As an anger repressor, I believed anger was a problem that should be set aside at all costs. Now that I'm a lot more in contact with anger, it's clear that that was counterproductive.
Anger has a legitimate biological purpose - that is to set boundaries. Look at any animal [1], if you push their boundaries they will bite, scratch or bark at you. But they will also very quickly let it go once the boundary has been set.
We humans tend to be taught to let our boundaries be pushed, weakened or outright crossed in order to do what others think is right. We are taught to repress our very biological instinct because we are bad, because we believe our primal instincts are just violent. But the body knows that our boundaries are being violated, millions of years of evolution aren't irrelevant. To me, this explains why we hold onto anger so much today and see outbursts of it online.
What we think of as primal instincts to harm people is actually our own repression of our primal instincts. Lord of the Flies is a propaganda film - perhaps even the secularization of original sin. Research has shown time and again that humans left alone in a group tend to work together, not kill each other [2].
When I see people deeply angry at society, at politicians, or at me, I see somebody who has had their boundaries crossed, again and again, and has been taught that they are not allowed to set them. This energy has to go somewhere.
Personally, the more I've allowed my own anger and set personal boundaries, the less angry I am at the world. The less my anger seems to manifest in harmful outbursts. Anger comes, and if expressed, it passes very quickly in a way that may be assertive but that doesn't harm others.
I did a talk on anger in the workplace at SREcon22 to an audience of people who work in tech [1]. Anger is well-studied, particularly by Dr. Brad Bushman, who has made it his life's work.
It's important to draw a distinction between repression and expression here. Feeling anger does not need to equate to expressing anger, though we often do. Expressing anger is almost always harmful—I'm hard-pressed to come up with an example where it isn't harmful—both to the individual feeling anger and to whomever they may express it to.
Dr. Bushman found, over multiple studies, that expressing anger led to a heightened state of arousal and set the conditions for its reoccurrence in the future.
The middle way is to feel the anger mindfully. One can even discuss it. The distinction is in becoming the feeling (I am it) versus recognizing the feeling as a guest who soon will leave.
I agree for the most part, feeling the anger is a very important step to understanding where it comes from inside and the analogy of it being a guest is a great one. But (and this could just be the limitations of language so we may be saying the same thing) I disagree that expressing anger is always harmful.
I think the conventional idea about anger is that the only way to express it is to shout, yell or worse, physically assault somebody. To me that's just an unhealthy form of expression, that seems to come about due to fear or repression.
Imagine a friend punches you jokingly in the arm every time you see them and you find it uncomfortable. It's unhealthy to scream at them, sure, but IMO it's also unhealthy to just sit there and feel the anger mindfully while continuing to let them do it. The middle way is to tell them assertively to stop it. It doesn't have to be unkind - just like we wouldn't consider a cat unkind when it nips at you for invading its personal space for patting it too much. The cat is using the only expression it has to warn you about its boundaries, but most cats don't go off the rails and start tearing you apart because it was slighted.
Personally I never had a healthy example of anger growing up -- only dysfunctional examples -- so I believed that the conventional expression was the only way to express it. The conventional expression felt scary, so I avoided it at all costs. It took me years to realise that I was so afraid of the emotion and expression of anger that I was even using meditation and mindfulness to continue to repress it.
The more I began to express anger in these healthier ways, the less that heightened state of arousal comes up to the point where it's very rare that anger sticks around for more than a few moments now, and is far less intense in the body.
When I see people deeply angry at society, at politicians, or at me, I see somebody who has had their boundaries crossed, again and again, and has been taught that they are not allowed to set them.
Aggressive angry people were frequently enabled whole their lives. They were not taught to control or suppress anger they were taught everyone else is at fault.
That is frequent real world situation.
Likewise, people who feel wronged and treated unfairly because they are subject to the same rules as others are a thing. Their boundary of "only I matter, you dont" was crossed, but is not legitimate at all.
The typical dynamic is that bully is enabled, because it is easier. And typically victim is pushed to more submission, because it is easier. And bully grows angrier and more aggressive.
The problem is society doesn’t allow normal people to enforce boundaries or consequences against those “aggressive angry people” in any meaningful way.
Yes, narcissism combined with aggression is a dangerous combo.
In my experience though almost every one of these aggressive angry people is quietly ashamed of their anger. They may not even be aware of it themselves, but that shame is what keeps it held together. They can never approach their anger because it feels so deeply to them as if their identity is that aggressive angry person, and so attacking their anger only makes their very identity feel threatened (even if it's not an identity they want). Attacking people is actually a way of protecting themselves.
I've had this experience multiple times in my life with bullies. Somehow trying to understand them even in the face of their anger allows them to relax and let down the offensive (although that of course does not mean letting them cross my boundaries).
People who've learned that form of interacting with other people have almost certainly had difficult lives. That doesn't mean to excuse them and allow them to run riot over everyone else, but the thing is attacking them is counterproductive and only puts up their defenses.
The bully-victim dynamic happens because one person is used to crossing boundaries (even if it feels bad) and the other person is used to allowing their boundaries be crossed (even if it feels bad). The bully explicitly seeks out those who have (through no fault of their own) been taught to allow their boundaries to be crossed. In both cases the mistaken belief is the same - that crossing boundaries is normal.
If you're interested in this more I highly recommend the 2017 documentary The Work:
My pet model of anger is as a manifestation/symptom of (or mask for) fear[0].
Having encountered people who reinforced their arbitrary boundaries in various ways (including physical violence) strategically and obviously without anger, as well as people who are constantly letting off anger without apparent success in own boundary reinforcement, I find the fear model a better fit for anger than the boundary-setting model.
That said, the models could coexist, make sense for different situations and individuals, and provide their own ways of resolution.
1. The boundary-setting model provides letting off anger as a way to reinforce boundaries and avoid the situation from reoccurring. It can be a productive way of dealing with the situation, and I admit one I haven’t thought about as much prior to today.
2. The fear model provides “overcoming fear” as a way of evolving to prevent the discomfort from reoccurring. From the boundary-setting angle, this could mean adjusting boundaries. (Note that this is different from repressing anger.)
Either model may be more useful in specific contexts: you may want to learn to choose the second option with a loved one, a friend, or perhaps a colleague, but to reinforce boundaries with a random person in a situation where others may use the precedent to take advantage of you[1].
Then, there’s a whole host of situations where there is fear/boundary violation not concerning any person in particular (e.g., living in a crowded city, in a society with unfamiliar norms, neurological changes due to physical factors difficult or impossible to control, etc.) where I wouldn’t say the fear model/overcoming fear is always the best fit, but I would say the boundary model/letting off anger could mostly lead to poor and destructive outcomes for yourself and others around you, especially over long term.
[0] Where “fear” ought to be interpreted at least as widely and generically as “boundaries” and could range from “fear of personal harm” to “fear for social status” to “fear of unknown” and so on.
[1] I will note that in such a situation giving into anger may be a bad choice if you are not in a position to use it well intuitively; depending on an individual and the situation, cold response can be more useful. Once you are weighing this all, you are necessarily not being angry, so the ability to snap back into the state on demand can be a valuable skill.
Comments
As an anger repressor, I believed anger was a problem that should be set aside at all costs. Now that I'm a lot more in contact with anger, it's clear that that was counterproductive.
Anger has a legitimate biological purpose - that is to set boundaries. Look at any animal [1], if you push their boundaries they will bite, scratch or bark at you. But they will also very quickly let it go once the boundary has been set.
We humans tend to be taught to let our boundaries be pushed, weakened or outright crossed in order to do what others think is right. We are taught to repress our very biological instinct because we are bad, because we believe our primal instincts are just violent. But the body knows that our boundaries are being violated, millions of years of evolution aren't irrelevant. To me, this explains why we hold onto anger so much today and see outbursts of it online.
What we think of as primal instincts to harm people is actually our own repression of our primal instincts. Lord of the Flies is a propaganda film - perhaps even the secularization of original sin. Research has shown time and again that humans left alone in a group tend to work together, not kill each other [2].
When I see people deeply angry at society, at politicians, or at me, I see somebody who has had their boundaries crossed, again and again, and has been taught that they are not allowed to set them. This energy has to go somewhere.
Personally, the more I've allowed my own anger and set personal boundaries, the less angry I am at the world. The less my anger seems to manifest in harmful outbursts. Anger comes, and if expressed, it passes very quickly in a way that may be assertive but that doesn't harm others.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99tkJbKFa4k
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali
I did a talk on anger in the workplace at SREcon22 to an audience of people who work in tech [1]. Anger is well-studied, particularly by Dr. Brad Bushman, who has made it his life's work.
It's important to draw a distinction between repression and expression here. Feeling anger does not need to equate to expressing anger, though we often do. Expressing anger is almost always harmful—I'm hard-pressed to come up with an example where it isn't harmful—both to the individual feeling anger and to whomever they may express it to.
Dr. Bushman found, over multiple studies, that expressing anger led to a heightened state of arousal and set the conditions for its reoccurrence in the future.
The middle way is to feel the anger mindfully. One can even discuss it. The distinction is in becoming the feeling (I am it) versus recognizing the feeling as a guest who soon will leave.
[1] https://youtu.be/ieiZJ6EWlDo?si=D7ie1tjh-qf8eVpn
I agree for the most part, feeling the anger is a very important step to understanding where it comes from inside and the analogy of it being a guest is a great one. But (and this could just be the limitations of language so we may be saying the same thing) I disagree that expressing anger is always harmful.
I think the conventional idea about anger is that the only way to express it is to shout, yell or worse, physically assault somebody. To me that's just an unhealthy form of expression, that seems to come about due to fear or repression.
Imagine a friend punches you jokingly in the arm every time you see them and you find it uncomfortable. It's unhealthy to scream at them, sure, but IMO it's also unhealthy to just sit there and feel the anger mindfully while continuing to let them do it. The middle way is to tell them assertively to stop it. It doesn't have to be unkind - just like we wouldn't consider a cat unkind when it nips at you for invading its personal space for patting it too much. The cat is using the only expression it has to warn you about its boundaries, but most cats don't go off the rails and start tearing you apart because it was slighted.
Personally I never had a healthy example of anger growing up -- only dysfunctional examples -- so I believed that the conventional expression was the only way to express it. The conventional expression felt scary, so I avoided it at all costs. It took me years to realise that I was so afraid of the emotion and expression of anger that I was even using meditation and mindfulness to continue to repress it.
The more I began to express anger in these healthier ways, the less that heightened state of arousal comes up to the point where it's very rare that anger sticks around for more than a few moments now, and is far less intense in the body.
Aggressive angry people were frequently enabled whole their lives. They were not taught to control or suppress anger they were taught everyone else is at fault.
That is frequent real world situation.
Likewise, people who feel wronged and treated unfairly because they are subject to the same rules as others are a thing. Their boundary of "only I matter, you dont" was crossed, but is not legitimate at all.
The typical dynamic is that bully is enabled, because it is easier. And typically victim is pushed to more submission, because it is easier. And bully grows angrier and more aggressive.
And it is the same in politics.
The problem is society doesn’t allow normal people to enforce boundaries or consequences against those “aggressive angry people” in any meaningful way.
Yes, narcissism combined with aggression is a dangerous combo.
In my experience though almost every one of these aggressive angry people is quietly ashamed of their anger. They may not even be aware of it themselves, but that shame is what keeps it held together. They can never approach their anger because it feels so deeply to them as if their identity is that aggressive angry person, and so attacking their anger only makes their very identity feel threatened (even if it's not an identity they want). Attacking people is actually a way of protecting themselves.
I've had this experience multiple times in my life with bullies. Somehow trying to understand them even in the face of their anger allows them to relax and let down the offensive (although that of course does not mean letting them cross my boundaries).
People who've learned that form of interacting with other people have almost certainly had difficult lives. That doesn't mean to excuse them and allow them to run riot over everyone else, but the thing is attacking them is counterproductive and only puts up their defenses.
The bully-victim dynamic happens because one person is used to crossing boundaries (even if it feels bad) and the other person is used to allowing their boundaries be crossed (even if it feels bad). The bully explicitly seeks out those who have (through no fault of their own) been taught to allow their boundaries to be crossed. In both cases the mistaken belief is the same - that crossing boundaries is normal.
If you're interested in this more I highly recommend the 2017 documentary The Work:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5836866/
My pet model of anger is as a manifestation/symptom of (or mask for) fear[0].
Having encountered people who reinforced their arbitrary boundaries in various ways (including physical violence) strategically and obviously without anger, as well as people who are constantly letting off anger without apparent success in own boundary reinforcement, I find the fear model a better fit for anger than the boundary-setting model.
That said, the models could coexist, make sense for different situations and individuals, and provide their own ways of resolution.
1. The boundary-setting model provides letting off anger as a way to reinforce boundaries and avoid the situation from reoccurring. It can be a productive way of dealing with the situation, and I admit one I haven’t thought about as much prior to today.
2. The fear model provides “overcoming fear” as a way of evolving to prevent the discomfort from reoccurring. From the boundary-setting angle, this could mean adjusting boundaries. (Note that this is different from repressing anger.)
Either model may be more useful in specific contexts: you may want to learn to choose the second option with a loved one, a friend, or perhaps a colleague, but to reinforce boundaries with a random person in a situation where others may use the precedent to take advantage of you[1].
Then, there’s a whole host of situations where there is fear/boundary violation not concerning any person in particular (e.g., living in a crowded city, in a society with unfamiliar norms, neurological changes due to physical factors difficult or impossible to control, etc.) where I wouldn’t say the fear model/overcoming fear is always the best fit, but I would say the boundary model/letting off anger could mostly lead to poor and destructive outcomes for yourself and others around you, especially over long term.
[0] Where “fear” ought to be interpreted at least as widely and generically as “boundaries” and could range from “fear of personal harm” to “fear for social status” to “fear of unknown” and so on.
[1] I will note that in such a situation giving into anger may be a bad choice if you are not in a position to use it well intuitively; depending on an individual and the situation, cold response can be more useful. Once you are weighing this all, you are necessarily not being angry, so the ability to snap back into the state on demand can be a valuable skill.