The Consequences of Anger

You may remember a few weeks ago when I published a blog post about 'how to deal with anger'. In it I discussed about how to stop being angry, and did brush over some consequences of it, but yet I could have gone into more detail.

So after thinking of this, I wanted to make a post discussing the consequences of anger and the things that come from being angry.

1. Drives friends away

Anger is an ugly thing to watch, and being angry will not make your friendships better. If you're in a habit of getting angry, then you'll be more inclined to become angry with friends. Even if you think you have complete control over yourself (though anger is a form of losing control), you'll start on a slippery slope until one day you snap and say, or do something you regret.

It doesn't have to be being angry with friends that drives them away, but being angry in general. For instance; if the way you treat other people is not nice and they can see the anger that fuels it, though you may be perfectly friendly to them, they may decide that they don't want to have you as a friend if you behave this way to others.

2. Damages family relationships

This goes hand-in-hand with point #1, and just like you can damage your relationship with your friends, you can damage it even easier with family members. With family, because we live with them, they know exactly what we're really like. Because we live with them, we act ourselves and aren't as careful with what we say or do, as we might be sometimes. This can make getting angry with a family member an easy thing to do. This will not only damage your relationship with that family member, but will also cause a wave of tension to ripple out through everybody else. 

3. It becomes addictive

The more we allow ourselves to become angry, the more we easy it is for us to get angry. If we're frequently angry, then it's not very hard to become angry, and it can become very hard to break. Anger becomes almost addictive in a sense. So don't let it get this far.

4. It only leads to more anger

Anger will only lead to more anger. If you react or behave angrily towards a person, then, more than likely they'll act angrily back to you. Once this happens a full argument can erupt and will leave everyone who was involved feeling down. Its situations like these that can be so easy to start, yet just as easy to avoid. 

5. Anger leads on to other things

Sometimes when we're angry, nasty words and arguments isn't where it ends. For some people, there self-control in that state of mind is not what it should, and physical acts of violence can start. The effects can be very damaging, you could seriously get hurt, or hurt someone else, you could permanently lose a good relationship, and you could get arrested (depending on how serious the act is, although all acts of violence in my view is as bad as the next).

6. Poor decision making

Poor decision making is another thing that can happen as a result of anger. It's not very often someone will make a wise decision when the 'red-cloud' is upon them. So to have the best chance of avoiding bad decisions, don't allow yourself to get into that state of anger.

7. Long term health issues

There are some long-term health draw-backs as a result of being regularly angry. These are: high blood pressure, stress, aggravated heart disease, increased susceptibility to infection due to a depressed immune system.

When we're angry our bodies do certain things that causes these health issues: extra adrenaline is secreted, the heart beats more rapidly and blood pressure rises, breathing becomes faster, the sympathetic nervous system diverts blood from the liver, stomach and ,intestines to the heart, central nervous system and the muscle cortisol production is increased, depressing of the immune system occurs.