How To Stop Your Anger Coming out Sideways

Building self-awareness will ease the pressures.

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I write Toxic Workplace Survival Guy because toxic workplaces make me angry. I want to help as many people as possible do as I did: survive long enough to emerge with my mental health, dignity and career intact, on my own terms. A big thank-you to all those who’ve become paid subscribers.

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“He could be severe but only when it was needed and then briefly. It had to be just, it had to wash things clean like a sudden, fierce storm.” — James Salter, Burning the Days.

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Survival Tool #9: Don’t Let Your Anger Come Out Sideways

If there was one thing I could change about my toxic workplace ordeal, it was how I handled my anger.

It’s normal to feel angry in a toxic workplace because you’re constantly having your boundaries violated.

But it’s important to take care of your anger in the right way.

I kept a lid on my anger while I was at work — because I reasoned that losing my cool in a professional context would undermine my position, and make it harder to leave with my head up, on my own terms.

Looking back, I’m glad I exercised this level of self-restraint.

But I also know there were times when I allowed the anger I was holding to come out sideways — in particular by snapping on occasion at my wife.

I deeply regret this, and — though I made repairs immediately afterwards — it still saddens me that I lacked the self-awareness to notice what I was doing in time.

That’s why it’s so important to acknowledge if your toxic workplace is causing a build-up of anger, and take steps to ensure it does not start spilling out on the wrong person.

‘Fierce Storm’

Some people can employ anger cleanly and effectively as part of their leadership style — speaking directly when people are not living to expectations in a way that establishes clarity, and clears the air.

I’m thinking of the picture of the ideal officer painted by the American noveslist James Salter, who flew fighter jets in the Korean War, in his memoir Burning the Days. As a cadet at West Point, Salter’s instructors had held up the prewar German army company commander — Kompaniechef — as the model for all U.S. officers to emulate:

“The company commander was someone whom difficulties could not dishearten, privation could not crush. It was not his strength that was unbreakable but something deeper, his spirit. He must not only have his men obey, they must do it when they are absolutely worn out and quarreling among themselves, when they are at the end of their ropes and another senseless order comes down from above.

“He could be severe but only when it was needed and then briefly. It had to be just, it had to wash things clean like a sudden, fierce storm.”

I love that image of healthy anger washing things “clean, like a sudden, fierce storm.”

Needless to say, the Kompaniechef did not let his anger come out sideways on his wife.

However much we may aspire to deploy anger cleanly in this way, the reality is that emulating the Kompaniechef would not go down well in the average toxic workplace — particularly if we don’t occupy a leadership role.

The kind of anger I’m talking about is different.