Healthy anger doesn’t always get as much attention as it truly deserves. As far as emotional health goes, anger is not always in wellness conversations. People often avoid it and consider it a negative expression. However, embracing, inviting and releasing the emotion helps to increase your emotional intelligence.

Licensed psychologist Jasmonae Joyriel believes that everyone needs healthy emotional management. As the founder of Ignite Anew, her formal training in trauma, relationships and intimacy allows her to offer customized solutions using an embodied approach. In a recent interview with 21Ninety, Joyriel explained how to effectively and healthily embrace anger.

21NINETY: What’s the difference between healthy and unhealthy displays of anger?

JASMONAE JOYRIEL: All emotions are healthy at their core. However, the way we react to certain emotions makes them healthy or unhealthy. Anger is misrepresented and misunderstood. The fear or aversion to experiencing anger leads people to disconnect from the emotion. [They] push it down until one of two things happens: they inevitably explode or they turn it inward until it becomes toxic to their emotional and psychological health. 

21N: Why might some struggle with the healthy displays?

JJ: Anger is an emotion that activates action. Our anger inspires us to act, to advocate for our personal or emotional safety, and to articulate our boundaries and needs. A healthy display of anger moves fluidly through the nervous system. [It] is given time and space to comprehend and initiates action.

Action may be a conversation. It may be clarity around a relationship or job. It may be initiating a larger plan to advocate for safety and needs. [The emotion] becomes unhealthy when we are unable to experience and integrate anger freely.

When anger is shoved down and builds up over long periods of time, what is eventually released is rage. Rage comes from a dysregulated nervous system that is unable to integrate emotions and actions appropriately. Instead, the built-up anger results in extreme displays of action, such as yelling, breaking things, or seeking revenge. It can turn inward and lead to self-loathing, self-harm, and, in extreme cases, suicide. When we don’t feel empowered to change our world, we are feeling hopeless.

Anger is a key ingredient of self-empowerment. This is especially applicable to Black women in the workplace and life. 

21N: How can we build habits into our lifestyle to make embracing it healthily doable?

JJ: The first step is embracing anger as a normal and necessary human emotion. You are allowed to and will experience anger. Next, get to know your anger. Where does it sit in your body? How does it move throughout your nervous system? What activates it? What is your anger inspiring you to do? Finally, if [the emotion] is a catalyst for action, what action do you want to consider taking?

Don’t worry about whether you will actually do it, just write every possible action down. Explore the good and bad consequences of each action. It may simply be to experience the anger fully or it may be to advocate for yourself more explicitly. When you embrace your emotions and engage [with] how to move with them, you develop a relationship where you work with your emotions rather than being ruled by them.

This article has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.