Anger Management

(Apologies in advance for a somewhat sappy post)

I've been pretty upset with friend of mine lately (person/reasons will not be discussed here). As a result, I had not been particularly nice to this person for a while. I guess my normal mechanism for dealing with anger is total avoidance or giving a cold shoulder, which does nothing to resolve the situation and probably only upsets or confuses the other person.

A few days ago, I finally decided to reach out to the friend that I had been upset with and have a talk. I wasn't going to feel any less angry in the near future if I did not talk about the situation with the friend involved. We had a good, calm discussion about why I was upset/disappointed. I feel much better about now if for no reason other than my friend understands why I've been mad and empathized with my concerns. It remains to be seen if the talk will change anything.

There have been other times in my past where I have gotten really upset with a friend for some reason (sometimes a very stupid reason) and I gave my typical cold shoulder reaction while I stubbornly waited for the other person to address the situation. Unfortunately, the normal result was a badly damaged or possibly a completely ruined friendship. My anger almost always passes over time, but my inability to talk frankly about the situation that made me upset has occasionally cost the friendship in the process. I am really glad that I sucked it up and had this talk with my friend recently so that I did not repeat past mistakes.