Feel Angry All the Time? 10 Things That May Be Hiding Behind Your Anger + Tips

Do you feel angry all the time? There may be some hidden reasons for that.

Is your anger getting out of control? Is it getting harder and harder to stop flaring up at people? Do you wonder why you always tend to use anger instead of other emotions in stressful situations?

Getting angry all the time is not productive, it can be scary for those around you and it rarely solves a problem. If you are always using anger and cannot seem to break out of this tendency, it might be useful to understand where your anger is coming from.

Angry responses do not appear out of thin air. They are typically attached to another feeling and are often covering those other feelings up. What your job is to decide what those other feelings are and then to tackle them, in order to break the anger cycle.

Here are ten possible things that may be making you feel angry:

1. Fear

Fear is often the root cause of most people’s anger. Whether that fear is losing someone or something, fear of looking stupid, of getting hurt or losing control. You lash out in response to this fear.

You should ask yourself, what the worst thing that can happen is and how you can deal with it in a rational way.

2. Helpless

Feeling helpless is not the same as fear, but pretty similar. You might feel powerless over a situation at work where your boss has threatened to sack workers, or it might be a health scare that you have no control over.

Getting angry won’t solve these dilemmas, putting in practical solutions will.

3. Frustration

It is easy to vent your frustration through anger. Imagine being held up in a traffic jam for ages while you are running late for work. Or trying to get through to a complaints department about some shoddy goods and you are waiting on hold. Your frustration can slip quickly into anger in seconds.

Next time you feel this happening, count to ten and try to see the bigger picture. A few minutes late will not be the end of the world if you call work and let them know what is going on. Knowing what to do next takes away this frustration.

4. Previous pain

Sometimes a current situation instantly takes you back to a bad experience and you feel like that little boy or girl lost again. It could even take you back to a previous relationship where you were made to feel like nothing.

Recognising that the anger you feel at this present moment has nothing to do with your current situation is the key to dispersing your negative emotions.

5. Bad habits

It might be that you have just got into a bad habit of using anger as your default setting, and people around you are enabling it by not commenting on your behaviour. Sometimes anger gets a problem solved the fastest because no one wants to have to confront an angry person. But it is a very bad thing to rely on, especially in the workplace, and at home.

It takes a strong person to recognise that this is what they are using anger for, but all habits can be changed. Ask your family or work colleagues to help you next time you show signs of aggression.

6. Exhaustion

Being mentally exhausted can sometimes mean that you are just too tired to deal with stressful situations that occur. In these instances, you resort to anger to get them away from you as quickly as possible. It could be that you are a new mum or dad and your baby is crying a little too much and you cannot handle it through lack of sleep.

If you are overly tired, talk to friends and family members and ask for help. It is not a sign of weakness.

7. Jealousy

Getting angry because you feel jealous of someone or something is a real red flag. Both emotions are particularly negative but combined can be a dangerous mix. If you feel angry because you do not have what someone else does, or what they have achieved should really be a wake-up call to your own life, not theirs.

Turn these jealous feelings into a positive message to yourself and use it to boost your own dreams and ambitions.

8. Seeking approval

Anger does not only arise from confident powerful individuals, it can come from those who hold less self-esteem. Those who seek approval from their peers in order to increase their own self-confidence can feel incredibly let down if they do not get the right responses. They may be hurting inside but instead they react with anger.

If you find that you are constantly wanting validation from others for your own self-esteem, you need to find it yourself. As the old saying goes, “You can’t love someone until you love yourself.”

9. Hurt

This is probably the most common reason people feel angry all the time, but it covers a great many areas. You can be hurt by a betrayal, for a loss, a snub, a lie, being ignored, and many other different reasons.

Dealing with the underlying feelings of hurt will get you closer to understanding why you use anger in response to them. Do you feel rejected or less of a person and acting in anger boosts you up?

10. Manipulation

Getting angry in order to manipulate people so that they do not back down is pretty hard-core. This suggests you seriously like controlling people and have a Machiavellian way of thinking.

It would probably be quite hard for you to stop using anger as a manipulation tool but one way to deal with this is to see how you would like it if someone used anger on you to get you to do things.

Do you think that any of the above-described things could explain why you often feel angry all the time? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

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