What are healthy ways of expressing anger?

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Ah anger. A subject near and dear to my heart. A brief moment of minor anger when I was 15 ultimately led to me cutting my military career short at 20.

After much meditation and self-inquiry, I’ve come to understand that emotional predilections are very much inheritable. My patterns of anger, I recognize quite clearly in my father. The same sort of irrationality, the same kinds of triggers. So if you want to get insight on your anger problem, a good place to start is mom and dad.

Another thing about anger is that you can work on the capacity to redirect it. It’s good to start small. Try to control yourself just a little bit better the next time you get angry. The first thing to work on is recognizing when you’re angry. I’ve noticed a lot of times I’m building up anger long before I’ve reached the point where I’m inappropriately yelling at people.

Finally I like to let off steam when I’m by myself. Anger can be visualized as the building up of energy in order to power through difficult problems. Your mind just collects little bits of it over time, and if you don’t let it out when it won’t hurt anything, you’ll eventually let it out when it will.

So when I’m by myself if I ever get the urge to get angry, I express it in as satisfying a way as I can. Yelling in my car at stupid drivers is something I love to do. I’m fully aware while I’m doing it that there’s nothing those drivers did to deserve my ire and that I’m just expressing my own inner anger. But it’s fun to own my anger like that.

Maybe get a punching bag?