To really control your anger in the long run, you absolutely must learn how to let it go. Letting go of your anger is so important that I will go as far as to say this: if you don’t learn how to let go of your anger, you will never really take control of your anger. You will gain control of your anger in the short term. But if you don’t let it go, your problems will return. You can bet on it.
To truly master your anger in the long run, you need to learn how to forgive and let go of your anger.
If you don’t you will continue to have anger problems, even if you do the other steps perfectly. That’s because holding on to grudges and bitterness is the perfect way to hold on to anger. If you want to rid of your anger, you have to get rid of your grudges and let go of your anger.
The Cost Of Unforgiveness
But most people have a hard time letting go of their anger. Instead, they hold on to anger from past hurts, practice unforgiveness, and hold grudges. And they pay a high price for these actions.
Unforgiveness has high costs. People who struggle to forgive and move on often suffer from:
- Depression
- Headaches
- Back/neck pain
- High blood pressure
- Trouble sleeping
- Stomach pain
- Ulcers
- Poor relationships
- Increased Stress
Letting Go Is Vital To Controlling Anger
If you suffer from any of these symptoms, there is a good chance that unforgiveness is causing a problem for you in your life. Bitterness and resentment can ravage your health on both an emotional and a physical level. Letting go is vitally important because holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.
The truth is that we are only punishing ourselves when we refuse to forgive. Often, the other person has moved on and doesn’t really care what we think. When we hold on to a grudge, we keep the pain alive and continue to punish ourselves.
Buddha is quoted as saying, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Makes a lot of sense to me. The wrongs we hold on to re still with us and still effect us. If you have a stack of wrongs over a long period of time that you have not forgiven, your emotional ability to handle these wrongs is stretched beyond what you can control. This unfinished business hurts your life.
If you notice that in your life you have a lot of misdirected anger, or show some signs of depression, it would make sense to evaluate your past hurts and wrongs, and consider if you have really processed them in a healthy way, forgive them and let them go–or if they are simply stuffed under thee surface. They may still be hurting you today.
If you don’t forgive and move on, then unforgiveness will cause you to either get more explosive and show more misdirected anger, or you will become more depressed–or both.