It depends on how you do it. You can’t just get super angry and then shove it down without dealing with it; that is very unhealthy. I know, I did it for years when I was a kid. It resulted in exacerbating a lot of my mental issues and spurred on my self-harming. Never, ever, ever just suppress your negative emotions.
But that’s not what I do. First of all, I’m very aware of my emotional state most of the time; it’s a holdover from when I was a kid, when I was incredibly volatile and had been known to literally just snap and attack people physically with sharp objects like pens. Like once I literally chased a kid across the school courtyard with a pencil screaming, “F*** you!” over and over again because he’d made a comment about a grade I got on a paper. So I’m very much about keeping tabs on my emotions, especially in a charged situation.
What that means is, I can usually tell when I’m starting to get upset. Usually I have the self-control to just not get upset unless there’s a crud-ton going on but when that happens, I usually have the option of stepping out of the situation long enough to calm down before I even shift from annoyed/frustrated to angry int he first place. If I don’t have that option, I take some time to remind myself of some points of Mormon doctrine that help temper my rising anger and turn it into something else - sympathy, worry for the other person(s), love. I work on focusing on those emotions, those aspects of the situation, instead of lashing out in my rage.
Sometimes I don’t manage it. Sometimes I don’t notice fast enough when I’m getting angry and I don’t stop myself from lashing out like I should. Sometimes I’m too tired or too overwhelmed or too whatever to behave the way I feel I should in that particular situation. When that happens, I then pray for forgiveness and usually apologize to the person involved.
However, that’s when I get angry. When I tell someone, for example, that they need to not bully my friends (this happened recently with another Booklr who was standing up for a trans person and told the haters to fight them; I told the haters they better not, or I’d get involved), I’m not usually angry. I’m just prepared for things to get a little crazy and I’m asserting that a particular behavior isn’t okay to do. But you don’t have to be angry at someone to tell them to stop doing something you don’t like.
Sorry for the long post, but hope that makes sense. :)
