I am sure that if you asked a group of respectable people if they got angry, many of them would deny that they did. Although working class males are allowed to be angry, middle class males tend to want to avoid it, and it is certainly an emotion that society frowns on in women.
Despite this denial, anger is more universal than we may want to think. Anger is a universal emotion that has been hard-wired into us - one of those emotions that has helped us survive by preparing our bodies better for fight or flight (the quickening heart rate, the increase of blood supply to essential organs, the increase in adrenalin).
Anger is just a normal, healthy emotion in response to some kind of interruption or threat. We are angered by annoyances (the partner who devours food noisily), by transgressions (the crossing of a line somewhere, the breaking of an implicit taboo), and by costs or perceived costs (an action which may hurt us in some way). The teenager who leaves her bedroom in a mess is probably breaking a rule that we have about how children should behave in respectable households, and possibly costing us some effort to ensure that it is cleaned up.
People think they aren’t angry sometimes because 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, which is just anger expressed in a damaging way.
However, I have become interested recently in the inhibitors that we place on anger. Anger appears in our feelings and then almost immediately we sometimes have a set of cognitive pillows that leap on the feeling in an attempt to stifle it. We have sets of beliefs - many of them unhelpful and untrue - which stop us from being healthy and authentic.
I have already mentioned one of them. “I cannot be angry because being angry always has to mean being violent and loud (that is what my childhood taught me) and I don’t want that so I won’t be angry.” This is just a distortion of the truth and unhelpful. Here are some more:
I must not be angry because I mistakenly believe:
- Anger is morally bad.
- Anger is always impolite.
- My anger will get me into trouble.
- My anger will achieve nothing.
- There is only one way to be angry and that hasn’t done me any good in the past.
- My anger will inevitably make me look ridiculous.
I have become concinced that a key reason why many people want to suppress their anger is that they fear the cost of expressing it may be too great. Sometimes the cost may be real (the loss of a house and lifestyle following a divorce because you angrily confronted your partner about his or her adultery). However, very often, the fear of cost is based on a mistaken and unhelpful belief. To the above list of reasons for not getting angry I would want to add:
I must not be angry because I mistakenly believe:
- My anger will inevitably be out of control and I will automatically destroy someone I care about if I dare to express my true feelings and be authentic.
- My anger will inevitably cause everyone not to like me and I dare not risk that.
- My will inevitably upset the whole applecart and I know I will not be able to cope with that.
What beliefs stop you from expressing appropriate anger in an appropriate way? If you feel able to, do let me know. I would be very interested to hear.
Anger need not necessarily lead to violence in humans but I think that is because we have learned to control our violent reactions in order to live in society. That violence underlies anger is shown by the violent gestures (e.g. fist waving) that often accompany it.
This is one of the reasons, I think, why people fear anger: they are afraid they will “lose control” and become violent, even if they have never done so before. Can you honestly say that when you have become very angry with someone you have never at least daydreamed of punching him? I know I have even though I am sure I would never actually do it. When people become angry with inanimate objects they are less inhibited and often demonstrate the violence of anger by kicking or punching them, as in that classic scene in Fawlty Towers when Basil “thrashes” his car.
Opinions differ on how to deal with anger. When I went to assertive training lessons years ago, we were invited to punch cushions and advised to do so as a release for the emotions of anger. Other people say that even this is wrong as it reinforces the link between anger and violence and they instead advise deep breathing or other displacement activities (”Count to ten…”). Anger generates energy and the problem is how to dissipate that energy safely. Violent displays are one way of doing that.
I also think that different people get angry in different ways. Some people suppress the symptoms of their anger and maybe this is the “cold anger” of which you speak. I think this can lead to frustration and perhaps to a desire for calculated revenge. I would much rather shout and stamp and get over it. Usually I am laughing about it 5 minutes later.
I think it should always be borne in mind that in the throes of anger you feel completely justified but later, after mature reflection, you may come to realize you were in the wrong. In fact, I think anger often results from being caught in the wrong. Thus no one should accord himself privileged status just for getting angry.
If someone angers me, I try to decide whether showing anger will further my cause or obstruct it. The calculation is often hard to do, of course. These days, most organizations have a policy of protecting their staff from “abuse”. In these circumstances, showing anger is almost always a bad idea as it automatically puts you into the “abuser” category, whether this is fair or not, and places you in the wrong.
RREX posted this comment on the posting in a parallel blog and I have reproduced it here.
Cool article. I think you have a mature outlook on anger (anger is ok, rage isn’t). In my household there was plenty of manipulative behavior, physical abuse, and narssicism so my answers my be influenced.
What beliefs stop (or stopped) me from expressing appropriate anger in an appropriate way?
1)My feelings of anger are inaccurate. I can’t be sure whether a perceived threat or transgression is indeed such so I must not act (until after the fact where I regret not acting). I do not have as much of a struggle with this as part of being an adult is trusting ourselves.
2)Belief that if I get angry at an external stimuli, I am being too “sensitive” and need to learn to “deal with it.” My parents always told me this, so this belief is more of a “distortion” as it ties the emotion of anger to “weakness and sensitivity,” two words most males do not like to hear about themselves. Heavily induced belief #1 (”anger trigger is inappropriate:)!
3)My anger will cause me to lose my life, my safety, friendships, and status quo.
4)My anger will achieve nothing (not true).
5)My anger will inevitably make me look ridiculous.
-the rest does not answer your question, but are just my thoughts-
It is funny I stumbled upon your blog as this is an issue I consider a weakness. I always felt that anger is ok and justified, because rude, disrespectful, ingrateful, lying, jealous people should treat others with mutual respect but I somehow ended up being a confident loner with impossible standards for friends. What I mean by this is, sometimes we gotta grit our teeth and “deal with it”(my parents were right! OHMYGOSH!!).
I am more concerned with certain people who manipulate others through angering others (internet trolls, control freaks, narciscists, abusive jerky people in general) as they screw it up for the rest of us. I think in this case the phrase “what is easiest, to kill the cause, yourself, or your anger?” applies.