Sometimes as you work at anger management, it might seem like your anger is worse than it was before. You may find yourself experiencing even more anger than usual. However don’t worry; you are not more angry, it’s just that you are paying more attention to it than usual so you are seeing it more.

By focusing your intention through anger management techniques, you have put on new glasses that focus more clearly on your anger, so you are going to see it more vividly and you are going to see more of it. And while this may be uncomfortable, ultimately it is exactly what’s needed in order to move forward and release yourself from the habitual grip of anger. You can’t let something go until you know it’s there, so seeing your anger more clearly in this way is actually a very good thing.

Anger management isn’t for the faint at heart. It’s painful to work directly with our negativity, but we have to actually make contact with our dark stuff if we’re going to move through it. Yet at the same time this brings us joy, because our deeper aspiration is to rise above selfishness and chronic anger, and as we do the inner work we find these positive feelings also becoming more clear in our experience.

As we work at it, our intentions to be kinder and more generous with people start to come to life, and with practice they only becomes stronger and stronger. Despite the difficulty, anger management works if you do the work and if you stay with it.

By Craig Mollins