes about a mistake we have made, we can react in different ways. Confident people may even laugh at the mistake, but an insecure person will not know how to handle the situation and is likely to end up getting angry. Since such a person is unable to be witty and laugh at themselves, they take the conversation to another level and try to inspire fear, since they perceive the joke as an attack on their “self.”

Anger therefore changes the nature of the situation that triggered it. However, the curious thing is that although anger manifests itself as a reaction to certain situations in the environment, its basis is actually hidden within us. Chronic anger is not a mere reaction but is the expression of an internal problem.

Of course, each person is unique and it is difficult to find a single cause, but at the root of chronic anger there is often a deep dissatisfaction. In reality, that person is not angry with the world, but with themselves. That person has become, without realizing it, their own worst enemy.

The causes of chronic anger

1. You can’t accept yourself. We all have an ideal image of how we should be. However, we often put too much pressure on ourselves and fail to live up to our standards. When we judge ourselves too harshly, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction develops within us. We then think that we are not good enough and begin to torment ourselves. In this way, although we project our anger outwards, we are actually angry with ourselves.
2. You have an unfinished business that generates guilt. Mistakes are one of the main causes of chronic anger. When we have made a mistake but we do not accept it, because that mistake goes against the idealized image we have of our “self”, we get angry. Until we accept that mistake, until we make peace with our past, we will not be able to move forward and we will continue to drag that anger around.
3. You feel dissatisfied with reality. When we have expectations that are too high and they do not correspond to reality, we begin to feel bad. However, in many cases, instead of adjusting our expectations, we want the world to change to meet them. Since this is not possible, a feeling of frustration gradually develops that leads us to be angry with the world.
4. You feel insecure and vulnerable. Often, anger is not the primary emotion but is a response to emotions such as pain, fear, guilt or sadness. However, these primary emotions make us vulnerable and that scares us. So, we develop another emotion to cover them up, such as anger. Therefore, in some cases anger is a defensive reaction that hides a fear of vulnerability at its base.
5. You want to sabotage yourself. In some cases, anger is a tool that our subconscious uses to tell us that there is something that bothers us. When we have been angry for weeks or even months, sabotaging our interpersonal relationships and our own emotional life is a way to draw attention to the need for change. This type of response usually arises when we force ourselves to lead a life that does not satisfy us.

How to overcome that anger?

Anger is like an internal fire, it burns continuously and if we don’t put it out, it will end up consuming everything in its path. However, the first step is to discover what its cause is. Where does this constant anger come from?

Consider that when you get upset because your neighbor turned up the music too loud, because someone parked using two spots when they only needed one, or because your coworker made a mistake on the report, that’s really just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

When we have reached a state of inner peace, small everyday problems are not able to irritate us. However, when we are already angry, those small problems can trigger an emotional storm.

Therefore, to combat chronic anger, it is necessary to delve within ourselves, in search of answers.