Grrr… All About Anger

We have a love-hate relationship with anger.

I say we have a love-hate relationship with anger because we know it’s terrible for our bodies. We know it’s terrible for our mental health. It causes destruction of families, relationships, careers, people, and property. It leaves us stuck and stewing.

With all that, you’d think people would try to avoid and limit anger like the destructive force that it is. But anger is the one negative emotion people cling to the most. We feel righteous indignation, we feel justified, we feel correct. We want other people to acknowledge that they are wrong and we are right. We want redemption. This is the love part.

I have seen all of the above in my practice. Clients who come to see me specifically because anger has negatively impacted their lives will look to reduce the symptoms of anger using interventions like mindfulness or breathing. Or to talk about how to make better decisions in their lives so they don’t end up in situations where people anger them.

OK, these are all valid and appropriate goals. But they don’t prevent anger because they don’t get to the root of what causes anger. They are, in essence, a band-aid for the symptom of anger.

I’m going to tell you now what causes anger and all of its relatives, like resentment and contempt, to name a few.

I’m prefacing this because there might be a little pushback. This happens because the drive to feel justified in your rightness is strong.

The reason that we get angry is because we think that another person should have acted in a way that’s different than how they did. Like how we believe they should act. In accordance with our beliefs or morals or whatever. 

When the only truth is that we wanted them to act in a different way. We wanted them to act morally, or correctly, or lawfully, or nice or kind or however we think we'd have acted.  

There is absolutely no evidence that proves another person should behave that way, and there is all the evidence that we just wanted them to.

If we understand that we only wanted something, we end up with appropriate emotions like sadness or disappointment.

These are negative emotions, but they're healthy. They don't lead to stuckness or rage spirals. They allow us to move on and accept that although we want people to act in a way that we think is obviously right, sometimes they don’t and they don’t have to.

Picture yourself responding to a recent situation where you were angry and see if you would’ve had that more realistic perspective…would your feelings have been different?