How to Control Your Anger: Tips from a Christian Counselor

If I were to ask you to recall a time that you were furious, what would come to mind? I’m sure that every single person living today would have a few moments that stand out from the rest, in which we were furious to the point that we could hardly control ourselves. Even as a therapist, I am guilty of the sin as well.

Understanding How to Control Your Anger

I would love to take a journey with you on understanding what is truly happening to us when we start to have these feelings of anger and frustration and explore the biblical perspective on how we can still glorify God while wrestling with our emotions and feelings.

This article will go into depth about the biblical perspective of anger and frustration, while also looking at various practical ways to address how we feel and control what we do with our emotions. Please, take this time to truly reflect on how you have let your emotions and feelings control your actions, and have hope that you can grow and improve through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Before we can really dive into handling our anger and learning to control the various frustrations in our lives, we first need to understand what anger truly is from both a worldly and biblical perspective. The Oxford dictionary defines anger as “a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.”

God and Anger

There are levels of anger, and if you take the time to think of your own past, I’m sure you can recall various times in which you were slightly annoyed, versus moments in which you were extremely displeased and felt like the world was against you. Anger is a natural feeling that everybody on earth has and will continue to experience. Even our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ experienced it while He was on earth.

We see in Matthew 21 a story in which Jesus entered the holy temple, which was designed and intended for prayer and worship, only to see the Sadducees and Pharisees using this building as a place for them to buy and sell goods. When the common person thinks of Jesus Christ, the stereotype comes to mind of a peaceful man wearing all white, giving the most loving and gentle sermons and speeches to those around him.

However, we see from the Scriptures that Jesus Christ drove out all the people and animals in this building while flipping tables. I don’t know about you, but this does not fit with the stereotype I used to have in my head of Jesus Christ.

In this instance, we learn from the Bible that having these feelings of anger is not always wrong, because Jesus’s actions show that he was angry that such a holy temple was being used in such a worldly, disrespectful way. The Bible discusses anger over 500 times, and the interesting part is that over half of those references refer to God’s anger.

The Bible often refers to God’s anger in response to sin and injustice in the world, rather than the sinful anger humans express that comes from a place of pride and hate. Now that we can see that anger can be righteous, I would like to dig deeper into what anger truly is in the Bible before we start to look at practical day-to-day solutions for how to manage the anger that we so often experience.

When looking in the Bible, there is a clear distinction between sinful and righteous anger. Biblical anger is a passionate and emotional response to sin. God even states that there are plenty of sins that are an abomination in His eyes. Psalms 7:11 teaches us that “God is a righteous judge, a God who feels indignation every day.” God has a continuous response to the wickedness of the world, and that response is a Biblical and righteous type of anger.

The Scriptures provide a picture of this, where God is portrayed as sharpening his sword and ready to strike to provide judgment of the iniquities of us simple creatures. This is truly justice because God is perfect, and sin is disobedience to him.

Sinful vs. Righteous Anger

The reason I want to clearly highlight this type of anger that we can also experience is that I believe that it can be harmful to fear and resent our emotions. Though I believe that the Bible supports the idea that, in general, feelings and emotions are natural and healthy for us to go through, I also believe that there is a sinful form of anger that, when discovered, we need to learn to repent of and work to avoid.

Sinful anger is unjustified anger directed toward a person or thing. As the youngest sibling of four, I felt personal anger and resentment toward my siblings. It would have been good to feel angry if they wronged me by sinning, and if I had wanted God to bring justice; however, my anger was due to my own pride and ego, which was sinful.

This sinful anger can be a result of a lack of trust in God and his plan to deal with the iniquities of man. This is often accompanied by a refusal to be peacemakers in the conflict, and the sinful anger will often manifest itself as wrath, resentment, and even hatred. Even I, a simple man writing this article, have been guilty of knowing I was in the wrong but holding on to my anger to gain a sense of comfort.

When we take a step back and look at God’s plan for us, it’s much more than just a set of rules from Exodus and the commandments. Rather, God knows what’s truly best for us, similar to how a loving father knows what’s best for his young children. Think of a time when you were angry and held bitterness in your heart.

Ask yourself, did the bitterness or anger have any impact on the target of those feelings, or did they only hurt and affect you? Following God’s commands and resisting sin can seem like a big list of “what not to do,” but the Christ-centered life is a life free of judgment, bitterness, and fear.

I wish that in this article I could reveal some life-changing secret to prevent you and me from ever dealing with anger, but that is not realistic. Feeling signs and symptoms of intense anger inside us shows that something deeper is going on. Even though sinful anger is not productive and will only ultimately hurt us, in a way, we can be thankful for those emotions because they will often reveal to us a deep hurt or a void that only God can fill.

Physical Activities to Help Control Your Anger

We can rely on many physical exercises and interventions to progress and grow amid those deep, intense feelings and emotions, because those feelings are accompanied by chemical reactions in the brain. Here is a list of some physical interventions and exercises to help relieve our bodies of all the stress built up when we hit our boiling point:

• Boxing/Punching Bag: Allows for a direct, physical outlet for frustration.
• High-Intensity Cardio: Running, sprinting, cycling, or rowing helps burn off adrenaline.
• Strength Training: Heavy lifting or circuit training, such as tricep dips, can channel energy.
• Dancing: Moving to music (or “Dance it Out”) to process anger.
• Wall Pushes: Pressing palms against a wall releases tense, built-up energy.
• Deep Breathing: Belly breathing helps calm the nervous system.
• Five Senses Activity: List out all five of the senses and give yourself five minutes of uninterrupted time to list everything that you are experiencing with the following senses.

Next Steps

My hope and prayer for anyone reading this article is that you may be able to start your journey to process your anger and learn not to run away or bottle it up. Anger is not fun, but it can be beneficial if we can learn how to learn from those feelings and emotions.

No one makes rational choices when their mind is overwhelmed by anger, so I hope that every one of you can take something away from this article to be able to benefit from those feelings and continue to make smart choices to live your best life. Come book a session so that we can start this journey of healing and growth through whatever has brought you great pain in life.