Anger is also learned. I grew up in a household in which rage was accepted and permitted. It took me quite a lot of time and interaction outside of my family to realize that I had learned patterned reactions of anger that were entirely unjustified and that this anger was altogether harmful, unproductive, and pointless.
If you are responsible for taking care of others, keep in mind that the way you act will stick with them. What you do today may be encoded and burned into them such that it determines their behavior tomorrow.
I agree. Also, emotional regulation is a thing—feeling an initial flash of anger is one thing, but allowing yourself to be consumed by it is another. I think I have pretty good emotional control of my anger, I rarely lose my temper at people and I'm generally pretty good at channeling it productively.
But the reaction doesn't go away, and it is also linked to other things like taking care of your physical health, diet, sleep, etc. taking accountability for your reactions to things ultimately involves cleaning up a lot of the rest of your life, too. Plus people can find it hard to believe that healthier people are less angry, but I firmly believe this is true based on my own observations of myself—so in this sense, emotions kind of are a choice, with enough practice and desire to achieve this and luck.
It is indeed very difficult to separate emotion and behavior, both concepts are encapsulated by the same continual shifting attention. That maintaining control over this shifting of attention is the focus of so many philosophies (eastern and western) shouldn't be ignored.
It might be that emotion and behavior are so tightly coupled that they are effectively both learned and it doesn't make complete sense to distinguish them.
For example, when I used to struggle more with these feelings, I'd get into tirades which were behavioral reactions that, rather than simmering things down, would just further amplify my anger. Similarly, I think forcing yourself to smile and other subtle behaviors actually can have an emotional effect.
> I grew up in a household in which rage was accepted and permitted.
Accepted, permitted and encouraged: "Show your anger! Let them know! Bring it out! Don't accept that from that person! Get angry!" Righteous indignation was exactly the right way to feel when you have "been wronged".
It's amongst the greatest disservices my parents could have done to me (there were more, plenty more).
I eventually managed to undo much of the damage to my personality by asking a simple question whenever I start to feel anger:
"Does this matter?"
If it really matters, get angry - get REALLY angry if you need to. I found that almost nothing matters and I basically never get angry.
Getting angry destroys relationships and friendships pretty much instantly - and the angry person is typically unaware of this.
I saw a woman in a carpark get super angry because someone else took her parking spot that she was waiting to back into. She got out of her car and yelled into their window and stomped around and she was clearly furious. I thought "that woman has no mechanism to determine if this situation matters enough to get angry."
I also never learned explicitly from my parents what "kindness" (the inverse of anger) is - it puzzled me when it started to become clear in my 20's that this is an important concept and I did not understand it and needed to.
If you are responsible for taking care of others, keep in mind that the way you act will stick with them
this was the biggest motivator for me to change my behavior. when i saw my kids doing things i didn't like, i realized that i was doing the same, and that they were most likely learning it from me, or if it wasn't me then i wasn't doing enough to model a better behavior.
the challenge is that many of these behaviors did not come out until i had kids. when you learn something from your parents, very often you don't get to apply that without kids, so you are not even aware that you would act like that until you are in the same situation with your kids.
Comments
Anger is also learned. I grew up in a household in which rage was accepted and permitted. It took me quite a lot of time and interaction outside of my family to realize that I had learned patterned reactions of anger that were entirely unjustified and that this anger was altogether harmful, unproductive, and pointless.
If you are responsible for taking care of others, keep in mind that the way you act will stick with them. What you do today may be encoded and burned into them such that it determines their behavior tomorrow.
When I worked in psychiatry, I was taught that emotion isn't learned, but behavior is.
I don't know if I buy that. I think that many of our emotions are driven by our expectations, and expectations are definitely learned.
Hand a wealthy person an imperfect fruit, and they'll react with anger.
Hand the same fruit to a hungry person, and you'll get gratitude.
I agree. Also, emotional regulation is a thing—feeling an initial flash of anger is one thing, but allowing yourself to be consumed by it is another. I think I have pretty good emotional control of my anger, I rarely lose my temper at people and I'm generally pretty good at channeling it productively.
But the reaction doesn't go away, and it is also linked to other things like taking care of your physical health, diet, sleep, etc. taking accountability for your reactions to things ultimately involves cleaning up a lot of the rest of your life, too. Plus people can find it hard to believe that healthier people are less angry, but I firmly believe this is true based on my own observations of myself—so in this sense, emotions kind of are a choice, with enough practice and desire to achieve this and luck.
It is indeed very difficult to separate emotion and behavior, both concepts are encapsulated by the same continual shifting attention. That maintaining control over this shifting of attention is the focus of so many philosophies (eastern and western) shouldn't be ignored.
It might be that emotion and behavior are so tightly coupled that they are effectively both learned and it doesn't make complete sense to distinguish them.
For example, when I used to struggle more with these feelings, I'd get into tirades which were behavioral reactions that, rather than simmering things down, would just further amplify my anger. Similarly, I think forcing yourself to smile and other subtle behaviors actually can have an emotional effect.
Me too.
Accepted, permitted and encouraged: "Show your anger! Let them know! Bring it out! Don't accept that from that person! Get angry!" Righteous indignation was exactly the right way to feel when you have "been wronged".
It's amongst the greatest disservices my parents could have done to me (there were more, plenty more).
I eventually managed to undo much of the damage to my personality by asking a simple question whenever I start to feel anger:
"Does this matter?"
If it really matters, get angry - get REALLY angry if you need to. I found that almost nothing matters and I basically never get angry.
Getting angry destroys relationships and friendships pretty much instantly - and the angry person is typically unaware of this.
I saw a woman in a carpark get super angry because someone else took her parking spot that she was waiting to back into. She got out of her car and yelled into their window and stomped around and she was clearly furious. I thought "that woman has no mechanism to determine if this situation matters enough to get angry."
I also never learned explicitly from my parents what "kindness" (the inverse of anger) is - it puzzled me when it started to become clear in my 20's that this is an important concept and I did not understand it and needed to.
If you are responsible for taking care of others, keep in mind that the way you act will stick with them
this was the biggest motivator for me to change my behavior. when i saw my kids doing things i didn't like, i realized that i was doing the same, and that they were most likely learning it from me, or if it wasn't me then i wasn't doing enough to model a better behavior.
the challenge is that many of these behaviors did not come out until i had kids. when you learn something from your parents, very often you don't get to apply that without kids, so you are not even aware that you would act like that until you are in the same situation with your kids.