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| anger-issues.org |
I routinely work with criminal offenders, teaching them anger management skills. Many criminal offenders often feel offended and disrespected by others, typically due to an inaccurately grandiose perception of oneself. When wronged in any way, many criminals feel compelled to react angrily because the opposing party has invited an assault or malicious act upon him or her by supposedly disrespecting the offender. In essence, the criminal absolves himself of any responsibility for his angry and violent reactions by projecting the blame onto the “disrespecting” party. “If she didn’t do this, I wouldn’t have done that,” is often the metacognitive process.
Teaching criminal offenders to accept responsibility for their actions is not as effective as one might think. Our initial desire is to humble the criminal to accept that he or she is responsible for his or her actions. If one is able to achieve this acceptance of responsibility, nothing has truly been accomplished. In fact, the offender now recognizes that angry outbursts are his modus operandi. Rather than shifting blame, he can proudly state that his vengeful efforts are the just punishment for wronging him. Criminal thinking is its own brand of sin and sociopathy that requires specific and targeted interventions to push an offender towards prosocial living.
Rather than teach responsibility acceptance, we teach the concept of anger as a secondary emotion. Anger in itself is not an evil thing; even God becomes angry and can operate out of His wrath. Rather, we teach our clients that anger is a sign that a deeper emotion or experience is at work. Anger can be a sign of hurt – I have been wronged, I feel slighted and unappreciated. It can be a sign of disappointment – she told me she would do this, she did not do this and I am disappointed. Anger can be a sign of jealousy and insecurity – she looked at him this way, she does not look at me that way anymore so anger settled in. Anger can also indicate vulnerability and fear – when he stared me down at the bar, I felt threatened and did not know how else to react. When criminals can identify the genuine emotional experience they are enduring, they can learn new ways to react to these emotions. Because anger is a masculine response and these more deeply rooted emotions are not, anger has become acceptable in criminal environments. Fear of abandonment is not. I have the unique position of hearing these offenders communicate their fears and concerns or at least become aware that they exist.
Let me extrapolate the idea of anger as a secondary emotion to Christian living. The Lord is clear when He instructs us to not let the sun go down on our anger (Ephesians 4:26). He tells us not to sin in our wrath and to not allow this wrath to find its home in our hearts before we rest for the night. The consequences can be deadly; shortly thereafter, He reminds us not to give the enemy a foothold. When we allow anger to dwell within our hearts and fail to identify the reason for our anger, we permit a level of deception to exist in our lives. This deception can be fatal if not properly addressed. If we continue to bury our emotions in the depths of our heart, we will be unable to discover and identify them as time continues on. The Lord is faithful to expose our wounds to us, but the process of healing from hurts from the past is lengthy and incredibly painful.
God instructs us to resolve the roots of our anger within twenty-four hours. He knows what happens to our hearts if we do not. When you find that you are becoming angry, ask God to help you identify the primary emotion causing the anger. Once identified, do all you can to be at peace with the person or issue causing your emotional response (Romans 12:8). As Paul says, “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (Romans 14:19). We live in a world raging war against Christ and His disciples. We cannot give the enemy a foothold by allowing anger to become a defense mechanism from experiencing our true emotions and actively working for peace with others. If your efforts to make peace fail, do not be discouraged. Jesus says to love Him is to obey Him (John 14:5). You can rest in knowing that God honors those who honor Him (1 Sam. 2:30). The key is to be honest with God, yourself, and others.
Anger is a powerful emotion. If we fail to identify the roots of that anger, we fail to experience the genuine emotions that would spur us to such an intense reaction. True story.
