The Anatomy of Anger
Accessing the Benefits of This Powerful Emotion While Putting to Bed its Abuses
“Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way that is not within everyone’s power and that is not easy.”
There is a great deal of power in anger, whether it be stored up or released upon the world. It's probably the emotion we're most familiar with, likely because it is the one emotion often strong enough, efficient enough, and violent enough, to subdue every other emotion. Namely, those emotions that make us feel weak and vulnerable. This includes, among others, heartache, sorrow, deep frustration, loneliness, isolation, regret, and rejection.
Each of us knows that these unique but interconnected emotional states are a necessary and healthy part of human life, allowing us to process the complexity of our experiences and to explore the reaches of our existence. They help us gain understanding, release pain, heal, find direction, and move forward. But knowing a thing doesn't guarantee our fealty to it. We don't like feeling weak or exposed, even when that temporary sense of vulnerability or fragility has the potential to lead us to a better place. Most of us don't sign up for hard work unless we can see the payoff right away.
Allowing ourselves to move freely and honestly within less buoyant emotional landscapes has never been easy for us. And it isn't helped by a sea of media that seems hell-bent on making us drink from either one or both of two extremes, melodrama or cynicism and nihilistic apathy. Most of the time, finding that place in between, where we feel free and alive in the fullness of our own emotions without the need to either over or undercook them, is no easy task, but worth every ounce of work it takes to find.
The other reason we move toward anger so readily is because the sense of power we get from it feels actionable. Where sadness, regret, and depression seem inert, a force that holds us back from everything we want or need, anger moves. It isn't surprising that some of my most financially and professionally successful seasons coincided with times of great heartache which I turned into a moving and very useful anger. It is a force that sets us to flight, bashes through walls, overcomes certain assumed limitations, ignores pain, and propels us toward something other than where we find ourselves, at least that's what we think. What we often don't realize until much further down the road, is that we haven't really moved as far as we'd have hoped, especially internally. Every emotion we thought we were silencing with our anger hasn't really gone anywhere. And with time and a lack of attention, they've only grown more complicated, more tainted, and quite difficult to make sense of. Not to mention we may have done a great deal of harm along the way if we were allowing anger to steer the ship.
Anger, though, is necessary and useful. Without our ability to both access and externalize it, there would be certain experiences, certain failures or rejections, certain losses, disappointments and conflicts, that would have no equivalent emotional outlet, ultimately leaving us impotent and defeated. I can be a bit stoic now and then. And I tend to often underplay the intensity of my emotions. This can be a good trait, especially when compared to the "shout at the world" mindset of Twitter or TikTok. But there is great value in understanding the role anger and its healthy expression can have on your life. Notice, I said healthy expression.
Anger can remind us of what we hold dear. It can reveal our personal convictions. It can shine a light on our boundaries and those things we consider nonnegotiable. It confirms the limits of our patience, the ferocity of our beliefs, and at times, the strength of our love for those closest to us. This is revealed in the passion we have to protect them and in the intensity of our conflicts with our family and friends. At times, caring enough about something or someone means getting angry enough to argue, to fight, or to struggle painfully toward understanding, reconciliation, and a deeper level of intimacy.
Spouses and lovers take note of this, your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, may sometimes pick a fight, not because there is really any practical need for it, but because the conflict, and specifically, your response to it, will reveal to them how dedicated you still are to the relationship, how passionately you still love them. They want to know they are worth the struggle.
Anger's uses are many. Anger moves quickly. It can open cracks when needed, push aside peripheral details and get down to the matter at hand instantly. It distills certain other feelings to a fine point. Funnily enough, while we believe it to be a self-protecting emotion, it can be just as vulnerable and revealing as everything else we feel. Outbursts of anger can cut us to the core in a flash, opening old scars to let the infection bleed out and newer, softer flesh begin to knit. While we usually consider it a shielding emotion, there are many times when its full venting immediately reveals the raw flesh beneath our covering. So often, the strength and volume of our anger is equal to the strength of our heartache.
“There are few things with so great an ability to change so much in such a finite measure of time. But are we changing the things we really need to change?”
Anger is no devil. It is a powerful and essential aspect of our being. And we can do unimaginable harm to ourselves and others when we repress and deny it. It will either build to the point of untimely and poorly aimed release, usually disproportionate to our original suffering, or it will remain inside, turning back on us like the reverse arc of a solar flare and destroy us from the inside. The difficult and very necessary art to it all is that we allow ourselves to feel it when it comes, to express it in a way that clarifies and resolves, and to focus it in a manner that supports life instead of scraping away at it.
We don't often think of anger as a life-affirming or life-giving force. It is most often viewed in light of its potential for destruction and its nearness to violence. And this isn't a completely inaccurate viewpoint. Like no other emotion, anger enables us to wreak havoc on our lives and the lives of others, and raze seemingly permanent and long-established relational structures to the ground. There are few things with so great an ability to change so much in such a finite measure of time. But are we changing the things we really need to change? Are we doing so in a way that builds up or merely subjects others to the destructive force of our own unresolved emotional storms?
Anger is easy. Knowing exactly how, where, and to what degree to use it, is the art and science of the thing. I don't suggest overanalyzing it to the point that you lose yourself to a state of mental gymnastics, fretting over how to externalize your anger properly every time it peaks out. But knowing yourself well will help significantly.
It's a good thing to understand your particular style of anger and how you view and express it when you're by yourself, and especially, when you are with others. Do you suppress it, medicating it with substances, food, television and video games, social media, or anything else? Do you let it roar, ungated and without guidelines, throwing it anywhere the spirit of the moment takes you, only to find a trail of broken things when the rage party is done? Do you analyze it, break it down into smaller pieces, and attempt to put it into a rational context with everything else in your life, even the many things that have no clearly rational explanation? Are you passive aggressive with it, saving it up for arguments and moments where just the right rage-dipped comment can cut to the bone? Do you lead others with anger, not so much guiding, teaching, and mentoring, but forcing, scaring, or coercing them toward decision and movement? Do you hold it deep inside where no one can see or touch it, letting that power, internally, carve you hollow with self-loathing and hatred, and externally, in isolation, rejection, and indecision? Or have you, in some small way, managed to find a relatively healthy balance of emotional freedom, expression, and natural integration into other parts of your life?
For most of us, it is a combination of these, and many other nuances I've not mentioned. But there is usually a style we lean on more than others, one that, while sometimes damaging, affords us some outcome we value or some level of protection we feel we need, albeit a fleeting outcome and an illusory protection. This is a potent realization, and something I finally learned years ago while part of a very empowering and healing men's group, that even the worst choices or habits provide us with some perk, protection, or benefit that fills some void for a brief time. Recognizing where this need lies and why we repeatedly fill it with something detrimental is key to our growth. And taking time to understand our usual modes of operation allows us to enter a tense or anger-filled situation with enough clarity to at least know what not to do with our anger, even if we don't know what we should do with it.
“This is a peculiar attribute of anger, that it feels justified in trying to convince everyone else that our own anger, that our emotions, are the fault of everyone else but us.”
One of the most harmful things about anger is how it compels us toward temporary blindness and unhinged action. This is also one reason why it often feels so good. It's a bit like getting drunk and letting go of our personal inhibitions and convictions. Unchecked anger makes it easy to cross personal lines, makes us feel alive in the moment, able to do what we want and then just apologize for it later, because "Hey, I was angry." As if the presence of anger is a justification for doing anything we want with it. "Look, I was drunk, I was tired, I was frustrated, I wasn't feeling well." Insert any number of scenarios. It feels good to let our inhibitions down, even when we know this will later return to bite us. And we adore it when life hands us a get out of jail free card, even though we know it's bullshit. No one else escapes unharmed from our temporary madness.
I'm not saying we shouldn't express the truth of what we feel. On the contrary, I believe doing so is imperative for a healthy life. But self-expression, especially that which impacts our relationships, is a skill worth cultivating. It is important for each of us to build relationships where we feel comfortable and encouraged to share the reality, depth, and intensity of our thoughts and feelings, even when they aren't comfortable. This, however, is not the same thing as emotionally vomiting on people. It isn't the same as using our emotions to get away with despicable behavior and adolescent ways of relating to others.
This is a peculiar attribute of anger, that it feels justified in trying to convince everyone else that our own anger, that our emotions, are the fault of everyone else but us. It may be true that someone or something else sparked the original conflict, even fanned the flames. It is definitely possible that someone else was the catalyst for our current unrest. But our emotions are our responsibility, not someone else's. We don't get to dump on other people and expect or demand they clean up the mess we've made. We must do everything we can, by ourselves, with our loved ones, with those who guide and mentor us, and with those who assist us in any way, to put our emotions within an accurate context. We alone have the ability to use them responsibly and to guide them toward beneficial outcomes.
It is good, then, that life usually affords us a few individuals who develop the capacity to know us deeply, a spouse, sibling, or friend, whose bond is so close that they learn our unique styles of emotional expression and the best ways to encourage us toward healthy release, clarity, and growth. We are still responsible for these emotions. But it's an incredible gift to have one or two people who know us so intimately that they not only have the ability to interpret our individual emotional peculiarities, but love us enough to forgive many of our frailties.
Anger is a gift, as strange as that may sound, just like every other emotion at our disposal. It is one of the ways we are able to reach out and touch the myriad surfaces of our life. It helps us clarify things that have been sitting in the dark too long. It can uphold the truth and defend that which we cherish. Still, it has the potential to explode and level everything in its path if we don't use it wisely. The key to a healthy expression of anger, really, is love. What I mean is, love and respect for the lives you and your anger touch. This includes yourself. Stay conscious of your anger and its origins. Don't allow it to run your life and muscle in on your decisions. It has a knack for making idiots of otherwise intelligent men and women. It will stupefy and blunt. Do your best to stay calm and sharp in the midst of anger.
If you use this gift artfully, healthy anger will allow you to know yourself better, express the truth of your life more clearly and with greater satisfaction, and empower you to defend goodness and oppose evil in various corners of life. And all this, with increasing skill. Own your anger, along with all your emotions. Don't bury them alive. They only come back uglier and more dangerous later on. Your emotions aren't meant to be weapons or excuses. They are beautiful tools for exploration and understanding, and hopefully, a growing capacity for grace and for empathy.