If you’ve seen a professional and you still can’t seem to get out of your depression, consider whether anger management strategies can help you regain your positive outlook and ability to function the way you’d like to. Use the suggestions below to address anger as part of your overall approach to relieving symptoms of depression.
What is the Relationship Between Anger and Depression?
The link between anger and depression can help you regain the energy to help yourself feel better. While depression is frequently associated with feeling less energetic, anger is frequently associated with spurts of energy. Both emotions require management in order to effectively improve your quality of life.
Uncontrolled anger is dangerous and nonproductive, so you don’t want to indulge in explosive displays of verbal or physical fury at yourself or others. For this reason, it’s frequently helpful to attend a psychological session that addresses anger management under the supervision of an expert in the field.
If you’re feeling depressed, determine whether you’re angry about a specific thing, yourself or someone else. Don’t act on the anger, but instead take the time to identify the more difficult question of why you’re angry. For example, figure out whether you feel unfairly treated, tricked or unappreciated. Although keeping a diary can feel like a chore, writing down your thoughts about why you’re feeling angry can be helpful if focus you on problem solving. Focus on ways you can avoid feeling angry when the same triggers are presented in your life. In this way, much like a 12-step program you work at managing your reaction to triggers which puts you in charge of difficult feelings and situations.
When you begin to handle feelings of anger, you’re less likely to feel like there’s nothing you can do or that situations are hopeless, as these are thoughts associated with depression. In this way, anger can help motivate you to keep participating in your life with the goal of making your quality of life the best it can be.
Complicated Feelings Of Depression
Notice when your expectations don’t match reality as part of understanding feelings of depression and anger. It’s frequently the mismatch between what you thought would happen and what does happen that creates frustration, anger or a sense of powerlessness associated with depression. Consider reshaping your expectations to accommodate the reality of a situation that is disappointing.
Try to practice resiliency by using strategies that have proven effective for others who have felt a similar way or have faced a similar situation. Depression often has a component of feeling isolated, but millions of other people suffering from depression have found a way to live happily.
Consider how you can move on from anger leaving the situation unresolved by acknowledging that sometimes there is no solution. Feelings of depression can worsen if you keep trying to fix something that is not fixable at that moment in time.
Anger is often a component of depression and managed effectively can help you relieve symptoms of depression. Use the suggestions above to address feelings of anger as one means of relieving your symptoms of depression.