The ending of a relationship, the death of someone we love… this type of event can make anyone feel angry. We feel angry at the world and think “why did this have to happen to me? ” This type of anger is understandable since there are always going to be aspects of our lives that we cannot fully control. However that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek help and advice to manage your anger. 1. 2 Low self esteem If life has gone against you recently, you may be feeling angry because of it.
Even though some events may have been directly due to your own actions, it’s not always easy to see the pattern. For example, if you have lost your job you won’t need to ask yourself “Why am I so angry? ” But it could be that you consistently put in the lowest performance of everyone in your company, which is why you were chosen to go. Low self esteem can often lead to people feeling angry at the world and at their undesirable surroundings. 1. 3 Misinterpreting signals from others
Low self esteem can also lead to feeling suspicious of what others think of us. For example, someone may make an innocent comment that makes you feel angry, because you interpret that it was meant for you. This might be very far from being the truth but it can still result in feelings of anger, both at you and at them. So don’t think, “Why am I so angry? ” Instead, think about what you can do to resolve that anger. 1. 4 Stressful events There are innumerable events that can happen in our lives that can make us feel stressed.
And the more stressed we are, the more likely we are to put ourselves on what we call ‘a short fuse’. When this happens we can find ourselves blowing up at other people when we normally wouldn’t do so. In this case it is essential to find the root cause of our stress so that we don’t get angry and vent our frustrations quite so easily. B. Anger is an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong.
Anger can be a good thing. It can give you a way to express negative feelings, for example, or motivate you to find solutions to problems. But excessive anger can cause problems. Increased blood pressure and other physical changes associated with anger make it difficult to think straight and harm your physical and mental health. Anger is an emotion related to one’s psychological interpretation of having been offended, wronged or denied and a tendency to react through retaliation.
Shiela Videbeck describes anger as a normal emotion that involves a strong uncomfortable and emotional response to a perceived provocation. Raymond Novaco of UC Irvine, who since 1975 has published a plethora of literature on the subject, stratified anger into three modalities: cognitive (appraisals), somatic-affective (tension and agitations) and behavioral (withdrawal and antagonism) William DeFoore, an anger-management writer, described anger as a pressure cooker: we can only apply pressure against our anger for a certain amount of time until it explodes.
Anger may have physical correlates such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of adrenaline and noradrenalin Some view anger as part of the fight or flight brain response to the perceived threat of harm Anger becomes the predominant feeling behaviorally, cognitively, and physiologically when a person makes the conscious choice to take action to immediately stop the threatening behavior of another outside force. The English term originally comes from the term anger of Old Norse language Anger can have many physical and mental consequences.
Anger is a normal and natural human feeling, especially nowadays as life is really fast and we have a huge amount of information to accumulate (in comparison with our previous generations). The range of anger is rather wide: from a slight annoyance to impetuous fury. Anger can be quick and long, lasting for years in form of bitterness, vengeance or hate. Anger can lead to health issues like depression, high blood pressure, hearth diseases, stresses, alcohol dependence and obesity.
If you are anger- express it. The external expression of anger can be found in facial expressions, body language, physiological responses, and at times in public acts of aggression Humans and animals for example make loud sounds, attempt to look physically larger, bare their teeth, and stare. The behaviors associated with anger are designed to warn aggressors to stop their threatening behavior. Rarely does a physical altercation occur without the prior expression of anger by at least one of the participants.
While most of those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of “what has happened to them,” psychologists point out that an angry person can very well be mistaken because anger causes a loss in self-monitoring capacity and objective observability. Modern psychologists view anger as a primary, natural, and mature emotion experienced by virtually all humans at times, and as something that has functional value for survival. Anger can mobilize psychological resources for corrective action.
Uncontrolled anger can, however, negatively affect personal or social well-being while many philosophers and writers have warned against the spontaneous and uncontrolled fits of anger; there has been disagreement over the intrinsic value of anger. The issue of dealing with anger has been written about since the times of the earliest philosophers, but modern psychologists, in contrast to earlier writers, have also pointed out the possible harmful effects of suppressing anger. Displays of anger can be used as a manipulation strategy for social influence.
Three types of anger are recognized by psychologists: The first form of anger, named “hasty and sudden anger” by Joseph Butler, and 18th century English bishop, is connected to the impulse for self-preservation. It is shared between humans and non-human animals and occurs when tormented or trapped. The second type of anger is named “settled and deliberate” anger and is a reaction to perceived deliberate harm or unfair treatment by others. These two forms of anger are episodic. The third type of anger is called dispositional and is related more to character traits than to instincts or cognitions.
Irritability, sullenness and churlishness are examples of the last form of anger. Anger can potentially mobilize psychological resources and boost determination toward correction of wrong behaviors, promotion of social justice, communication of negative sentiment and redress of grievances. It can also facilitate patience. On the other hand, anger can be destructive when it does not find its appropriate outlet in expression. Anger, in its strong form, impairs one’s ability to process information and to exert cognitive control over their behavior. An angry person may lose is/her objectivity, empathy, prudence or thoughtfulness and may cause harm to others. There is a sharp distinction between anger and aggression (verbal or physical, direct or indirect) even though they mutually influence each other. While anger can activate aggression or increase its probability or intensity, it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for aggression. The words annoyance and rage are often imagined to be at opposite ends of an emotional continuum: mild irritation and annoyance at the low end and fury or murderous rage at the high end.
The two are inextricably linked in the English language with one referring to the other in most dictionary definitions. Recently, Sue Parker Hall has challenged this idea; she conceptualizes anger as a positive, pure and constructive emotion, that is always respectful of others; it is only ever used to protect the self on physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions in relationships. She argues that anger originates at age 18 months to 3 years to provide the motivation and energy for the individuation developmental stage whereby a child begins to separate from their careers and assert their differences.
Anger emerges at the same time as thinking is developing therefore it is always possible to access cognitive abilities and feel anger at the same time. Parker Hall proposes that it is not anger that is problematic but rage, a different phenomenon entirely; rage is conceptualized as a pre-verbal, pre-cognition, psychological defense mechanism which originates in earliest infancy as a response to the trauma experienced when the infant’s environment fails to meet their needs. Rage is construed as an attempt to summon help by an infant who experiences terror and whose very survival feels under threat.
The infant cannot manage the overwhelming emotions that are activated and need a caring other to attune to them, to accurately assess what their needs are, to comfort and soothe them. If they receive sufficient support in this way, infants eventually learn to process their own emotions. Rage problems are conceptualized as “the inability to process emotions or life’s experiences” either because the capacity to regulate emotion (Schore, 1994) has never been sufficiently developed or because it has been temporarily lost due to more recent trauma.
Rage is understood as “a whole load of different feelings trying to get out at once” (Harvey, 2004) or as raw, undifferentiated emotions, that spill out when another life event that cannot be processed, no matter how trivial, puts more stress on the organism than it can bear. Framing rage in this way has implications for working therapeutically with individuals with such difficulties.
If rage is accepted as a pre-verbal, pre-cognitive phenomenon (and sufferers describe it colloquially as “losing the plot”) then it follows that cognitive strategies, eliciting commitments to behave differently or educational programs (the most common forms of interventions in the UK presently) are contra-indicated. Parker Hall proposes an empathic therapeutic relationship to support clients to develop or recover their organism capacity (Rogers, 1951) to process their often multitude of traumas (unprocessed life events).
This approach is a critique of the dominant anger and rage interventions in the UK including probation, prison and psychology models, which she argues does not address rage at a deep enough level C. Causes of Anger According to Steplen (2000) is destructive. It can cause interpersonal difficulties such as; sleeping difficulties, palpitations, tension and headaches. Anger may also determine the difference between a promotion and a lost of job; according to Pennebater (1990), as cited in the book of feldman in 1999.
It can also determine the difference of broken relationship and the one that mends itself. This is very alarming because it can destroy your future and it can also hurt your feelings one’s feeling. Mayer said as cited in the book of Duffy (2001), that anger is also destructive in work place. When you are angry and you will spend your time arguing with your boss pr employees you exhibit temper. In addition, “suppressed anger is damaging to your relationships, your health and your peace of mind”. Says Hale Dwoskin, CEO and Director of training of Sedona Training Associates. It is like having a pressure cooker on a high flame with the pressure valve clogged. It will eventually explode causing damage to yourself and those you care about. ” Anger is such a damaging emotions that is left unchecked, it can lead to depression, Substance abused and other problems. Anger is also a form of stress, and stress is responsible for 75% to 90% of Americans’ doctor visits, according to the American institute for stress. It can seriously damage your health. For instant anger can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, Diabetes and high blood pressure.
It also decreases lung function and it may predict your risk of heart disease better than other traditional risk factors like high cholesterol, cigarette smoking and weight Anger can be caused by both external and internal events. You could be angry at a specific person (Such as a coworker or supervisor) or event (a traffic jam, a canceled flight), or your anger could be caused by worrying or brooding about your personal problems. Memories of traumatic or enraging events can also trigger angry feelings.
People feel angry when they sense that they or someone they care about has been offended, when they are certain about the nature and cause of the angering event, when they are certain someone else is responsible, and when they feel they can still influence the situation or cope with it. For instance, if a person’s car is damaged, they will feel angry if someone else did it (e. g. another driver rear-ended it), but will feel sadness instead if it was caused by situational forces (e. g. a hailstorm) or guilt and shame if they were personally responsible (e. g. he crashed into a wall out of momentary carelessness).
Usually, those who experience anger explain its arousal as a result of “what has happened to them” and in most cases the described provocations occur immediately before the anger experience. Such explanations confirm the illusion that anger has a discrete external cause. The angry person usually finds the cause of their anger in an intentional, personal, and controllable aspect of another person’s behavior. This explanation, however, is based on the intuitions of the angry person who experiences a loss in self-monitoring capacity and objective observability as a result of their emotion.
Anger can be of multi causal origin, some of which may be remote events, but people rarely find more than one cause for their anger. According to Novaco, “Anger experiences are embedded or nested within an environmental-temporal context. Disturbances that may not have involved anger at the outset leave residues that are not readily recognized but that operate as a lingering backdrop for focal provocations (of anger). “According to Encyclopedia Britannica, an internal infection can cause pain which in turn can activate anger. D. How to express your anger
Anger is only a problem when it’s openly expressed. Expressing anger does not have to be a problem. Anger can be expressed assertively in a very healthy and respectful way. It’s when a reaction is aggressive and beyond what a situation warrants that problems arise. Likewise, unacknowledged anger can also lead to problems with relationships, health, and well-being. Furthermore, Bushman ,Brad said as cited in the book of Duffy (2003), that outward expression of anger leads to dangerously elevated cardiovascular activity and it may contribute to the development of Cardiovascular disease.
A better tack is to do anything that is incompatible with anger and aggression. That includes watching a funny movie, reading an absorbing novel, sharing a laugh with a friend, or listening to music. Given time, your anger will dissipate and then you’ll be able to deal with the situation in a more constructive way. Through exercise can also actually heighten physical arousal and keep anger died and nontraditional exercise programs like tai chi, yoga and stretching can also dissipate negative feeling such as anger but make people more conscious of their mood states.
Straight and immediately (verbally or nonverbally) to show your anger. It gives an opportunity to free from the negative emotions. To express anger in an indirect way, in this case usually suffer persons that are weaker, not dangerous and those ones who “come to hand”, usually they are our family and close relatives. Thus we hurt our dear ones. One of the best ways is to express your anger to the person who is the source of this very anger. If it is impossible- better find some compromise. Restraining anger you “drive” it deep inside. So, negative emotions store will provoke a big stress sooner or later.
You may foresee situation of anger feeling, try not to expand this feeling but get to know the reason, understand and solve it. A Roman philosopher Seneca said: “When you are feeling of ascending “volcano”- stand still, not doing anything- not speaking, not moving. ” The instinctive, natural way to express anger is to respond aggressively. Anger is a natural, adaptive response to threats; it inspires powerful, often aggressive, feelings and behaviors, which allow us to fight and to defend ourselves when we are attacked. A certain amount of anger, therefore, is necessary to our survival.
On the other hand, we can’t physically lash out at every person or object that irritates or annoys us; laws, social norms, and common sense place limits on how far our anger can take us. People use a variety of both conscious and unconscious processes to deal with their angry feelings. The three main approaches are expressing, suppressing, and calming. Expressing your angry feelings in an assertive—not aggressive—manner is the healthiest way to express anger. To do this, you have to learn how to make clear what your needs are, and how to get them met, without hurting others.
Being assertive doesn’t mean being pushy or demanding; it means being respectful of yourself and others. Anger can be suppressed, and then converted or redirected. This happens when you hold in your anger, stop thinking about it, and focus on something positive. The aim is to inhibit or suppress your anger and convert it into more constructive behavior. The danger in this type of response is that if it isn’t allowed outward expression, your anger can turn inward—on yourself. Anger turned inward may cause hypertension, high blood pressure, or depression.
Unexpressed anger can create other problems. It can lead to pathological expressions of anger, such as passive-aggressive behavior (getting back at people indirectly, without telling them why, rather than confronting them head-on) or a personality that seems perpetually cynical and hostile. People who are constantly putting others down, criticizing everything, and making cynical comments haven’t learned how to constructively express their anger. Not surprisingly, they aren’t likely to have many successful relationships. Finally, you can calm down inside.
This means not just controlling your outward behavior, but also controlling your internal responses, taking steps to lower your heart rate, calm yourself down, and let the feelings subside. As Dr. Spielberger notes, “when none of these three techniques work, that’s when someone—or something—is going to get hurt. ” * Expressing your anger helps when it corrects the wrongs that are making you angry, but not when the wrongs continue or even worsen. Suppose your significant other is unusually quiet over supper, and you wonder if he is bored with you or wishes he were somewhere else.
You chide him for not being more involved. Suppose he replies that his best friend at work was just fired, and he is upset about it. You can now see that his reserve means something entirely different than you thought, and you are over your anger. On the other hand, suppose he tells you “honk off” and leave him alone, with no further explanation. You become even angrier, as well you might. * Talking about angry feelings helps when you clarify the situation and see that you are not being wronged after all, but not when your sense of being wronged remains.
Your workaholic husband has not phoned you, and he is late for supper again. You kept the roast hot in the oven and it burned, and by now, you are hot as well. Suppose you hurl your full fury at him, and he apologizes, as usual. Do you think he is going to have the courage to call you the next time he is going to be late? On the other hand, suppose you understand about his job responsibilities, and appreciate his hard work, but then show him the burnt roast and ask him to phone home so you know when to plan dinner. Which do you think is more apt to get the telephone to ring the next time he will be late? Stating your concerns usually works best when you do it in a considerate and understanding manner, but is more apt to provoke opposition when you express yourself angrily. Have you ever noticed that most arguments are at least 98% arguing, and only 2% listening? Instead of listening when your opponent is speaking, and trying to understand, you are working on your own rejoinder and getting ready to fire it back at the first opening. So at the end of the argument you feel even more convinced by your own justifications, and less inclined to consider the other side. In the midst of an argument, trying to understand your opponent can reduce your anger, whereas single-minded concern for your own justifications only increases your sense of being wronged. “You never talk to me! ” “Yea? And you always nag at me! ” We have all heard the advice to avoid using the “never” and “always” words in an argument, and yet we sprinkle them in anyway. Here is why: Anger often expresses itself as an accusation against whoever wronged you. Naturally, anger wants to hurl as strong an accusation as possible.
So the “never” and “always” words exaggerate the offense and place it in the worst possible light. Unfortunately, when we overstate our case, we tend to believe our own exaggerations. So we feel more deeply wronged, and get even angrier. On the opposite side, not surprisingly, those who we so carelessly accuse feel maligned and wronged themselves, and are little inclined to cooperate with us. * State your own concerns carefully and fairly. Overblown accusations leave you believing your own propaganda, and angrier than ever.
Imagine you are really angry at someone, and step into the feelings. Be aware of how you have been wronged, and feel justified in being angry. Yet in the moment, caught up in your angry, you have no sense of how much you anger can hurt someone. And this is perhaps the weirdest feature of anger. We all know how much anger hurts us, when it flies our way. But at the moment we unleash our own anger, who ever considers how much harm we do to those we claim to love? When you are angry, your concern for whoever wronged you vanishes; and when your concern returns, your anger subsides.
Empathic concern and angry justifications do not together dwell in the same heart. Anger is not built into the human animal simply to express itself and nothing more. Anger can be an ally but it has its own agenda, which is to intimidate and punish. * Balance out your angry justifications with some recognition that your antagonist is an actual human being. Do you want to pretend that you are merely an innocent bystander and that your own anger does no real harm? How can anger seem so justified one moment and so right, but then so regrettably wrong an hour later after you cool off.
And how can anger seem so totally justified to the angry individual, and yet so unjustified and hurtful to those on the receiving end of it? Anger re-calibrates your mind, so that you see only your own justifications and missed the opposing position altogether. I offer a last reminder: * Be careful with your anger. The more justified and righteous your anger feels to you at the moment, the more surely it will lead you astray. II. A. There are ways to cope with it. 1. 1 Psychologists suggest several good ways to deal with the situation.
These useful strategies maximize the potential for positive consequences. First, minimize the importance of the situation-in this, you should understand the situation better and you may become more tolerant of the apparent shortcoming of others. Second, you should reinterpret the situation in a way that is less bothersome. Third, Fantasized about getting even-but don’t act on it. Fantasy provides a safety value. In your fantasies you can yell at that unfair professor all you want at suffer no consequences at all. However don’t spend too much time brooding: fantasize but then move on.
Lastly relax-by teaching yourself the kind of relaxation techniques used in systematic desensitization. You can help reduce your sensation to anger and it will dissipate. 1. 2 Contrary to this popular misunderstanding, the healthiest way to deal with anger is to stay in control. Analyzed the message it is sending, and harness the energy it provides for positive change. Another misconception is that revenge can lead to positive change. Unfortunately revenge leads to a cycle of destructive escalation. Expressing anger with violence breeds more anger. 1. Take slow, deep breaths and count to 10 when you feel a hot surge of anger. Use the time this takes to keep yourself from doing something rash. 1. 4 Try to consider the offensive situation from all perspectives, not just your own ‘ maybe the offending parties had no choice but to do what they did. Consider whether your anger is justified. 1. 5 Think about the object of – and the underlying reason for – your anger. Go beyond easy scapegoats and focus on what specifically triggered your temper. 1. 6 Take positive action to improve the situation once you’re in a more controlled state of mind.
For example, if you feel your boss treated you unjustly, collect yourself first and then approach him or her with your concerns. Refrain from venting and taking it out on your subordinates or colleagues. B. How to control anger * First – Realize that anger is an emotion based on thought. Nothing makes us angry, it is OUR response to the situation that determines the emotion. We can react calm or angry depending on how we view what is going on. * Second – Because anger is based on our thinking, to modify the reaction, we have to modify our thoughts.
It is how we think about the situation is what counts. In the case of the keys, we can use a little self-talk, to calm us. “Ok, the keys are missing, now where did I put them. ” Of course a little prior planning, i. e. ; putting them in a prescribed location (key hook in the kitchen) so that we will always be able to find them. * Third – Since anger is a secondary reaction to fear, if we are fearful we will also have the tendency to be angry as well. Therefore we have to keep our fears in check if we want to control our anger.
That is easier said than done, but we can do it if we realize that real fear is a natural reaction to a REAL circumstance. When we fear the future (projecting) or past (regression) we are experiencing fear of a phantom-a nonexistent circumstance. III. Recommendation To Summarized one point, we can then say that being angry can really affect us so much emotionally and physically. Those show that anger is really destructive to us but then, there are strategies to overcome with it. So, we must control our anger before anger controls us and we should do the ways that is mentioned to release anger.
But, no matter which of these strategies you try, above all, don’t ignore your anger. People who have always try to suppress their anger may experience consequences such as self-condemnation, frustration and even physical illness. IV. Conclusion Managing anger is a vital, everyday concern for individuals and the groups they comprise. Unproductive stress and anger are costly because they undermine physical health, emotional well-being, and performance. The direct, effective expression of anger can help manage conflicts to reduce tension and solve problems.
Stress, anger, and conflict are commonly thought to be negative experiences that should, if possible, be avoided. up till now they can be stimulating and productive. Persons search out stress and conflict and feel powerful as they express anger. Stress seems inevitable as persons tackle difficult, challenging problems that help them use and develop their skills. Anger and conflict seem inevitable as persons work with, rely on, and support each other. Stress and anger are very much a part of our lives, and all of us need to learn to live with and make the most of them. V. Preferences/Bibliography Anger definition”. Medicine. net. Retrieved 2008-04-05. Sutton, R. I. Maintaining norms about expressed emotions: The case of bill collectors, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1991, 36:245-268 “Emotion. ” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopedia Britannica Online, p. 11 International Handbook of Anger. Chapter 17 R McCrathy and others , “The Impact of a new Selfmanagement Program on Stress, Emotions, Heart rate variability, DHEA, and Cortisol”, Integrative Physiological and Behavioural Science, 1998 Pag. 153 “Anger. ” Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 2001.
According to Aristotle: “The person who is angry at the right things and toward the right people, and also in the right way, at the right time and for the right length of time is morally praiseworthy. ” cf. Paul M. Hughes, Anger, Encyclopedia of Ethics, Vol I, Second Edition, Rutledge Press Jennifer S. Lerner and Dacher Keltner (2001). “Fear, Anger, and Risk” . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (1): 146–159. doi:10. 1037/0022-3514. 81. 1. 146 . PMID 11474720. MenandWomen101. com Thesis Statement Anger is a negative and powerful emotion, short madness, more hurtful then injury that caused it but some ways to cope with it.
