Anger and Friendship

They say you need to control your anger but how many people are actually able to do so? Anger is a integral part of everyone's life and everyone gets angry once in a while; some get angry faster than others and some show anger while others don't. And when one does get angry it is the anger that rules the person's action and thinking and also what the person says.

When someone is angry his/her mind gets into the negative mode. No matter what you say or do to that person, he/she will take it in the negative sense. And when a person is in negative mode most of thoughts are negative, and one negative thought leads to another; thereby taking the person into a world filled with negativity.


How do you deal with such people? This is probably one of the most asked questions and one of the most difficult to answer. And what happens if the person happens to be a friend of yours. Dealing with an angry friend can be one of the toughest things.


Every person has some negative things in him. A good friend will tend to ignore those negative things (if he isn't trying to improve you on those) and look at your positive points, but he/she would know the negative things i.e. the things he doesn't like in you. But when he/she gets angry on you all the things not liked about you will be said. This leads to a friend who was trying to console a angry friend getting angry himself or at least starting to get angry.
So where does this lead to?
There are a few possibilities -

• the second friend gets angry and the friendship breaks
• the second friend takes things in his stride and waits for the friend to cool down
• the second friend backs off and waits for the angry friend to make the next move

The angry friend also has several possibilities - whether he should go & apologize to his friend or whether he waits for his friend to come again as whatever was said was true.

There is a greater chance of the friendship breaking unless things are analysed with cool heads and sanity prevails. And the worst thing here is that the anger may not have been caused by the friend but it was the state of anger that led to the situation. In the end the someone or something else's anger is thrown at a friend (who was trying to calm him) and you end up losing a friend.

Is it really worth carrying out your anger on friends? Some may say that good friends understand and shouldn't get angry. Others might argue that there are limits which shouldn't be crossed no matter how close friends you are. The point people forget here is that the limit is different for each individual and knowing the limits is again difficult - you don't know how far you can stretch a rubber band until it breaks.

The question still remains "What does one do if someone especially a friend gets angry?". People will say ideally one should control one's anger; but the world is not ideal. And if you see your friend disturbed you try to help. Now to what extent do you go, how much can you take and if your friend crosses the limit (says or does something he/she shouldn't have done) do you forgive him/her when they realize their mistake and come back to you; do you want your friend to apologize or forget everything and get back to good old days.

The possibilities are plenty but the questions still remains unanswered - "what do you do?". And one more question arises - "Do you go to your friend and try to console him?"