Chronic Anger: Reverse 'Hardening of the Attitudes' to Improve Outlook

Why am I so Angry All the Time? 

If you've been feeling angry about the world and everyone in it, I've got good news. You have the power to change the relationship you have to the world by changing your attitude and letting go of the anger. 

But perhaps as you read this you're wondering why you should give up your righteous anger when it seems to energize you.

The answer is because it's an illusion that holding onto anger works for you. Anger hypes and stimulates you at the same time it zaps your power to effectively lead your life.  

Anger is a paradox. While anger is an emotion that feels powerful, our feeling angry results from the perception the world has taken away our power. 

Anger erupts when we feel victimized and stripped of our power.  When you feel powerless that explains why you also feel angry 'all the time'. 

And anger begets more anger. The angrier you feel, the more you feel victimized and the less power you have to change your situation, leading to more seething anger. And if you act in revengeful, petty ways in response to your anger you dig yourself a deeper, more desperate hole to climb out of. 

The way out of your anger is through taking positive, life-affirming actions that put you in power of your emotions and your life on a positive path.

A Flexible Mind is a Powerful Mind

When you recognize you have options and the flexibility to act in life-enhancing ways in response to anger-producing situations that's when you and others feel your power.

The Angry Victim

When we spew anger we're simply putting up a false front to look like someone who's in charge of their world. But inside another story emerges of a caught off guard angry-victim reacting to the situation in a child-like powerless manner. Spitting, sputtering and spewing anger is a real, but ineffective reaction.

If lashing out in anger is your only reaction to what happens in life you'll harden up instead of grow stronger, and you'll begin to take on the rigid attitude of the victim who has been wronged by life. 

Hardening of the Attitudes Creates a Rigid World

Sometimes with aging or after experiencing a series of negative events our anger can develop into a chronic hardening of the attitudes making it more difficult to see our way to positive solutions. We can get stuck in our reptilian brain where we are simply reactive and territorial.

Hardening of the attitudes is often accompanied by physical changes in our bodies that reflect this rigid frame of mind. These physical changes--like hardening of the arteries, tight muscles, restless sleep, and prickly emotions--especially anger, rage and nastiness--can lay the groundwork for major health events to occur. 

Being in a constant state of rigid, hardened attitudes is indicative of living in a state of constant high stress that puts your body on high alert. That's why you're susceptible to major health events, like heart attacks and strokes, if you're angry all the time.

While hardening of the attitudes makes you feel powerful at first, in the long run it leaves you living in a world that feels harsh and unforgiving in which you must constantly be ready for flight or fight. 

Choosing to take steps to get free of your anger will benefit you physically, emotionally and spiritually; keeping anger alive will kill you.

Peace is a stranger to the rigid mind.

Peace is a guest of the flexible heart.

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Life-Enhancing Actions Are Antidote to Anger

As long as you sit in being an angry victim, you limit your ability to take back your power and sense of calm.  But if you learn to take appropriate and healthy actions in the face of anger instead, you'll maintain a powerful and positive path in life.


Let go of your anger so you regain the power to navigate your own life and regain a sense of peace and tranquility in your life. Believe in your ability to create and maintain the life you want.

There's nothing wrong with getting angry. It is completely normal to be angry in response to things that happen. All of us lash out in anger at one time or another.

The question is what are you going to do to rectify the situation so you can regain your power, lose the anger, and create the situation you want going forward. As long as you keep the angry victim attitude, you are controlled by it.

Sure you can lash out in angry, revengeful or hateful ways. But this negative path not only sinks you deeper into your angry 'hardening of the attitudes', it also sets you up for devastating consequences that close off options and darken your future. 

If we fail to take appropriate and healthy action to recenter and balance ourselves, a wall of angry victim builds up and over time a 'hardening of the attitudes' sets in.

I Now Let Go All Anger and Rage from My Life

💓Anger feeds anger; compassion feeds compassion. Find ways to respond with compassion for the world--for your sake and others.

💓Ineffective actions are those that leave you feeling powerless and floundering. Actions taken in anger will still leave you powerless. Actions taken to remedy the situation that made you angry will empower you.

💓Effective actions are those that put you in charge of your life and leave you feeling good about yourself and your life.

Reverse Hardening of the Attitudes to Improve Your Outlook

If you're tired of holding all that anger, let go of your anger by taking actions to change your mindset from rigid to flexible instead of continuing to dig in and harden your position.  

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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.

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