How to Control Your Anger

WHAT IS THIS FEELING CALLED ANGER?

When we say we are angry, what does it mean? What is anger?

Psychologist Charles Spielberger, PhD, (a specialist in the study of anger) defines anger as an emotional state which ranges from mild irritation to extreme rage. It would be nice if, by blowing our top, it would end there. But how many families have had to endure the after-effects of road rage, when the family breadwinner comes home ill-tempered and ready to lambast the first person who speaks to him?

Perhaps you are that breadwinner, or have a family member who is prone to such outbursts – at any rate, you will agree that it is highly unpleasant no matter who does it. You wish you could do away with it.

According to Carol and Richard Eustice, anger can fall into three categories: rage, resentment and indignation.

Anger that is brutal and out of control is classified as rage. As an external expression of the emotion, rage may produce a tangible and violent outburst. Road rage falls into this category.

When you feel anger against someone or something but do not express it, the anger is deemed to be resentment. This type of anger makes the angry person uncomfortable as the anger is suppressed yet not extinguished. This may end up harming the angry person physiologically and psychologically.

An acceptable kind of anger which is considered both controlled and positive is called indignation. With this type of anger, the angry person calmly expresses disappointment with the situation or person but does not resort to angry outbursts.

These 3 kinds of anger may be experienced individually or in combination, depending on the circumstances present. When you understand what each kind of anger is, you may be able to better manage those situations that cause such feelings.

What are the Effects of Anger on Ourselves?

Most of the time, it is normal (even healthy) to have this emotion. However, when you allow anger to take control of you, it becomes a destructive force which may eventually produce problems for you in your social life, at work, and for your quality of life. If you find that you are becoming a person who is chronically angry, you will notice that people will tend to avoid you more. You become an unpleasant force to deal with and perhaps eventually no one will want to interact with you anymore.

But it is not all your fault – the types of feelings you have are often influenced by how people relate to you, not just by how you relate to others. As it says in this love song, “Love is a two-way street.” Well, so is anger, if you really think about it. If someone gets angry with you, your natural response is to become defensive. (However, you have a choice as to how to express that kind of anger.)

When you get angry, you will find yourself experiencing a range of physiological and biological changes. Your heart rate and blood pressure will increase. Your energy hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline) will also shoot up. Your muscles become tense. You become short of breath and may get heart palpitations. Your senses are heightened (though sometimes they are dulled.) Often, there is yelling; vigorous and larger-than-life body movement; and stiffness of posture.

In some people there may be constipation and even impotence. Other physical signs of anger are: contraction of pupils; higher levels of physical strength; quicker and more powerful speech and motion.

Psychological signs of anger are: sleeplessness, apathy, anxiety, depression, malaise, condemnation and judgmentalism of others, self-loathing, low self-esteem, insecurity, jealousy, envy, resentment or bitterness, passive-aggressive behavior, silence, irritation, and criticism. On the emotional side, when we become angry, we suffer afterwards from the feeling that we are guilty, failures, depressed, very agitated, and severely enraged. Some might attempt suicide. And of course, we know now that there is a direct link between people who are chronically angry and the onset of hypertension and heart disease in such people.

What Causes Anger?

Events which occur either within or outside ourselves may trigger an outburst of anger. In our example above, the anger we and others may have experienced was caused by an external event – a traffic jam. An internal trigger of anger could be a personal problem which we find hard to resolve. Or perhaps you were brooding over past events which had caused you to become angry before. External and internal events may occur in combination, thus making it harder to control our anger.

According to the cognitive behavior theory, anger may also be partly caused by behavior taught by other people, genetic predilections, and the absence of the capacity to solve problems. There are two factors at play here: people who tend towards anger may have an irrational view of reality (meaning, they think the world has to see things their way) and a low level of frustration (meaning, they either have to get what they want or nothing at all.) Angry people more often than not believe their response was caused by a person or event – it is rare for them to acknowledge that they became angry due to their irrational view of reality. This means that angry people perceive the world a certain way, with definite expectations of reality – when the reality of the real world kicks in and it does not match their perception and expectations, then they resort to anger.

When do we need to be angry?

You might be asking yourself: when is it okay to become angry? Or perhaps: when should I express my anger? Normally, we react in an aggressive fashion as our instinctive and natural expression of anger. You have to understand that anger is an emotion which we rely on when threatened. It spurs us to act to save our skins. So, when our survival is at stake, expressing your anger may be required to a certain extent.

For example, we could be caught in a traffic jam and then someone blows his top. If the person were to jump from his car and head ranting and raving in your direction, your first reaction would be fear, then you would get angry yourself: I’m caught in the same traffic jam, I’m hot and bothered too - why is this guy after ME? Your choice then would be to either flee or face the angry individual. Either way, your sole concern would be your safety at the moment.

Or perhaps your car overturned and you need to get out fast. By getting angry, we trigger a range of physiological responses that allow us to produce the energy that will help us find our way out of the wrecked car before it explodes. There have also been reports of people who have been able to lift significantly heavy objects during moments of crises – only to find out when they have calmed down that they could not lift the same objects at all. It is all part of the flight-or-fight response.

Getting angry may not be as dramatic as a car wreck. There is such a thing as righteous anger – religious people would probably be familiar with this, especially followers of Christianity. This is the type of anger which allows you to be indignant when you hear about or witness an event which goes against your values. Righteous anger allows the angry person to become a catalyst for change. You could be at a supermarket and see an adult physically abusing a child – your
righteous anger would help you to speak out and ask the adult not to do that.

On a broader scale, we have seen examples of righteous anger when the Blacks in South Africa fought against apartheid. Without righteous anger, people would be apathetic and be too afraid to speak out against wrongs. With this kind of anger, individuals are able to initiate changes in their society.

Another time that anger can be a positive emotion would be when we are in a situation that severely threatens us. As we mentioned, teenagers have lately been murdering schoolmates and teachers (an example being the recent killings of 32 people at Virginia Tech in the USA) – if you were one of the potential victims and a gun was pointed at your head, you might have gotten angry yourself. It may not have been an overt type of anger where you would yell and punch someone, but you would probably have felt hostile emotions towards the kid with the gun. In this case, that type of anger would be positive since it allows us to stay on our toes and look for the next available exit, when possible. Without anger, we would probably be passive and miss out on an opportunity to escape. Or we could use our anger to tackle the teen with the gun and disarm him.

When Does Anger Become a Negative Emotion?

Anger is considered a negative emotion when we become angry every single time someone or something bothers us. Fortunately, we have laws, social norms and our own good common sense to restrict our expressions of anger. But there are times when someone needs to physically step in and stop us before we wind up hurting ourselves or someone else. A good example of this is the epidemic of murders in schools by gun-wielding teenagers who have anger issues – perhaps they were picked on too much by their schoolmates, perhaps they felt lonely and wanted someone to pay attention to them, or perhaps they just liked the power that anger gives. Whatever may have caused them to shoot their teachers and classmates, it may have been possible that someone could have foreseen what was going to happen by identifying which teenagers were angry.

Anger also becomes a negative emotion when we use it to manipulate others into doing what we want. When an angry teenager picks up a gun and threatens his schoolmates with it, it is usually because he wants something to be done or happen his way. In reality, such a person probably feels unloved or unwanted but wants to belong to the group at large. For example, some of the teenage shooters in the US were heckled by their schoolmates, thus making them feel left out and ostracized. They were right to feel hurt but chose the wrong way to resolve their situation.

Some people are known to use anger to their own advantage so, in a sense, they “need” anger for their own purposes. Have you ever seen a toddler throwing a tantrum? Well, tantrums are not confined to just children – even adults have been known to throw tantrums just to get what they want. Road rage may be perceived as a temper tantrum because the person displaying road rage wants to get his own way at the expense of other people. Just as children need to be taught that tantrums will get them nowhere (if the parent has the willpower to do so,) so must a person using road rage to get ahead be taught that he cannot take advantage of other people that way.

Another reason anger can be considered a negative influence on us is that, since we only have a limited amount of life energy, people who spend most of their time being angry are actually pouring their life energy into the effort of staying angry rather than funneling it into more positive endeavors. This is the reason there are people who are able to accomplish more in their lives, who have acquired peace of mind, and there are people who fail to do so.

(The above article is from the Audio/eBook: "Ripping Loose or Calming Down: A Guide to Anger Management" You can learn more here.

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