What’s the big deal with anger?

In base line terms, we all feel anger at some point in our lives. It’s a very natural emotion.

Some people feel anger more often than others, and it’s not uncommon to meet people who carry a ‘short fuse’, with a tendency to explode easily.

Probably a majority of people would agree that anger isn’t a healthy emotion to experience, and yet despite this, anger is an emotion we’re all going to inevitably feel. In terms of health, unresolved anger issues can cause heart strain, a weak immune system, digestion issues, muscle tension and poor sleep. It can lead to bad, impulsive choices, to hurting those we care about or can’t afford to upset, anxiety and depression. One of the main consequences that happens when your brain kicks into the attack or danger mode, is that it also triggers heightened cortisol levels in your blood stream, and as we now know all too well, consistent stress and cortisol can be quite literally a killer.

Not great, when you think about it really.

Some people would argue that expressed appropriately, anger can be justified and can be used in a positive way. A passage I once saw by Joy Mead wrote: ‘People who are angry at injustice are compassionate people’… ‘angry people’… ‘forced the end of slavery in the British empire’; ‘angry people’… ‘won the vote for women; angry people’… ‘brought an end to apartheid in South Africa’.

Be that as it may, anger causes significant problems for the people who carry it on a long-term basis.

Often anger in itself isn’t the problem. Sometimes anger can be seen as justified, sometimes not. There is often no neutral arbitrator or court of law to decide this. But whether the anger you feel is right or not, that’s not the issue. It’s what you do with your anger and how you express it that matters, which is why in counselling dealing with anger is labelled anger management. For those of us who have been on the receiving end of anger, we know how devastating and detrimental unchecked anger can be. And more so, if we were exposed to it as young children. Memories of anger moments in our childhood will linger on until adulthood.

Anyone who is on the receiving end of inappropriately-expressed anger, will find that their brain kicks into a primeval danger survival alert, which has been hardwired into us from a very long time ago. When the brain is triggered in this way, it stores the anger and conflict as a danger to remember. If you burn your finger by touching a hot iron your brain will record and remember the negative experience, so as not to repeat it. Experiencing aggressive and explosive anger works in a similar way same way and sadly, the brain likes to retain a hold of our negative experiences and those experiences can shape our emotions and the way we behave in future.

Anger doesn’t need to be explosive to be detrimental, those who tend to suppress their feelings can project their anger by tightening their lips, muttering to themselves, moving away or refusing to engage, keeping silent or talking in a passive-aggressive tone, being extremely cold in attitude. This will still impact negatively those on the receiving end of it and usually doesn’t lead to any positive change or progress. Neither does being angry and yet avoiding difficult conversations help. Usually, active, open and meaningful participation by both parties is needed to reach a resolution where there is reasonable cause for anger.

Meanwhile, many of those people who project anger in an aggressive way, maybe on a regular basis, are often unaware of how detrimental their loss of control can be on the people who are receiving it. This might be because they lack understanding and believe they are absolutely right and justified in expressing anger the way they do. Or maybe this way of expressing anger was what they saw and learnt as normal behaviour at home when they were growing up. Or maybe they simply struggle with self-control over their emotions. Quite often, those with uncontrolled anger will be surprised when in the aftermath their loved ones, or others around them, get upset with their behaviour and refuse to forget it.

People who feel and express anger might be right. The anger might well be justified. But it isn’t what we are angry about that becomes the major problem; it’s the way it’s voiced and expressed to other people.

So why do some people manage to express their anger in a calm, measured, rational way and others simply have to explode and let it out? It all comes down to how we manage and express our emotions. Anger will always exist, it just depends where on the Aggressive, Submissive, Assertive spectrum our emotions are wired to and which of those three ways we actively use to communicate anger in. There is always hope, because with the right techniques and help, a person who expresses emotions in an Aggressive manner can practice and change to the Assertive, equally the Submissive can change to the Assertive too.

Being Submissive with our anger doesn’t work, because when we are submissive, we internalise our anger and repress it. This means it festers within us to the detriment of our mental and physical wellbeing, and it can cause us a great deal of stress and anxiety. Being Aggressive and expressing anger in an uncontrolled way is also going to cause problems sooner or later with the people around you. Many people will quite simply not tolerate aggression. They might respond in kind, cut ties completely, or make a formal complaint. People don’t usually respond to aggressive communication in a proactive manner.

So really the best way to communicate anger is in an Assertive, calm, open and respectful manner. In general, people tend to listen and respond positively to anger which is rationally, calmly expressed. When those ‘danger / attack’ feelings of anxiety, fear and anger are absent, the point being expressed can be heard. There can be some very positive outcomes to expressing anger in this measured, assertive and respectful way.

If you are someone who feels anger often and is struggling to express anger appropriately, there are many tools you can use to work on your Assertive communication, many of them to do with CBT techniques. Sometimes, something as simple and basic as giving it time (maybe counting to twenty inside your head) before responding to what angers you, can change the whole dynamic and bring you back to your rational, calmer self before you speak. Removing yourself from the situation until you are in a calmer frame of mind, practising muscle relaxation techniques, doing meditation, moving your focus briefly to your breaths in and out, can all help steady the mind when anger is present.

Within a dynamic such as the work place, focusing on the objective and thinking through a rational argument will help. Taking the time to listen and understand the other person without jumping to conclusions, being open and responding in a selective way to the other party’s complaints (pick your battles), choosing the points that matter most to you without having to answer to every point being made, will also lead to a more positive outcome in a disagreement.

Counselling is also an invaluable part of anger management in enabling you to release and open up to the difficult emotions and situations you might be experiencing in your life, which might be in turn triggering your stress and anger. And counselling can also help in that it can identify where the pattern of expressing anger aggressively came from, or equally, why we might be so submissive with our angry emotions. It can delve into the past and look at where our basic assumptions about ourselves and other people comes from. Awareness is always the key to changing behaviour and situations.