Thank you for wanting to understand, heal your anger, and have the loving relationship with your child that you have dream of.
I have written this article just for you, because after successfully working with angry parents from around the world, I wanted to make sure that every parent who wants to resolve their anger is given the tools to do so – for the children – for themselves – for their spouse.
The anger cycle stops here!
While Why You Get So Angry and What You Can Do About It is an in depth article about anger – this article relates that information specifically to parenting issues so you can put some of the pieces together and make a plan to end your anger.
Take Charge
The good news is that you can decide to take charge and stop the anger cycle right now, before doing any work at all.
I have included several methods to temporarily calm and silence overwhelming anger responses at the bottom of this article. These methods are for you to use whenever necessary, while you resolve the underlying cause of your anger.
You never have to have an angry outburst at your child again!
You Are Angry Because
Anger is your dominant emotional response to life stresses (triggers) – it is your way of coping. Therefore, whenever you have an automatic response to life events, yours is more than likely going to automatically be anger.
Angry responses may be a familiar strategy, or something quite new and surprising – people often say their anger heightened after the birth of a child, starting a new job, death of a family member, or some other life change.
Whatever the reason, anger is currently how you respond to any emotional stress.
The Angry Parent
The angry parent is overwhelmed by emotions – frustration, anger at themselves, anger at the world, guilt, regret, fear and confusion to name a few.
They talk about an explosion of anger that comes out of nowhere – they have no idea where it comes from or how to control it. Often they don’t even know what they’re angry about – they just feel angry and react to that overwhelming emotion.
This explosion is like the lid comes off the pot and the anger bursts out, right?
This is because your storage bin is full – full of hurt, full of pain, full of emotions, full of the stresses of life, and there isn’t room for one more thing – that one more thing makes it burst – and you just explode uncontrollably.
Emotional Stress
Becoming a parent adds significantly more stress to an already overstressed system.
- The Birth of a New Child can be a very overwhelming time for many parents – unsure of what to do, general sense of inadequacy, unable to sooth a crying baby, an unwell child, hormonal changes, sleep deprivation. Being a parent means you can’t just take a time out – to relax, de-stress, get some much needed stress.
Your anger is your way of screaming out – “I’m not coping!”
- Overwhelmed By Life. Working full time, taking care of the home and family, bills, errands, spouse, and children is more than a full time job – there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all that needs to be done, so your mind goes into overdrive, constantly reminding you of what still has to be done.
Becoming a parent naturally triggers all kinds of automatic reactions and painful memories from our own childhood – often without our realizing.
- Mirrors. You see yourself in your child’s behaviors and automatically react – often without any realization.
When we come face to face with physical characteristics or behaviors that are the same as those we dislike about ourselves, we automatically react – often without understanding why, or even realizing that we are reacting.
This is why fathers are often so hard on their sons. They try to toughen up their sons so they won’t be weaklings or cry babies, or thoroughly dislike certain characteristics of their children – and tell them so.
Realize that it is nothing to do with the child’s behavior, but instead what that situation triggers inside you! - Memories Certain situations trigger the emotions of our painful memories that we have kept stored deep inside, and if unresolved, can overwhelm us – again, with or without our knowledge.
- Just looking at your new baby can remind you of horrific abuse, or bring up those same paralyzing feeling and emotions.
- Your child reaching the age you were when a dramatic event happened can be a strong trigger.
- You may fear that you will harm your child like your parent did.
- Or even something as simple as your child behaving in ways that led to an unpleasant event during your childhood can trigger you – after walking across a neighbor’s lawn instead of on the footpath you were yelled at by the neighbor and still feel the fear.
Why Do I Lash Out At My Child
Parenting is stressful – you are responsible for a life 24/7. That child is always there – demanding attention, demanding care, demanding your time and effort when you are already so full that you don’t have anything to give.
You respond to stress with anger.
Your child is always right there in front of you – whether you are in a good mood or a bad mood, whether you have had a good nights sleep or not, whether you are exhausted after a long day at work, or have spent all day cleaning and running errands – that child is there triggering you constantly.
Your child is in the wrong place at the wrong time – when you are responding to stress with your automatic emotion – anger.
Parenting requires patience. Patience requires calm. Your repressed emotions are the opposite of calm, so patience is virtually impossible for you right now.
Your Story Of Anger
Take a look at the sections titled Understand Your Anger, Why Do I Get So Angry?, and the Self Test – Is Anger Controlling Your Life? in Why You Get So Angry and What You Can Do About It.
Think about your past, your life, and the part anger plays in it. See if you can build a general understanding of anger and your life – the story.
The Children
There is one issue that has not been addressed yet – the innocent victims of your angry outbursts.
Were you ever chastised or yelled at by an adult when you were a child? Can you remember how it made you feel – the fear, worry, insecurity? Think back on one event right now, and let yourself feel it. Can you feel it? Good!
This is what you are doing to your child!
This is how you are making your child feel!
You have to be strong, decide that this is not acceptable, and never hurt your child again. This has to be your focus. This has to be your motivation. This podcast will help you reach this decision.
Don’t worry about how to do it, that’s the easy part – we’ll walk you through every step. Don’t let any mind chatter stop you from doing this!
Healing The Cause Of Anger
|
The base cause of the anger that is destroying your life lays deep inside you – beyond your everyday awareness.
It stems from your painful memories, your hurts and fears, and the dysfunctional core beliefs
that you developed as a child.
Heal Your Self: A Journey to Find You will
gently guide you with simple steps and hands on activities, to be able to go beyond your problem solving mindset, into a space where the answers come to you – and you can completely and permanently resolve and dissolve the cause of your anger with a very easy technique called
The Greene’s Release technique.
Once you experience it first hand it won’t seem impossible or complicated at all – as you can see by the comments people make.
The results amaze me every single time!
Take Charge Exercises
These 7 exercises will temporarily calm and silence overwhelming anger responses. They are not a solution to your anger, but alleviate it while you do the work to resolve its cause.
Understanding
Now that you understand emotions, and how your anger is an emotional response, it’s control will be lessened.
Spend an entire day becoming more aware of how you feel, and noticing the triggers that evoke your anger. The more you become aware and understand that what you are feeling is merely a response, you can decide to silence it.
Stop Building Angry Emotions With Your Thoughts
Have you ever noticed the thoughts that race through your mind before you explode?
Perhaps they begin when you walk in the door to a messy house, and accelerate when you see that none of the children have been bathed, and dinner was forgotten.
You build your angry emotions with the things you think about. While you are doing the work to resolve the cause of these unpleasant circumstances and your anger, decide to limit the time you spend dwelling on things.
Silence the Mind Chatter
Your mind chatter is an expression of your inner fears and worries. The very things that you will be resolving with Greene’s Release.
Use our Mind Chatter Success Tip to silence all negative mind chatter that evokes angry feelings.
Shut Down Emotions
You can deliberately shut down emotions by jumping into your logical mind. All you need do is say and write the 6 times table back and forth several times – intently to really get your logical mind kicked in. Then do something that uses your logical mind – pay bills, read an interesting book, do housework, or even read a story to your children – anything that you have to think about while doing.
Our 5th Meditation: Relaxation Podcast shows you how to jump between your thinking, emotional, and free spirit self.
Safe Expression
Make a plan for the times that anger takes over, being careful to include what to do in various situations – at home, in the store, visiting friends, driving.
Example: Okay, so you are about to explode. Put the children somewhere safe, walk out of the room, and lock yourself in the bathroom. Now scream as loudly as you can, scream out your anger, let it all flow freely.
You could use a pillow over your face if making noise is a problem, get in your car, drive down to the park, and scream it all out.
Create safe ways for you to express your anger – privately.
Make A List
It is perfectly natural to be unhappy and angry about your life.
Greene’s Release is going to show you how to turn everything into its opposite, so rather than stewing on the things that annoy you, write them down in a list – then add their exact opposite. Think about this opposite, what it will be like to live, and let it be your focus to build your motivation and determination to do the work.
Take A Break
Your life is stressful and you have had enough – so how about taking a 30 minute stress break from your life every single day.
Our series of 6 Meditation: Relaxation Podcasts will show you how to bring some calm into your life then have you floating away in relaxation.
Take the first step today to end your anger! Begin With A Small Step and then order Heal Your Self: A Journey to Find You.
You are not a bad person for feeling angry or for 
