“Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you're doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.” ~ Joel Osteen
It is true. All you have to do is sign into Facebook and you are met with a newsfeed that is filled with people who are Angry, Outraged, and Upset about This, and That, and Those People. They tell us all about how the Offenders must be Lazy, or Ignorant, or Somehow Less than Everyone Else.
But now imagine what it would be like if each of those Facebook posts were written from the perspective of the “Other Guy.”
You know, the One who never goes to school functions - not because he is a Bad Parent, or because he Doesn’t Care - but because he is Ashamed of his second hand clothes and doesn’t want to Embarrass his kid.
Or the One on the highway who hasn’t cleared her car off completely - not because she is Lazy - but because the Abuse she suffered left her Unable to lift her arms over her head, and getting away from that abusive relationship left her too Broke to afford the car broom.
And the One who was So Rude in the convenience store - because she feels like her world is constantly falling apart, and she is Afraid.
Yes, there is plenty to be Angry about, if that is how you choose to feel. But now, I want you to imagine what would happen if - instead of letting that anger get the better of you - you could allow yourself to let that feeling of frustration slide off of you, to let it move through you without taking hold.
Would you be able to look past the actions of other people, and instead start looking for ways that you could help them? Would you be less stressed and more caring in your own circles? Would you experience less pain and fewer problems of your own?
Probably.
Let’s look at how Anger works.
You might be thinking to yourself, “But I am not an angry person. This doesn’t apply to me.” If you are thinking this, then I challenge you to keep reading, because Anger is not what you it is. It is not all about the yelling and the rage and the arguing. Anger is a defense, and we all have it. And just like anything else, it makes all the difference in the world what we do with it.
What is Anger?
Anger is a natural and mostly automatic response to either physical or emotional pain. The type of pain does not matter. We may not be consciously aware of the pain or what caused it. The important factor in causing anger is that the pain that we experience is unpleasant.
Anger can occur when people don't feel well, feel rejected, feel threatened or fearful, or experience some kind of loss. Since anger never occurs in isolation, meaning that it is always preceded by a feeling of pain, it is often characterized as a ''second hand'' emotion.
Anger, Thoughts, & Social Behavior
Pain all by itself is not enough to cause anger. Anger occurs when pain is combined with some other thought or influence that triggers the anger. Think about burning your hand on a hot stove. Touching the stove all by itself is not enough to burn your hand. But touching the stove when the heat is on creates a burn.
Many people are in a constant state of emotional pain, such as constant stress from an illness, a job, a relationship, or persistent anxiety and worry. Many more experience some kind of chronic physical pain due to illness or injury. When these feelings of pain are coupled with a triggering thought, that person is more likely to experience some anger.
There are many thoughts that can trigger anger. We are always interpreting the world around us, making personal assessments, assumptions, evaluations, and interpretations of situations. Sometimes those thoughts can make us believe that someone else is attempting, consciously or not, to hurt us either directly and intentionally or through some act of negligence or neglect.
In this sense, anger is a social emotion. You always have a target that you direct your anger to, even if that target is yourself. Feelings of pain, combined with anger-triggering thoughts motivate you to take action, face the perceived threats, and act to defend yourself by striking out against the target you think is causing your pain.
Anger Is A Substitute Emotion
Anger can also be a substitute emotion. Sometimes people make themselves angry, or allow themselves to feel angry so that they don't have to feel other difficult emotions. People change their feelings of pain into anger because it feels better to be angry than it does to be in pain. This changing of pain into anger may be done consciously or unconsciously.
Being angry instead of simply being in pain has a number of advantages. First of all, it is distracting. People in pain usually think most often about their pain. But angry people think about those other people who have caused hurt, offense, a threat, or pain. Angry people think of ways to get back at, to cause harm to, or to teach a lesson to those people that they believe have caused that pain. Part of the transmutation of pain into anger involves a shift in attention from self-focus to an outside focus.
This is how we use anger to temporarily protect us from having to recognize and deal with real painful feelings. Instead of processing your pain, you get to worry about getting back at the people you're angry with instead. Making yourself angry can help you to hide the reality that you find a situation frightening or that you feel vulnerable.
Not only does feeling angry provide a good smoke screen for your feelings of vulnerability, becoming angry also creates a feeling of righteousness, power, and moral superiority that is not present when someone is only experiencing pain. When you are angry, you are angry with a cause. "The people who have hurt me are wrong. They should be punished" is a common theme. That feeling of moral superiority can lead an angry person to lash out at other people who are seen as breaking some sort of rule.
Defining Anger
Whether or not someone's anger is a problem can be determined by whether or not other people agree with their anger, and feel that the actions they take in the name of their anger are justified.
Angry people almost always believe that their anger is justified. The conscious mind will even create justifications of the most irrational anger. But other people don't always agree. The way that society judges anger creates real consequences for the angry person.
An angry person may feel justified in committing an angry, aggressive action, but if a judge or jury of peers do not agree, that angry person may still go to jail. If a boss doesn't agree that anger expressed towards a customer is justified, a job may still be lost. If a spouse doesn't agree that anger was justified, a marriage may have problems.
Benefits and Costs of Anger: Social, Emotional, and Health
Whether justified or unjustified, the seductive feeling of righteousness associated with anger offers a powerful temporary boost to self-esteem.
It is more satisfying to feel angry than to acknowledge the painful feelings associated with vulnerability.
You can use anger to convert feelings of vulnerability and helplessness into feelings of control, power, and superiority.
Some people develop an subconscious habit of transforming almost all of their vulnerable feelings into anger so they can avoid having to deal with them.
The problem becomes that even when anger distracts you from the fact that you feel vulnerable, you still at some level feel vulnerable.
Anger cannot make pain disappear - it only distracts you from it.
Anger generally does not resolve or address the problems that made you feel fearful or vulnerable in the first place. In fact, it is much more likely to create new problems, including social and health issues.
Next week we will look more at the effects anger has on our health and relationships∎
Karen Gray is a Certified Hypnotist, a Registered Nurse, and the owner of Green Mountain Hypnosis in Lebanon, New Hampshire. For more information on how you can use hypnosis to change your life, you can visit www.greenmountainhypnosis.com, contact Karen at karengray@greenmountainhypnosis.com, or call (802) 566-0464.