To Be or Not To Be… Angry

Validate ALL of the Emotions.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to the world and our seemingly innate ability to engage with each other. Why are we so prone to anger and violence; a hair trigger away from a meltdown? One thing I’ve learned in my studies and practice in the field of mental health is that anger and violence tend to beget more anger and violence. But why is this? My main theory is that anger is rarely understood and even more rarely expressed in an appropriate and healthy manner.

Don’t believe me? Think about the last time you got angry at someone. Perhaps your partner said something incredibly rude. Perhaps your boss invalidated your experience at work. Perhaps you got an F on a paper you strongly believe you should’ve gotten an A on… or at least a C. When this happened, do you remember expressing your anger and being met with… you guessed it, more anger!? And you probably reeled back and thought, wait a minute… why are YOU angry?

This phenomenon is partly due to biological factors, partly due to psychological factors, and partly due to social conditioning. Before you click out of this article in a (valid!) frustrated huff, let me explain.

Biologically-speaking, human beings “think” because we have millions of neurons in our brains that fire electricity at each other. One such neuron is called “mirror neurons” and have been around since the dawn of human existence. These neurons allow us to engage with each other socially by mimicking what we interact with. If someone yawns and you have the capacity for empathy, chances are you’ll yawn too. If someone leans in while you’re talking, chances are you’ll subconsciously lean in too. In terms of anger, the same process stands.

Psychologically-speaking, human beings experience emotion on a variety of levels. Some are flat, some are more typical, and others still are excessive in expression and intensity. Due to this, some will experience anger more readily and be more apt to mirror your anger. This is a personalized factor that will vary depending on who you’re interacting with.

Socially-speaking, human beings are conditioned to follow acceptable rules and ideologies in terms of interactions. We address our elders with respectful tone, we strive for politeness, and we are socialized to view anger in a negative light. If we break this down further, there are even gender-assigned expectations with anger expression in the United States. Hence the common expressions of “boys will be boys” and “act like a lady, not a little monster”. The sub-cultures of ethnicity, proxemic community, and family will further dictate whether a person believes anger is an acceptable emotion to feel and express. This can be highly detrimental to holistic development and overall effective and healthy human interaction should the opinion of anger be “unacceptable”.

All emotions are valid and acceptable. There are no negative emotions; only uncomfortable ones.

Let me repeat this.

ALL EMOTIONS ARE VALID AND ACCEPTABLE.

What makes emotional reactions unacceptable is typically the expression of it.

Angry that you got cut off in traffic? Okay. So angry that you decided to ram your car into the bumper of the offending driver’s car? Less okay. I’ve realized that improvement of our ability to engage with each other relies on our ability as a society to learn basic communication skills I learned in my Master’s program. Yes… my Master’s program and not, say… elementary school, when it could’ve been incredibly useful to master. But that’s another article altogether.

Let me walk you through what we in the biz call Effective Communication and how it can help the next time you’re angry or trigger a mirror neuron to react with anger.

In all interactions, we are balancing three components simultaneously. However, sometimes we’re going to prioritize one over the others, and that will affect how we engage. Those three components are as follows: the goal, the relationship, and your self-respect.

Say we want to discuss that F with our teacher. If we were prioritizing the goal, we’d only focus on how to get that F changed to an A via a “take no prisoners” type of fashion. If we were prioritizing our relationship, we’d care more about how we make our teacher feel when we confront them, and are probably okay with not getting the grade changed at all. If we prioritize our self-respect, however, we’d be more focused on conveying how getting the F made us feel rather than having it changed or preserving our relationship with the teacher. If you’re imagining yourself standing on a chair with a scarlet F on your chest, crying about the humanity of things, then you catch my drift.

After we’ve figured out what we’re prioritizing, then we focus on how to convey it. My tried and true will always be I-Statements. I hear what you’re saying! One too many of those in Health class, am I right? However, they are pretty effective at conveying emotion in a productive way. One essential part of I-Statements, however, is the knowledge that we cannot control other people. If we use an I-Statement to express how angry we are over being disrespected, the other person still has the ability to escalate or ignore altogether your complaints. This is when boundaries become effective! If we’re able to say, “Look, when you told me to shut up, it really hurt my feelings. I’d appreciate if you could talk to me with more respect in the future, as it will show me that you care about my feelings”, the other person could say, “Don’t tell me what to do!”. If that is the case, our boundary could be as follows: “I hear what you’re saying, however, it makes me feel like you’re prioritizing your experience over mine. If you are unwilling to compromise, I think we might have to look into seeing other people”.

Obviously, this is a gross exaggeration of a conversation that might ensue between romantic partners. However, it’s much easier to hear out someone explaining what behaviors triggered their anger and their opinions on how it can be dealt with (creative problem solving!) when you’re spelling it out, not yelling it out.

At the end of the day, you’re the one who truly gets to decide how you’re going to react. You have the ability and opportunity to use every situation as an exposure! A situation in which you learn to tolerate the discomfort of feeling angry, while attempting to express it in a healthy way. It might take a while to unlearn some ineffective behaviors, such as ramming your car into others during traffic hour, but I know it’s possible! We still have work to do on acceptance of uncomfortable emotions, brainstorming ways to use coping skills, and learning to express yourself in an appropriate way. However, this is a great first step into creating insight into your experiences and hopefully making an effort for change.