What is anger?
Anger is not a ‘negative emotion’; it’s a cue created in the brain for a purpose: self-defence. Either for yourself or for your family or community.
The body creates the emotion of anger for a reason: in order to ensure that you are treated with respect, protected against exploitation, have your wishes taken seriously, or to cue you towards self-defence. Emotionally intelligent people do this constructively and well.
If emotions like anger are not released properly and are bottled up then periodic explosions of rage may be the result. This is what is really meant by problems of the kind treated in anger management courses.
Misusing anger
In therapy I notice that people who don’t manage anger well make three common mistakes:
- They bottle up anger and later on, once the pot is filled to boiling point, they explode in uncontrollable rage (which creates stress and damages your health)
- They express anger but don’t follow up and ensure that they get what they need (for example, you yell at your daughter for not keeping her room tidy but you don’t enforce the rule – so it happens all over again).
- When they express anger they shout, swear, call names, blame, scream and try to make the other person feel as bad as possible.
The reason for these mistakes is simply lack of education in emotional intelligence. We are told as children that anger is ‘bad’, ‘destructive’, ‘self-indulgent’, etc. So we aren’t given permission to explore the emotion in more depth. At the same time we watch the adults around us having tantrums and so we conclude that anger must, indeed, be an evil thing.
Expressing anger can be healthy
Anger is a ‘hot’ emotion. Meaning that most people feel it very powerfully; rising up and demanding fast expression. But that doesn’t mean your body wants you to go into a rage. What it means instead is that your body is warning you that something deeply important to you or the people around you is at stake, and you need to speak up quickly. Using communication techniques it is easy to learn how to channel your anger into words that get people listening to you and ensure that you actually get what you want.
Most approaches to anger management are fatally flawed through seeing anger as bad and something to be controlled and avoided. People with ‘anger management issues’ may be referred to psychobabble specialists like Dr Buddy Rydell as played in the film Anger Management who mix up anger with rage.
The study of emotionally intelligent approaches to anger suggests a different view.
Anger is good:
- It brings issues out into the open
- It gets you taken seriously
- It corrects poor behaviour
- It resolves grievances
- It initiates change in others
- It fights injustice (think Martin Luther King)
- It protects you from manipulators
- It helps you towards self-respect
- It maintains personal boundaries between you and others
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