Emotional Detective

The Wrecking Ball of Rage

Part two in a five-part series on Anger

What makes anger so powerful?  Of course, anger carries with it the impulse to attack, destroy, and retaliate.  While these hallmarks of anger are often allies to power, they are not the only reason for anger’s might.  Another, less obvious source of anger’s power is its ability to blind us, disabling the natural safeguards that might otherwise stop us from giving in to our angry or destructive impulses.

 

 

Intense anger temporarily detaches us from fear, empathy, and reason, leaving us in a primitive state that can be unpredictable and lawless.  If you think of your personality as the product of conflicting concerns and impulses,  one set of your needs can put the brakes on another set of your needs most of the time, to keep you in balance.   For example, your natural fear of danger usually stops you from taking unnecessary physical risks, while your compassion and need for others keeps you respectful, dampening your more primitive, selfish urges.  Understanding and reflection can counterbalance anger, but only to a point: when consumed by fury, we become “blind” to these concerns.  We lose our natural inhibitions, leaving us free to vent our anger like a baby, without concern for its appropriateness, or for its consequences. 

 

You can’t reason with someone who is overwhelmed by anger.  At such times, people tend to fall back on facile and simplistic notions.   Instead of thinking logically, they adopt mental short cuts.  Stereotypes and generalizations are readily accessible; reasoned reflection is not.  Likewise, in a state of rage, we look for a scapegoat - a single simple cause rather than appreciating complexity.  Road rage is a classic example of this, when people assault drivers or construction workers in response to frustration with traffic.    The woman in the video below is clearly out of control.  (If this video is not embedded in your email, click here and scroll down)

 

 

 

It is easy to blame someone nearby even when they are not the real source of our problem.   When we blame or attack a scapegoat for our frustrations, deep down we "kind of" know there are many other factors that contribute to our predicament - but this knowledge is out of our mental reach.   When our blood boils, we don’t care about complexity; our thinking automatically becomes less nuanced and more cloudy.  Worse still,  we are less able to control our impulses.

What can you do in advance to avoid swinging into a “blind rage”?

 

Avoiding Blind Rage

Although anger is useful for alerting us to problems, it certainly isn’t  “nice.”    And because most of us want to be “nice,” we tend to overlook early signs of our anger.  This strategy can backfire.   Ignoring anger leaves the causes of a frustrating situation unchanged, and lets anger build up, increasing the chances of  it snowballing into a blind rage that is unmanageable.   Pay attention to your anger before it accumulates, and try to make some changes before anger entirely takes the driver's seat.

Look back on your list of things that make you angry. 

• Are there triggers that are avoidable?  What can you do to avoid these situations in the first place?    Do you have the power to change the predictable course of these situations?  Keep in mind that changing your behavior will often trigger changes in others. 

• If triggers are unavoidable, can you find a way to accept these obstacles in your life? For instance, if you always see red when your partner is late, can you find a way to accept that this is one of his or her flaws and avoid letting lateness trigger feelings that may not really be congruent with your partner's intentions or feelings about you ?   You could try to make plans that accept that your partner tends to run late.  Acceptance of difficulties, coupled with a little forethought, can prevent anger from building into a boil.

• Can you understand the situations that trigger your anger from a different perspective, to help to diffuse your anger?   For example, why is your partner always late?  Does he or she suffer because of this problem in other circumstances?  Is his or her lateness a sign of disrespect to you, or a sign of his or her internal chaos?   Being able to think about triggers from different perspectives diminishes the raw power of anger.

• Can you take responsibility for part of the situations that make you so mad?  Sometimes a well-worn path to anger is one on which you chose to take the first step.  Can you see where you take the first step, or open the door to a known pattern of anger?

The longer your anger remains unacknowledged, the more likely it is to burst forth in an intense,  and potentially dangerous way.    Staying alert for psychological clues can help protect against the havoc wreaked by the wrecking ball of blind rage. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Misunderstood Anger

This is the first segment in a five-part series on Anger.    

These days, anger has acquired a bad rap.  Warnings about its dangers and downside  abound, while tips on how to manage this powerful emotion proliferate: “Never drive angry.”  “Don’t go to bed mad.”  “Just walk away.”

In my experience, anger can actually be very useful.  Feelings of anger – when used wisely – can increase your sense of power and motivate you to transform a bad situation.  Like all emotions, anger is triggered by a change relevent to your happiness, whether it is an external stressor or your very own thoughts.  Before learning to use your anger more effectively, you must understand where it comes from, and what it means.   

Most of us become angry when we are unexpectedly frustrated or blocked in the pursuit of a goal or desire: a wish for personal safety, a tempting financial reward, the longing for justice, or the hope of getting where we need to go.

 

The more important the expectation or goal is to you -- and the more “unjustified,” complete or surprising the obstruction -- the angrier you are likely to become when thwarted.   In this way, anger can be both an indicator and protector of those things in life to which you feel most entitled or needy.

The philosopher Robert Solomon believed that anger reflects a sense that the world has injured us and defied our expectations.   It follows then, that our personal expectations about how the world “is” or “should be” go a long way to determining what constitutes an anger-inducing offense.  So when your email goes down unexpectedly, you get angry because you expected to connect with someone else or meet a deadline.  Context is especially critical when it comes to anticipating and understanding anger.  Each of our three aspects (primitive, social and reasonable) has its own needs and expectations about how the world should be.   Each has its own specific anger triggers and responses, and here are just a few common ones.  

Primitive Frustrations: 
 

• Being blocked whether by failed technology, geting lost, or a missed opportunity  
• Craving physical relief and wanting food, sex, sleep or drugs  
• Feeling trapped by poor health, bad decisions, circumstances, obligations, an unfulfilling relationship  
• Feeling helpless against uncontrollable forces such as the government, weather, traffic, or your own limitations  
• Unexpected pain from stubbed toes, sudden illness or injury

Social Disappointments:

• Wanting help or cooperation and being met by ineptitude or rudeness (bad drivers, doctors, cell phone company employees)
• Expecting help or cooperation and having people steal credit or let you down at work
• Wanting love and being criticized, misunderstood, left out, judged, or lied to
• Desiring true friendship and finding friends filled with envy, indifference,  or competitiveness
• Disagreeing about key ideals, politics, aesthetics, or values

Affronts to Reason:

• Injustice poverty, prejudice, discrimination, or cruelty
• Universal problems like war, famine, waste, or pollution
• Ideological issues like politics, religion, or philosophy
• Existential concerns about life, religion, or meaning

When does anger pop in, uninvited, to your life?  And what is your anger protecting?

You probably experience and express your anger differently depending upon the context and particular concern.  Take a few moments to think about which specific circumstances consistently set you off.     Review the common triggers listed above and use them as a springboard to discover what makes you angry.   Take note of your anger, whether you hear it loud and clear, or as a whisper of annoyance, or as the silent din of a stifled rage in your mind.   Try to write down what gets you going even if is uncomfortable to admit; it will be useful to review your list later.

As you take note of which triggers reliably provoke your anger, think about what it is that leaves you feeling wronged. As you look over your list, ask yourself:

• Do physical difficulties, social dilemmas, or ideological issues set you off most frequently?  Or are you equally triggered by all aspects of your personality?
• When do you become most aggressive (not just angry) and impulsive? 
• What is your anger protecting? 
• Where did your expectations originate? 

Is there something you could work to accept -- or change -- that might reduce the potency or frequency of your rage?   Is there some way to go about putting things “right,” rather than just getting angry time and time again?   How can you use an understanding of your anger to plan your life, or change your expectations -- address the things that make you mad – before they arrive uninvited?

Getting to know your anger better – its roots, methods, and aims – can help you know when anger is likely to rear up.  And it will also tell you about your values.  It may even help you learn to get what you want -- before getting angry.