Since anger is such a prevalent emotion in our high-stress societies, we tend to take it for granted. We even consider it a healthy release of pent-up emotions. Yet, at its extreme, anger can kill you or someone else.

When you are angry, adrenaline floods your body, thus stressing all your bodily functions to the maximum. Biologically, this is an emergency situation. It may have saved your ancestors by impelling them to use a club to ward off a charging saber-tooth tiger. And in a war-zone, it might be useful, too. But, as an aspect of daily life, it is a sure way to ruin the smooth functioning of your metabolism.

When you further consider how your blood pressure rises as well, you are talking coronary heart-failure as well.

Anger is deadly. And when it is expressed towards others, can quickly escalate into homicide. In fact, most cases of murder are due to an uncontrollable resentment toward someone else.

Even unexpressed anger has lethal side effects. It can escalate into all sorts of worse mental aberrations and unpleasant life experiences.

Anger, expressed or unexpressed, can ruin your life. It can kill you or someone else. It is not something that you should mistake for a mere character flaw.

Even at lower levels of hostility, anger can cause major upsets. It can ruin your mental and physical health over time, and it definitely ruins all your relationships. Eventually, it can even hurt you financially, create substance abuse, or involve you in a deadly accident.

Anger is nothing short of a brief insanity. After your rage has passed, you are looking at some form of devastation. During your episode of anger, you literally lost your mind—your bodily sensations completely overwhelmed any sense of intelligence.

We laugh when we watch movies like “Anger Management.” Yet the final joke may be on us if we permit anger to control us. Unless we take care of our anger it is going to ruin our lives.

Anger, like suicidal depression, is a mental illness. It is a brief loss of reason, an overwhelming desire to strike out and hurt someone, a manic lust for revenge at any cost. Like any mental illness, it needs immediate attention.

If one is subjected to uncontrollable bursts of rage, then this needs professional intervention. A professional healer will help you identify and remove the traumatic conditions that have upset you. Some of them may be so deep-rooted that you are even unconscious about them.

If anger is merely due to high-levels of stress, anxiety, and frustration, then a course of stress-relief is necessary. There are many books on how to reduce your stress through such simple measures as taking walks, having hot baths, getting a massage, doing deep breathing, visualization, exercising, listening to soothing music, or taking on some form of spiritual practice.

It takes a great deal of effort to build anything—a business, a relationship, or a life—but it takes a few outbursts of anger to have everything collapse into ruin. Can you really afford to take for granted an emotion that can result in either utter failure or death? Saleem Rana