More threads by David Baxter PhD

David Baxter PhD

Late Founder
Anger Problems: Prevention
By Steven Stosny, Psychology Today
January 2, 2009

Do you want to be resentful, angry, or compassionate?

One dangerous myth about an "anger problem" is that it only involves aggression, abuse, hurting people, or destroying property. Such behaviors are merely the extreme end of the anger spectrum, indicating but one of many kinds of anger problems.

Though we associate extreme behaviors with anger, in reality most of the anger we experience in the course of our lives is unconscious. You are never aware of most of your anger. By the time you do know that you're resentful or angry, it's already in an advanced stage, when the techniques taught in anger management classes - "managing" angry feelings and arousal - run the risk of being too little too late.

A more viable target for prevention of anger problems is the subtle types of anger that lie outside conscious awareness. Subtle anger forms the undercurrent for the waves of overt anger that cause more infamous acting out behavior like aggression, abuse, etc. Without the chronic, low-grade ebb and flow of subtle anger, there would be very little violence and abuse.

While overt anger makes you act against your best interests, subtle anger more often keeps you from doing what is in your best interest. Examples are quietly putting a chilly wall between you and your loved ones that keeps you from connecting with them and indulging a continual impatience that keeps you from feeling compassion for them. These kinds of behaviors won't get you court-ordered into an anger management class, but they will ruin your life.

One sure sign of an anger problem, whether hidden or subtle or obvious, is feeling like all your troubles are the fault of someone else. If it seems that other people are always trying to put you down or push your buttons, you may be a reactaholic, in which case your thoughts, feelings, and behavior are controlled by whomever or whatever you're reacting to at the moment. The more reactive you are, the more powerless you feel; anger is in many ways a cry of powerlessness.

Because they involve more subtle than overt anger, preventing anger problems requires a shift in your outlook on life more than the management of arousal and angry feelings. You can begin such a shift of outlook by answering the following questions.

Do you want to be reactive to other people, allowing them to push your buttons, make you act against your best interests, and keep you from doing what is in your best interests?

Or do you want to behave in your long term best interests, regardless of what people say or do?

Do you want to be resentful?

Or do you want to be compassionate?

The best way to prevent anger problems is to control subtle forms of anger by building more compassion and value into your life.
 

Trust

Member
Feeling compassion is one of the most life-affirming and connecting things. I love being the recipient of another's generous compassion and I feel good when I don't allow resentful feelings to grow and choose instead to allow my compassion for others to refill my heart. It's not always easy, sometimes I have to let a little time pass, but when it is possible compassion leads to healing and acceptance.

Anger is normal I guess? I suppose it is how we handle it that becomes the problem. I have yet to meet anyone whom has not felt it or expressed it, but I do agree that it can be a very subtle feeling lurking within and sometimes we just suppress it so deeply and so often and then when it suddenly escapes we are shocked by the intensity. Not a good idea. And no one appreciates seeing a nuclear reaction in response to "Please pass the salt." Sometimes anger can indeed be triggered by the most innocuous comments. All that secretive seething can become a big problem!

All emotions are useful - we have them for a reason - to show us a picture our interior life - to feel and takes cues from those feelings on how to respond - but I prefer to feel and express the kinder ones.

If only everyone could talk openly about all types feelings - love and happiness and insecurity and shame and fear - without feeling alienated or less than or better than others - and if only we chose more often to offer and accept compassion for our shared human strengths and frailties, we would all be much better off. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves how much we all have in common.

Good night all!:D
 
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