When most people hear the word anger, they think of something to suppress, something to control, something to be ashamed of.
I used to think that too.
Then I served in the United States Army. I deployed to Operation Joint Endeavor in 1996 and Operation Noble Eagle in 2003. I came home. And I kept carrying things I didn’t know how to put down.
I am a veteran who lives with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There were times when PTSD managed me instead of the other way around. Times when I felt lost, without information, without hope, without tools. Times when the anger that lived inside me felt like the enemy — something to fight, something to push down, something to “suck it up” about.
That is what we are taught, isn’t it? In the Army, when you are ordered to do something questionable, you learn to suck it up. In life, when something bothers you, you are told to suppress it. Smile. Move on. Be strong.
But here is what nobody tells you: suppressed anger does not disappear. It waits.
The Day Everything Changed
One day I decided the time of me being helpless was over.
I needed to find a battle plan. And if there was one thing that helped me begin to understand PTSD, it was understanding my anger — not as an enemy, but as information.
When people refer to anger, they treat it like something to be defeated. Yet the approach that helped me most was making my anger my best friend.
Think about what a best friend does. A best friend tells you the truth when nobody else will. A best friend shows up when something is wrong. A best friend is trying to get your attention because something matters.
That is exactly what anger does.
Anger is not the problem. Anger is the signal. It is your body, your mind, your spirit trying to tell you that something needs attention — a boundary that was crossed, a wound that was never healed, a need that was never met.
When you start treating your anger like your best friend instead of your enemy, something remarkable happens.
It ceases to be scary.
What This Means Practically
Treating anger as a best friend does not mean letting it run wild. It does not mean losing your cool, damaging relationships or acting out of control.
It means pausing when anger shows up and asking: What are you trying to tell me?
It means getting curious instead of reactive.
It means recognizing that the single most effective strategy through any difficult situation is to pause. When you are out of your comfort zone, when things feel out of control, when the anger rises — the strategy is to pause. Just a few seconds or a few hours. Because it is likely that the tactics your anger is triggering are not the best ones available to you in that moment.
When you are out of the situation, that is when you can access your full self.
Why This Matters for Veterans
Anger is almost always a component in any issue related to mental health. We are taught to repress and suppress those feelings when something bothers us. In the Army especially, you learn to contain, to perform, to push through.
But that containment comes at a cost.
When you transition out of service — at the end of your contract, during retirement, when circumstances change — anger always seems to follow. It shows up in relationships, in workplaces, in quiet moments when there is nothing left to distract you.
The veterans I work with are some of the strongest, most disciplined, most resilient people I have ever met. And the ones who find the most peace are not the ones who conquered their anger.
They are the ones who learned to listen to it.
Hard Love
This is what I call hard love.
Hard love is not soft. It is not vague. It does not tell you what you want to hear. It tells you what you need to hear — delivered with care, with respect, and with the absolute belief that you have the capacity to handle it.
Hard love says: your anger is valid AND it is trying to tell you something. Your pain is real AND you have the power to transform it. Where you are right now is not where you have to stay.
Every person has the capacity to transform — even in their darkest moments — when they learn to lead with self-love and personal accountability.
That includes you.
Ready to Start the Conversation?
If this resonated with you — if you are a veteran, a survivor, or simply someone carrying more than you should have to carry alone — I want to hear from you.
This is exactly the work we do at 19SeventySix Coaching. Not easy work. Real work. Hard love work.
Rev. Bernice “Doc Bunny” Sykes, Ph.D. is a U.S. Army veteran, holistic life coach, and contributing author to The Resilient Warrior: Battle-Tested Life Hacks for Military Men & Women (Hatherleigh Press). She is the Founder & CEO of 19SeventySix Coaching, based in Las Vegas, Nevada.