The Validity of Anger
Right now, at the outset, I would like to make an important distinction between, on one hand, a healing emotion, anger, and on the other hand, a destructive force I call rage and a destructive style I call negativity.
When most people speak of ‘anger problems,’ ‘anger management,’ or fearing someone’s anger, they are speaking about rage. Rage is a destructive action. It is intended to hurt, actually break someone or something. It is also blind and the attack is often against an innocent helpless person or child. We speak of a person being ‘in a blind rage,’ or being ‘blind with rage.’ Rage is also explosive, which means that it cannot be controlled once it blows. One can contain anger but not rage.
The fundamental difference is in the autonomic nervous system. Rage results from impulse of self-protection being forced through the 'fight-or-flight system, that is mediated with the sympathetic nervous system. Anger, on the other hand, is mediated by the ventro-vagal 'social receptivity' system, part of the parasympathetic nervous system.
Negativity is a tendency toward criticism, sarcasm, and judgment, sometimes delivered in a hostile manner but without any real emotion. Negativity is a defense against anxiety and unwanted emotion. Expressing negativity, however, is not satisfying, not healing, and damaging to relationships. Negativity often covers up an inability to act assertively. Negativity can also be a means to avoid real disappointment and hurt, by anticipating it in advance, like a broken clock. Willingness to bring up an uncomfortable issue is not negativity.
Anger is commonly confused with a loss of control. It is rage, however, that results in lack of control. Anger may be disorganizing if anger has never been allowed in a life. It may be beneficial to work with anger first in a controlled setting like therapy. Anger, when a person is ready to own it, often spurs actions that positively 'take control' of a life or situation.
Anger is also confused with the desire or actuality of punishing someone. Putting aside all dubious arguments of whether it can beneficially change behavior, the act of punishment, is not the logical result of anger but an attempt to be rid of anger (or more likely, painful rage). In fact violence, including verbal violence, arises from either rage, or a need to quickly as possible discard strong feelings we cannot yet tolerate.
Similarly, anger is confused with blame. Blame is placing the responsibility for one's actions and feelings on another person. Anger does not transfer responsibility to the target. Blame also functions as an attempt to punish.
Loss of control, punishing actions, and blame all have to do with the intense other-focus of rage. Anger, on the other hand, brings a self-focus. Self-focus means an awareness of our feelings, our desires, our needs, and our foundation. Others do not get the worst of it when we are able to self-focus. On the contrary, the other- focus of rage dehumanizes others into perceived monsters. Anger humanizes others.
Anger is not shouting or screaming. Rather these effects on the voice are from rage and fear, which tighten the throat.. True anger deepens the voice slightly, and adds a resonance which draws attention to itself and leads others to take the communication seriously.
Anger is also confused with 'establishing the moral high-ground'. Many only feel they can express upset and protest when someone has done something 'morally' wrong. It is taking a victim role, and expecting that role to compel the other person. That is, they can get angry against someone, but not angry for themselves. This leads to negativity and critical attitude that attempts to make personal interests, which are legitimate, into moral law, which they are not. This is focusing on faults and not solutions. Moreover, there is a loss of self-focus.
Anger is natural and good when a wrong has been done to oneself, to someone dear, or to someone vulnerable. But it is also necessary to distinguish righteous anger from 'self-righteous' (really 'ego-righteous') anger. The difference is whether the integrity of the person is threatened, or merely, the self-image. If the action or comments of another make us defensive as well as angry, it is likely the latter. Because it is the accurate observations and adult behavior of others that most often threatens these false self-mages, protective protests are self-defeating and misdirected. This does not, however, mean that anger is always inappropriate.
Irritable explosions may result when one waits too long to take care of oneself. For example, we want to leave to go somewhere but we are 'too polite' to interrupt, thinking we can wait it out. Resentment builds. It may explode, or the resentment is carried along to the next setting because it has built up in our body. Expressing anger at someone else is inappropriate here as the injury is self-inflicted. This is rarely the whole of the problem, but it is a part of 'anger-management'.
Many people accept the existence of anger, but strongly question the wisdom of its expression. That is, they have a hard time even imaging any positive effects from bringing it into their relationships. Cannot goals, even assertive goals, be achieved another way? Anger is not a tool to achieve goals. Cannot wrongs be addressed 'peacefully'? Anger is more than conveying the information of an injury. It is also more than registering a protest on ethical grounds. Anger is a biological process which restores vitality and interpersonal contact. A goal for many in this culture is to convey the most information with the least biological activation. That is a mistaken goal.
True anger is a natural response to injury or intrusion. The motives of others who injure or intrude may vary quite a bit, but the response of anger is still natural, and just as healing. Many of us have trouble expressing anger toward good people or family. We may feel that anger is not 'justified' toward others who may have our best interests at heart. Anger, unlike punishments or other actions, is an emotion and does not require justification. When our ability to express anger is regained in relationships, others may perpetuate the confusion by acting like they have been punished. The key is not to try to achieve justification, but to achieve connection.
While anger is an emotion that informs and energizes action, it is never a justification for an action. Few of us have the ability to hold and experience anger calmly enough to allow anger to participate in a humane but honest response. . Anger doesn’t keep well—when denied it turns into buried or partly buried rage, and resentment.
An inability to express anger contributes to an inability to express love. Anger is the trickiest interpersonal tool available, no doubt about it. Every child quickly learns that some people cannot accept their anger. Perhaps it will be all the people in their lives. Since anger is involuntary, the child comes to see him- or herself as unacceptable. One seeming way out of this dilemma is to become ‘nice.’
Niceness is no substitute for love, and in fact, it usually gets in the way of love. Niceness is based on withholding true feeling, and while that makes sense with strangers, and in casual or business relationships, it is disastrous if used extensively in close relationships. Niceness covers up anger a lot more poorly than people think. The anger comes out in distorted form, such as withholding, negativity, passive aggression, resentment, righteousness, and playing a victim role.
There is a saying about detoxifying the effects of unprocessed anger: "Claim it, tame it. aim it."
- Claiming means accepting the legitimacy of one's self-protective impulses and recognizing the effects of anger stirring somewhere in the body and in the self. Describing injuries and injustices one has experienced may be legitimate but this is not claiming anger. There is a mistaken cultural norm to try to fix all things without any anger. Anger, however, when appropriate, is necessary for healing and self-building.
- Taming means shifting the self-protective impulses from the sympathetic or rage system to the ventral-vagal or social engagement system. This usually means some bodywork. Taming also means developing the capacity to hold anger long enough to shape it into a humane response.
- Aiming means channeling the energy of anger through the social engagement system to remove the cause for the anger. It is movement toward a constructive goal. 'Stewing' with anger is not aiming! Perhaps aiming will include protest, but complaining in a way that makes it clear that the complainer is not prepared to participate in a solution is called whining, and this is also not aiming.