How anger can harm relationships
Anger is a difficult enough issue to deal with on your own, without accounting for how it can hurt your relationships with friends, family and coworkers. Perhaps most harmful is how extreme anger issues can poison romantic relationships. As tempers wreak havoc on your own life, they can do the same for the person closest to you, driving a wedge between an otherwise loving pair.
In some situations, it can be healthy for partners to fight. As Chicago therapist Aaron Karmin writes, getting the chance to “air out your dirty laundry” can actually be a productive way of identifying issues that are bothering one or both of you. From there, you can have conversations about how you can work to not only resolve these problems but avert them in the future.
But there are a lot of ways that anger can manifest itself negatively in a relationship:
- Blaming and criticism: Angry people have a tendency to attack others as a way of avoiding their own feelings. Frequently blaming or criticizing your partner will only push them away.
- Controlling behavior: An angry person tends to want to direct what others can and can’t do. This is essentially abusive behavior, which can cause irreparably damaging problems in a relationship.
- Lack of intimacy: When a relationship is fraught with fighting, following by “periods of angry silence,” this will lead to a decline in intimacy. As Karmin writes, intimacy requires trust and trust requires predictability. As habitually angry people aren’t predictable, your partner won’t be able to relax around you, feeling less loving and more nervous.
Don’t allow anger to push your loved ones away. Enroll in the online anger management classes of Conflict Coaching & Consulting for counseling proven to help resolve issues like these.
Dr. Carlos Todd PhD LCMHC specializes in anger management, family conflict resolution, marital and premarital conflict resolution. His extensive knowledge in the field of anger management may enable you to use his tested methods to deal with your anger issues.
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