Clients usually come to us with desperate worry about their partner’s anger problems and sometimes ‘aggressiveness’. Typically, when we share a close relationship with someone, our personalities, goals, passions, and methods of doing things regularly collide. Also, this can happen because we spend a lot of time together and are so familiar with each other’s flaws, it becomes extremely easy for us to be judgmental and irritated with our spouses, oftentimes even blaming them for causing our problems. Don’t you agree?
In relationships, anger can be very damaging. While a couple may sincerely love one another, if they fight regularly, their happy moments may grow less and farther apart. At some point, the next argument will start before they have a chance to recover from the last one. Love cannot flourish in such situations, much like a rose surrounded by weeds.
Hence, our relationships will suffer if we don’t make an ongoing effort to manage this anger when it manifests. On the brighter side, here is one enlightening or eye-opening truth we have to pay attention to and must keep in mind at all times.
People who struggle with anger issues tend to communicate with others in destructive ways that can break the relationship and at the end of the day… not even achieve the objectives or goals they wanted to achieve. Our communication style or manner of speaking is frequently learned from events that occurred far earlier in our lives when our linguistic skills were still developing.
- For a minute, think about the communication style used in your family.
- Does your style of communication resemble any of theirs?
Most of us have a tendency to communicate in ways that were helpful in the context of our upbringing but are now troublesome in our daily lives. Many of us may have unmet needs, suppressed emotions, and negative impacts on others around us as a result of the way we communicate. It is essential to realize that while several communication methods are available, only one consistently produces the outcomes we are after.
A client once informed us that his family usually yells at each other to communicate. He adds he had started seeing a lady who admitted to him that she gets “scared” when he gets angry. In response, He stated that he was not unhappy and that this was simply how he usually expressed himself when he was upset.
The reality is that good communication with others may not be “natural” in the same ways that it is for you and your family of origin. Although the client in the story above has an aggressive communication style, he was unaware of the effect it had on his girlfriend.
To comprehend the type of adjustments he needed to make, he had to gain knowledge of both his own and other communication styles. Also, he felt better, his needs were fulfilled more frequently, and his fiancée no longer felt scared of him whenever he got angry by learned to be more assertive.
Finally, anger management requires effective communication since poor communication leads to confusion, misinterpretations, and confrontation which causes tremendous emotional harm. Words are strong, but the signal we send to others is stronger and frequently affects how others react to us and how we feel about them.
“We should remember that every opportunity to develop anger is also an opportunity to develop patience.” – by mended hearts.