For various personal and professional reasons I have been thinking and reading a lot about anger this month. I have been reminded that anger has many faces, and that it doesn’t always announce its arrival with complete honesty. It knows a trick or two and is a master of disguise.
A lot of people don’t like anger because they often confuse it with aggression. But in wanting to avoid anger, what a lot of people really mean is that they want to avoid aggression. Anger is just an emotional state aroused by particular cultural contexts, but aggression is particular verbal or physical action that is intended to harm or destroy. It is possible (and perfectly healthy) to be angry and to choose not to express that feeling in an aggressive way. Less intuitively, it is also possible to choose to be aggressive and not to feel anger - the clinical, dispassionate dropping of bombs during war, for example.
Most of us are very familiar with hot anger - the kind that calls itself anger, and if not held back, runs headlong into aggression and embraces it. Hot anger intrudes into another’s space; it points the finger; it tries to stare the other person out; it shouts; it is strident, or sarcastic, or condescending; it cuts with words, or hammers the table. Quite frankly, it is the kind of behaviour that as an ageing middle-class professional male, that I try to avoid at all costs.
However, just as I was beginning to feel relatively smug with myself, I was reminded about cold anger. Cold anger is much more tricky. If it does run towards aggression, it does so with much more cunning and guile. Cold anger can appear to be more restrained, but it can be equally painful to receive. Cold anger is silent and looks away; if it does speak it is often to criticize needlessly, or it carps and bitches behind a person’s back; it arrives late deliberately and tries to be as unco-operative as possible; it sneers under it’s breath. My experience of working with people who have suddenly had a partner walk out on them is that cold anger can be harder to bear than hot. If hot anger burns, cold tries to freeze people to death.
As I reflected on cold anger, a lot of it started to have a familiar ring. I started to recognise my own patterns of withdrawal from some people and of disruption in certain professional settings. I’m not talking melodrama here - not huffy walkouts - but I know how to be awkward when I choose to. Of course, we all need to say, “No,” on occasions and be able to voice protest and seek change. But there is a difference between doing it in an assertive, and vulnerable, and constructive way, and doing it in a cold angry way that is protective of me and destructive of others.
The good thing is that in recognising some of the cold anger behaviour, I have been able to recognise the anger, that up until then had been hidden. What exactly was it about this particular organisation that I was responding to with such hidden aggressive feeling? What exactly was I saying internally, “They mustn’t be like this!” about? Having identified that, I can now choose to work at adjusting my anger and at responding more constructively.
I had been working part-time as a volunteer for a particular charity that was rapidly losing my respect. The administration of the service by others that I delivered seemed to be very shabby. Paperwork got lost, phone call messages were sometimes not passed on, the systems for taking care of vulnerable people seemed to be leaking a lot. In response to this I never displayed hot anger to the manager or staff concerned, but constantly moaned about what was happening and made cutting remarks behind peoples’ backs. Internally I was not just saying, “I don’t want this to be like this.” I was tut-tutting with ’shoulds’ and ‘musts’. I was angry because I cared, and that anger was growing. Now that I have recognised that anger, I can choose to evaluate the behaviour in another way, and reduce the anger and my stress - “This happens in all organisations, particularly charities where people work for nothing or little pay and don’t always have the best of training or management. Chill out a bit!” And I can also plan how to work for constructive long-term change.
I can thoroughly recommend: Overcoming Anger and Irritability by William Davies.
See also:
I think that anger is a healthy emotion, but like you say there are right and wrong ways to express it. I’m normally not a person who gets angry, but getting angry (without aggression) has helped me achieve things in the past.
I agree with Becky. The survival of anger in the human population suggests to me that it has been selected for as a useful trait. Perhaps it was useful in protecting oneself, one’s family, one’s tribe, from enemies, both human and non-human.
As is often the case, “natural” emotions like anger can come into conflict with changing social mores, perhaps because when strangers live together, anger can be a disruptive and even dangerous reaction to events.
I think strong emotions either energize you or “take the wind out of your sails” and anger is an energizing emotion. If you can use it wisely, you can often achieve good results as Becky says.
I also agree with Becky…
[...] they think of anger only in terms of hot anger and don’t recognise the cold anger (see Blowing Hot and Cold). They also want to avoid anger because the confuse it with the violence and abuse of aggression, [...]
keep on the good work. you shaping the destinies of many. Email me more victorious teachings.