Anger feels right in the moment, but no child wants an angry parent. Below is some great advice on how to deal with your anger to become more effective and loving as you raise your kids.

To be honest, I still struggle with anger sometimes, especially when I’m tired. Every time I think I’m making progress, I find myself yelling again. I’ll even stamp the occasional foot and wonder to myself if I’ll ever have a handle on it! Still, looking back, I have made progress, and I’ll share what has helped me so far.

For perfectionists like myself, the following are the most likely causes of anger (from Living Wisdom School by David Riddell). We’ll take a look at each of these in turn.

• Fear of unbearable feeling (UBF) or Fear misexpressed as anger
• Inability to negotiate and be assertive
• Unrealistic expectations
• To protect our pride
• Emotional exhaustion

To deal with my own anger, it was fundamental that I first had to decide that anger really was my enemy, not my friend.

Anger gives us a feeling of power and control. Sometimes it even seems to make people change. The power-rush that anger gives can frankly be addictive. But these effects are only brief. Then we are left with memories of things said or done that we are not proud of. There are also people – our children! – who are frightened to get too close to us, or may respond by trying to even out the power balance.

It really helped to ask myself some uncomfortable questions:

• Do I want to be an angry parent? If I am an angry person now, I am not suddenly going to turn into a sweet little old lady at 85, now am I?
• What do other people see when I am angry or in a rage? Is that what I want to look like?
• My kids are inheriting who I am. Do I want them to inherit that?
• What are the other results of my anger?
• Am I making people afraid of me to avoid being inconvenienced?
• What feeling would I have if I didn’t feel anger?

Fear-Anger

At the root of most anger lies fear. Anger is like a vicious guard dog we send out to chase away the threatening intruder on our property. We don’t let the guard dog loose on invited guests or benign visitors; we let them loose for a threat. And that threat is usually our own UBF (unbearable feeling).

This is the reason that self-control is not enough. There are lies under the anger that are causing it. When we address the UBF, we address the anger. Once you’ve made friends with the intruder (the UBF), the guard dog becomes unnecessary.

Truth coaches are vital here. We need to find one that will get there faster than the guard dog! To fix my anger, I first had to find my fear. Then I had to find a truth coach that addressed the fear and repeat it to myself until it became part of who I was.

There is also the kind of fear you get when your child does something really dangerous. This could include running away in a parking lot or hitting their little brother on the head with a toy metal teapot. Such incidents can also lead to an explosion of anger when really, you are just so frightened of having to make a hospital dash.

Better to express the fear. When I’ve done this, the offending child usually spontaneously bursts into tears of sorrow too!

Inability to Negotiate and Be Assertive

I also had to learn how to negotiate and be assertive. I would imagine I was being ‘patient’ with the kids when I hung up the bathmat and towels, cleaned up their spills and put their books back on the shelf for the hundredth time. But really, I just didn’t know how to say what I wanted. I was too scared of hearing ‘no’, and I didn’t know what my ‘bottom line’ was anyway.

Finally, after the resentment had built up too much, I would explode. For a moment, I would feel powerful and like I had won, but it never lasted. The bathmat and towels were still left in a wet, crumpled heap. The messes were still left for me, and the books were still scattered everywhere.

Anger is hard to unlearn. Really hard. I needed a realistic alternative before I could start giving up this survival kit. I had to learn not to be scared of hearing ‘no’. These days, I try to assert myself immediately rather than being ‘patient’ and then blowing up.

Calmly, I let the kids know what I will not put up with, and I expect compliance. I don’t do it for them while ranting and raving at them about it. If they forget to hang the bathmat, I ask straight away for it to be done. If they refuse, there is a calm consequence. They know I am serious now, and they respect me much more than when I would launch into a tirade.

Do you know what? I also hear “I love you” a whole lot more, often within a short timeframe of a consequence being given! When I am irritated, I try to say so right away rather than letting it grow. When I need to assert what I will not put up with, I try to do it quickly before getting angry.

Disappointment Energy

It was helpful for me to reframe my anger as ‘disappointment energy’. In other words, the anger I felt was in direct proportion to the disappointment I felt at my expectations not being met. The ‘gap’ between what I wanted and what I got determined whether I was mildly irritated or ready to rampage.

The first thing I had to ask myself was, “Were my expectations realistic?” Often, they were not! Lowering them or changing them made a big difference. For example, “I expect the kids to do their fair share around the house” was vague and required some mind-reading ability on their part. So I changed it to, “I expect the kids to help willingly when I ask for it.” This is more specific and put the onus on me to be humble enough to make polite requests for help.

But what about the ‘willingness’ part? Well, I also learnt to have the expectation that they would most likely refuse, whine or complain as their first reaction, so I came up with a plan. At the first sign of hesitation – or after a blatant refusal – I would supply the cheerful “Yes Mum” response for them! And I would keep cheerfully repeating it until all their excuses had run out.

I don’t have to do this so often now. I have also learned to communicate my expectations ahead of time, not after the inevitable has happened.

Letting Go of My False Ideals

I had many ideals. These included a tidy house; an efficient schedule; and kids who never fought and were always helpful, cooperative and respectful.

I wanted my husband to be able to know what I wanted before I did. I expected him to have no hesitation to share his innermost thoughts with me and to be sincerely interested in discovering mine.

My husband, I thought, should be a servant leader, my spiritual guide, my counsellor, my knight-in-shining-armour who would protect me from all danger. He should do anything for me, even give his life for me … and then it struck me: I wanted him to be Jesus.

Now even in my soaring flights of girlish fairytale idealism, I realised that he couldn’t be Jesus. Moreover, I was robbing Jesus of the role that He wanted to have in my life.

I had to give my husband and kids permission to be … human. They are my friends and companions, fellow injured souls and equals. I had to invest time training them in how to love me. This was humbling!

I couldn’t play the betrayed queen anymore, crying “treason!” I also had to give myself permission to be human, because if anything, my ideals for myself were even higher!

It really helped me to put my ideals in writing and then let them die. I grieved for them for a while, but then I got something better in their place. God always has something in His other hand.

Protecting Our Pride

When we are unwilling to take correction or criticism, we can often react with anger and defensiveness. When our self worth is in other people’s hands, this is very easy to do.

I had to learn to ask myself, “Is there any truth in what they are saying?” If there was, I had to learn how to be humble enough to take it on, knowing that I was still okay. If their criticism missed the mark, I had to learn that I didn’t need to change their mind.

I gave up the right to vindicate myself, knowing that God knew the truth and that was all that mattered. I could lay down my sword. Other people could think what they liked; I was still okay. It’s one of those breathtaking paradoxes: I can defend myself without going on the defensive. Instead, I must be centred and know my worth is secure.

Emotional Exhaustion

Controlling people is exhausting. Keeping everything in its place is exhausting. Sometimes I felt like I was the sole bastion against the onslaught of entropic forces threatening to rain down chaos!

Then there was the fact that I was functioning on little sleep and working far too hard for far too long. When more is going out than coming in – need I say more? A ‘snap’ is just around the corner. Which straw will break the camel’s back? No wonder I was an angry parent!

You must work out what is truly important. Negotiate. Be assertive. Get real.

Being an angry parent uses up a lot of energy. And it never seems to help, at least not for long. But we continue using it because it feels powerful. But what about the big picture: will it matter a year from now? Probably not.

It’s not winning this battle that’s important; it’s who I am becoming. My family is inheriting who I am. Just like they can inherit your blue eyes and the shape of your nose, they can also inherit your attitudes and beliefs. But unlike our physical characteristics, which we can’t do much about, we can do a lot to make sure our character is worth passing on. If I am an angry parent, they likely will be too. That alone makes giving up anger a worthy battle to fight.

More Helpful Truth Coaches

Consider some other helpful truth coaches in your fight to vanquish anger:

• Anger never improves my situation.
• My life would be more peaceful if I had realistic expectations.
• Anger gives short term gratification for long-term pain.
• I can defend myself without going on the defensive by being centred.
• Is the anger even real, or am I reacting to an echo from the past?
• What would I feel if I didn’t feel anger? What am I afraid of?
• Do I want to be an angry parent?
• What do people see?
• What is the price of the quick fix?

Originally published on MumDaily. Photo by Dmitry Vechorko from Unsplash.