Keeping Your Anger in Check

Episode 26: Keeping Your Anger in Check.

Why is controlling anger something you should be concerned about as a thriving father? 

What steps can you take to recognize this in your life, and what do you do if it is a struggle?

What does the Bible have to say about being angry? When is it a sin and not a sin?

What are some of your experiences with anger, and how have you been working through those?

I would love to connect with you on Facebook and feel free to join our group, Thriving Fatherhood, where I offer more on how to thrive in fatherhood.

Transcript

Welcome to the Thriving Fatherhood Podcast, where we are living and working in the trenches to go from surviving to thriving in this mission field called fatherhood. 

My name is Brian Knight. I am a father of three, a husband, a son, a coach, and a believer in Jesus Christ.

Today, I am going to be talking about keeping your anger in check as a father. I have talked about anger management with kids back in episode 10. Check that out if you get a chance, that was one of my most popular episodes. 

This time I am going to focus more on the father, you as the individual and how you are handling things that come up in your life that make you angry. I know I struggle with this and I am willing to bet many of you fathers out there do as well.

One of the things I do with my day job is I am a health coach for Veterans. I will be honest there is usually some other stuff we have to get through before we get to the actions of being healthy such as diet, physical activity, and rest and sleep to name few of the more popular components. One of the things that comes up first for people is usually relationships or power of the mind. If you think about it, if your relationships are not right and mindset is not right you are going to have a very difficult time focusing on what you eat, sleeping well at night, and exercising. 

I have been coaching a younger Veteran around relationships and power of the mind. He has struggled with anger and how it affects his actions. He is a father of two older kids as well. He is a Christian and has recently started turning his life around, reading his Bible, and trying to be a better example for his kids. Unfortunately, some of the foundations of his previous actions have been laid, but it is never too late for a new start or new beginning. 

Personally, he aspires to be a better example for his kids and especially his daughter who is dating a guy that he does not approve of. He sees a lot of this guy in his younger self and feels somewhat responsible for his daughter being with this guy. We have been talking about his thoughts, feelings, and actions towards this young man and how that may have an impact on his potential to minister to his daughter and this young man. I will spare you the whole story.

When thinking about this topic, there were some different points that came up for me when thinking about fathers and how they can deal with or minimize anger in their lives.

First, stay in the Word constantly, and be around others who are doing the same. Make sure you have a good group of men who you can call upon and who will support you during tough times so you are not trying to handle everything on your own. This is where men get into trouble and make decisions they regret is when the situation gets overwhelming and they are unwilling to ask for help, seek wise council from other well-meaning men, talk about your feelings, and pray for God’s help and guidance. Our society teaches men that they are weak if they need to ask for help, but I disagree with this. It is better to learn from someone who has been there and done that, than to learn the hard way on your own.

Personally, men at church are some of the first I seek for wise council. Including my pastors, elders and deacons. Wise men are waiting for you to reach out to them for help. Sometimes men think they are being a burden if they ask another man for help, but the opposite is true, most men I know would be glad to help out and honestly, it is an opportunity to grow the friendship 

What is the significance of staying in the Word or the Bible and reading it and studying it? Well, for me personally, I found when I am in the Word daily or frequently, I learn about God’s attributes and I tend to apply them to my life. If I am not in the Word for long periods of time, I start to drift towards how the World responds to situations which has not been good in my situation. 

My daily reading plan is a book that helps you read the Bible in three years. The reason I chose that is it is something I can carry around with me and the daily reading isn’t so long to where I do not have time to read it and read the commentary for the scripture. I have found I miss a lot if I am just reading the Bible and not taking the time to study it. 

Next, what kind of person do you want to be. Do you want to be known as someone who flys off the cuff at the littlest thing or do you want to be known as someone who is able to stay calm under pressure and situations that would normally make other people blow their tops. Do you think if you live your life like this people are going to be more open to coming to you when they need help or may have did something wrong. Like your wife and your kids. I want them coming to me if they need something, not one of their friends. Trust and approachability.

What example are you setting for others? When I think about this questions, I think if I get easily angry what example am I setting for my family members, especially my kids. Are they going to replicate my reactions to anger, or my response to anger. Again, am I going to react, or am I going to respond to something that makes me angry.

Think about this, does anger usually get you what you want, does it usually turn out well. I will be honest, it has worked for me in a few cases, but the majority of cases when I look back on my anger it usually did not get a positive result, it usually escalated the situation. Whatever that is

So, what do you do when you get angry. The first step is to recognize and acknowledge that you are angry about something. Put that little bit of space in between your feelings and your actions. Anger is just a feeling. There was a circumstance that happened, this is usually something out of your control, then you had a thought about that circumstance, then you had a feeling about that thought, as a result of that feeling(anger in our case) you took a certain action and this will cause a result in your life whether that has a positive or negative outcome. For example, I was angry so I yelled at the kids. It happens to all of us, but what is the result of that, especially if we do it too many times. 

How do you deal with anger? Number one, stay in the Word, stay around other positive people, recognize when you are feeling angry so you can respond instead of reacting. Then I like to use the STOP method. It goes something like this. Stop, take a breath, observe your surroundings and how you are feeling in this moment, proceed. Also, mindfulness meditation can help you and journaling your thoughts around something that makes you angry. 

What does the Bible say about anger: I will give you a small piece. I want to give GotQuestions .org credit for this next piece. Anger is not always sin. There is a type of anger of which the Bible approves, often called “righteous indignation.” God is angry (Psalm 7:11; Mark 3:5), and it is acceptable for believers to be angry (Ephesians 4:26). Examples of biblical anger include David’s being upset over hearing Nathan the prophet sharing an injustice (2 Samuel 12) and Jesus’ anger over how some of the Jews had defiled worship at God’s temple in Jerusalem (John 2:13-18). Notice that neither of these examples of anger involved self-defense, but a defense of others or of a principle.
 
That being said, it is important to recognize that anger at an injustice inflicted against oneself is also appropriate. Anger has been said to be a warning flag—it alerts us to those times when others are attempting to or have violated our boundaries.

So, that is what I have for you today; if you feel this show has been valuable for you, I encourage you to share it with one other father who could gain some insight from it and wants more thriving in their lives. 

Also, I would love to hear about your experiences with anger and how you are working through that in your own life.  What were the challenges for you, what came up for you that was unexpected, what did you learn? Please share that with me in the comments below.