“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”~ Thomas Kempis
Angry. Pissed off. Ticked off. Hacked off. Boiled over. All of these things are used to describe a person’s anger.
There are two kinds of basic emotions. Fear and love. Anger stems from fear, and not love.
Anger is an automatic response to ill treatment. It is the way a person indicates he or she will not tolerate certain types of behavior. It is a mechanism that we fire back in which an unpleasant stimulus is met with an unpleasant response.
Anger is an emotion related to one’s psychological interpretation of having been offended, wronged or denied and a tendency to undo that, commonly by retaliation.
But I feel that we can go deeper into this. It is my feeling that anger comes from the loss of control. Once we realize that we have lost control over something, anger is our way of responding to it to show that we find the result unsatisfactory.
Our body language commonly shows the signs of anger. Much like the wild beasts, we snarl and growl and give off facial expressions that allows others to know, we are not happy.
But I think that it is correct to say that it stems from fear. When something happens that we lost control over, we are fearing what could happen next because the end results are not going to be what we had expected it to be. We can no longer guide our destiny as we once were, and so we’re left with the outpouring of this particular part of emotion of fear, by expressing that we are really pissed off.
There are a lot of things that cause us to be angry, some of them include:
- Other drivers.
- Being placed on hold with a business or customer service, or being handed off from one person to the next, and spending all that time doing so.
- Our perception of other people’s activities and actions that we believe to be wrong.
I believe that it is very natural to be angry. However, I do think that there is a right and a wrong way to handle our negative emotional state.
Everybody has heard the phrase, “anger management”. Hollywood did a marvelous job in portraying a more funny side of it. But there are some people who would definitely be considered a good candidate for anger management in reality.
Being angry is done by choice. You choose to be angry. Those people who could most benefit from managing their anger have a problem with knowing when to stop being angry and they allow themselves to be in a cycle, rather than just going through the steps and motions of being angry. They repeat it over and over and over again.
This is how anger begins.
1. The Trigger. Something has caused us to become angry. Whether it be loss, or words, or actions or anything else that will “trigger” the emotion.
2. Internal Angry Reaction. At this point, you realize that something is different and that it is unpleasant.
3. Internal Intensification. The point in time in which your body begins to justify its emotions, most of the time people with anger problems justify their anger improperly based on false assumptions. Internally, there is an onset of chemical release, and such things as your heart rate and breathing increase dramatically.
4. External Barrier Break. The more obvious signs of anger that others can clearly identify. Such as screaming, shouting, crying, gesturing, and fist pumping.
5. Explosive Peak. This stage is prone towards the violent and physical side of expressing anger. Dangerous to oneself and others. This is also the stage in which people may react verbally, and ultimately say something that they did not mean.
6. Exhaustion and Withdrawal. The emotion of anger, or at least the majority of it
7. Remorse and Apology — or – Intense Justification. The final stage of anger. The realization that someone might have said something that they didn’t mean, and now they are feeling remorse and regret. Those who realize their errors use this time to apologize for their outburst.
8. Repeat. For many of us who do not have issue with anger problems, this stage doesn’t always apply. Those who do, always hit this stage and return swiftly back to number one.
Breaking the anger cycle begins with developing awareness of your personal triggers and identifying opportunities to change your reactions. If anger is a choice, then we should probably take note to our triggers. And if again those triggers come up, we might find the strength within us to attempt to deal with it in another way, rather than anger. It is not always easy to do that though.
I still believe that anger is a natural human response, even if it is a choice. Expressing anger is far better than suppressing it. Studies show that women live on an average of 10 years longer than men. And it could be related to the fact that women have an easier time expressing anger than men. But I can’t say that is for sure.
Life has never been designed for control. We are not supposed to be puppets on a string. We would absolutely hate it if we were. Just think about whether or not YOU would want to be pulled around by strings, I doubt that you would.
So then when we do lose control, we become angry. Never keep it bottled up inside of you. It only does so much damage to your body, both physically and mentally. Keep track of what is triggering your anger. Then move towards a Plan B, if you are your own cause for anger and frustration. Fix what needs to be fixed.
Remember, there is a difference between expressing your anger and taking it out on someone. Know what those lines are and stay away from causing yourself and your relationships so much harm and damage, and at the same time, allow your mental state to be clean and healthy. Deal with whatever it is you must deal with. Learn from mistakes if there are any, and press on in life.
Dambreaker 