Blowing off a little steam can be good for you, but, like most things, it's a question of how much, how often, writes Elaine Edwards
There's something totally unedifying about "throwing a wobbly" in public. What's the point of losing the rag with a shop assistant, of shouting at your kids in public or roaring at another driver for cutting across you? (And "he can't hear you anyway", according to this writer's reliable sources.)
But sometimes it just makes you feel better.
Anger on a day-to-day level appears to be on the rise due to the general hassle, congestion and time pressures that people find themselves under, according to psychologist Marie Murray.
But when it becomes more habitual, more explosive, more unpredictable and, worse, more violent, we may need to do something about it.
Celebrity tantrums are something most people will have had a passing laugh at in the tabloids - Russell Crowe throwing a phone, Sean Penn punching a photographer or Naomi Campbell in full "supermodel strop" mode.
Yet it's not only celebrity strops we read about anymore - court cases over so-called road rage, assault and rows between neighbours over silly stuff also seem to be more common. For the Joe and Joan Soaps among us, anger just isn't funny anymore.
Zita Radmall-Quirke, psychiatrist at the St John of God Hospital, Stillorgan, Co Dublin, says anger is a normal emotion which, like anything else, runs on a continuum "from zero to 10".
"There is some point along the way where it changes from being a mobilising, healthy emotion - some of our best work is done when we're furious about things - to one where it's likely to cause damage or harm to myself or to others," she says.
"At what point that comes is probably different for different people. Very often, I would say generally that anger is associated with a perception of injustice, that in some way I believe an injustice has been perpetrated upon me because of my life circumstances, because of something immediate, because of the way I am, the way I was born or whatever.
"So it can go way back to origins or it can be something that's more recent.
"Then you have a continuum of people who express it and people who don't express it. That's a huge area. Some people will internalise it - some people can take on everything and appear to be like sponges but they are the ones very often where there's a 'straw that breaks the camel's back' that it is expressed in huge hostility and output."
Radmall-Quirk suggests that anger issues are very often attached to low self-esteem.
"If you are able to manage other aspects of your life and other emotions, you are more likely to be able to manage anger and that can be that you are able to express the small hurts along the way or the small senses of injustice and so on and deal with them rather than letting them build up. Somebody with low self-esteem will either blow up about everything or they won't feel that they have the right to express anything."
She says one has to ask whether going down the "anger" road is going to resolve the perceived injustice or hurt, or whether it will simply help build up "a snowball" of resentment.
Help can often come in the form of friends who will pull up the angry individual on his or her behaviour, but it doesn't always come from partners who have lived with it for years.
Sometimes, alcohol-related problems or a major life event such as a separation or divorce can be that final straw, says the psychiatrist.
She suggests that anyone wishing to seek help should initially approach a GP, who will direct them to local services.
"I would say what services are available locally are generally best. Very often people living in the country think the best services are in Dublin and in my opinion that puts more stress on the individual."
The bad news is there can be a long waiting list for therapy, because of a shortage of professionally qualified therapists on whom other medical professionals rely.
A recent seminar on stress and anger management in Dublin attracted mainly women aged between about 35 and 60, with a few middle-aged men thrown in. But then, the event fell on the night of a crucial Ireland World Cup qualifier match.
Gael Lindenfield, whose 19 self-help books have been translated into 28 languages, is a psychotherapist specialising in what she calls "confidence building, assertive communication and the management of feelings".
Her seminars, which involve some element of "sharing" with the strangers who have paid €45 for the two-hour session in a cramped room on Stephen's Green in Dublin, will not suit everyone.
But her method will certainly get anyone with anger issues to think about their day-to-day niggles and about logical, sensible ways of dealing with them.
And her own life experiences will also ensure that no one walks away from her seminars thinking that their own problems are insurmountable.
Lindenfield, who originally trained as a psychiatric social worker and psychotherapist, overcame severe depression, a traumatic childhood spent in a series of children's homes, the early death of her mother who was an alcoholic, a divorce, and the tragic death of her 19-year-old daughter nine years ago.
Perhaps reassuringly for some at the seminar, she says that anger can actually be a positive emotion, something that can help us to "get things done", a force that helps people to feel injustice and to do something about it.
Anger, she writes, provides vital boosts of both physical and emotional energy, "just when we are most in need of either protection or healing".
Lindenfield's methods of dealing with the things that cause us to get angry include, for example, simple common-sense deep breathing exercises.
She also suggests taking a step back and earthing oneself to the floor or clinging on to a table top for "grounding" when one feels anger building in a face-to-face situation.
The self-help book method won't work for everyone, especially for those too far gone in their anger to benefit from advice that might almost seem self-evident to others. But Zita Radmall-Quirke says that even taking the step to buy a self-help book or to look up a website is an acknowledgement that something is wrong and that this is the time to take action.