Anger Management thru Myers-Briggs Personality Awareness!

All of us encounter anger in our lives. For some of us anger can rule our worlds and it can be very destructive if not managed.

Knowledge of your Myers-Briggs personality type can help in some aspects of anger management.

Anger is very normal, natural even healthy it is an emotion. Sometimes anger gets out of control and when anger happens it can become destructive especially repeated anger. Some of us face angry environments every day that may be at work or in our relationships for example.

Dr. Charles Spielberger, a psychologist who specializes in the study of anger has said that anger is “an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage.” Most of us can understand this definition. What many of us don’t know and can benefit from is that we have personality clues to help us control, manage and understand our anger better so that anger does not rule our lives.

According to Dr. H. Norman Wright a world famous marriage counselor, anger stems from three sources; fear, hurt and frustration (irritation).

Knowledge of personality type can assist us to manage potential anger feelings in each of the three areas. As you manage these feelings of anger you are reducing your emotional feelings and physical reactions to anger.

Be aware that too much anger in our lives is a killer. So we begin to manage anger thru personality knowledge by firstly understanding what and how we see.

Each of us will see the world thru a different lens and this lens will impact how or to what degree we get frustrated, hurt or afraid.

According to Myers-Briggs personality everyone is either seeing the world thru the lens of the Sensor or the Intuit instinctively. All humans use both but each of us has an instinctive preference for one over the over.

The Sensor will be seeing most naturally everything in a detailed very practical manner. Whatever the person who prefers sensing is focused on will be seen in a very practical in-the-moment fashion.

Sensors also manifest a preference for being very sequential as they are seeing things. In other words, what they see and take in should flow in a more 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5…..kind of way rather than a non-sequential jumping around from point to distant point type of approach.

The Intuits of the world see things exactly the opposite by instinct. Intuits will see the big picture before the detail. Intuits will see potentials, patterns, and meanings and are powerful at reading between the lines in order to take in information.

Some folks are more angry than others at times because they are a sensor being exposed to too much intuition or they are intuits being exposed to too much sensing.

It is not a matter of avoidance, where the sensor avoids all conceptual big picture things and the intuit avoids any activities focused on reality and in-the-moment happenings, it is a matter of understanding which you are, sensor or intuit, and then understanding the context of the situation you are in.

Understanding the context you are in enables one to get ready for something different than we are naturally used to and thereby prepare to use a personality preference that is not our favorite.

With experience, I being an intuit; can get ready for situations that represent more sensing realities. It can be sensing people, work environments that must be done in the sensing way, perhaps a wife who is more sensing than I.

By knowing ahead of time what you are about to encounter a more sensing or more intuitive situation you have a better chance to face the situation without getting angry. By understanding that you are a sensor or an intuit you have the potential to reframe yourself for almost any situation that arises.

Without putting to fine a point on it, if one is intuitive and one knows they will face today many sensing situations/people one can be more prepared and can learn how to use the sensing; how to encounter perhaps more sensing than one is comfortable with in a non-angry manner.

Finally anger is something we cannot eliminate from our lives completely; it is a healthy emotion at time. Sometimes getting angry is the emotional outlet needed at the time.

However for those of us who are angry too much, among the many possible solutions for and tools for managing anger, knowledge of Myers-Briggs personality type can be one of the most basic and easily used anger management tool.

If you don’t know which of the 16 personality types you are you can get a free Myers-Briggs test done on the internet at several sites including this one!