Anger Can Be a Necessary and Useful Emotion: In doing so anger makes it clear to us who we are. It tells us for example if our space has been invaded, if our freedom has been squashed, if our pride has been injured, if the way we see the world has been invalidated, or if our feelings have been ignored.
Among the most triggering primary emotions is frustration. Frustration is often experienced when you are feeling helpless or out of control. Over time, this emotion can cause your mood to stew until reaching an angry state.
When we become angry, our brain has sent us a message that we need to deal with a threat, such as a rival we must contend with or a need that isn't being met. It is a common misconception that we must vent our anger in order to cope with the perceived threat.
Anger often signals that someone has crossed an emotional boundary. Is there someone in your life who keeps telling you what to do, who doesn't listen to you or constantly criticises you? Are there people in your life who don't take no for an answer or abuse you emotionally?
We almost always feel something else first before we get angry. We might first feel afraid, attacked, offended, disrespected, forced, trapped, or pressured. If any of these feelings are intense enough, we think of the emotion as anger.
People often express their anger in different ways, but they usually share four common triggers. We organize them into buckets: frustrations, irritations, abuse, and unfairness.
Anger is an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Anger can be a good thing. It can give you a way to express negative feelings, for example, or motivate you to find solutions to problems. But excessive anger can cause problems.
"Healthy anger" might seem like an oxymoron - after all, isn't anger a bad thing? While the misconception abounds that anger is inherently a toxic or negative emotion, that's not actually true. Anger is something that we all experience; it's the body's natural reaction when something isn't right.
Anger is one of our most primitive emotions, and it is there to protect us. Anger can trigger the body's fight or flight response, helping us to fight or flee from danger. It alerts us that something's “up”.
Anger propels us to use our individual power, alone or collectively, to inflict costs or withhold benefits to get what we need. Individuals who constructively experience and express their anger are in a better position to fulfill their needs and control their destiny than those who suppress their anger.
Anger is linked to the sympathetic nervous system's "fight, flight, or fright" response, which prepares humans to battle. It is essentially an effective response to stressful situations and events of life. It is biological, psychological, and social with major links to survival and preservation mechanisms of life.
Anger is essentially a control tactic. Underlying anger is fear. The most common fear is not feeling in control of a person or event. Anger is an attempt to control one's own world by attempting to control the actions of others.
Humans experience a range of emotions from happiness to fear and anger with its strong dopamine response, but love is more profound, more intense, affecting behaviors, and life-changing.
On the other hand, anger is a powerful emotion and if it isn't handled appropriately, it may have destructive results for you and those closest to you. Uncontrolled anger can lead to arguments, physical fights, physical abuse, assault and self-harm.
1. People stay in it too long. One of the big mistakes I see people making in my practice is this: Staying in a situation they know will illicit anger or staying in a situation when they are angry, well beyond the point where they can function appropriately.
Unhealthy Ways of Expressing Anger
Some people respond to anger through aggressive action — punching, kicking, or breaking things, or, worse, hurting other people. The use of hurtful words as a response to anger is also unhealthy and often destructive aggression.
Telling someone who is angry that they should calm down is like throwing gasoline on flames. It's likely to cause a flare up because it holds up the very worst kind of mirror to an angry person: A mirror that doesn't just show them how they're being, but does so dripping with disapproval.
Destructive anger can be described as a beefed-up version of behavioral anger. It's an extremely dangerous type because, in addition to being potentially violent, destructive anger expresses itself as intense hatred, even in cases where it may not be warranted.
Anger itself is not classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5). For this reason, there are no diagnostic criteria for anger issues. However, anger is associated with many mental health conditions, including: antisocial personality disorder.
But overwhelming anger can destroy the foundations of life – relationships, career, home, family – and violent anger puts lives at risk. Therapy can help clients experience, accept and manage anger and feelings like it.
Different events and situations trigger anger for different people. In general, most people are more easily irritated if they are already Hungry, Annoyed, Lonely, or Tired (HALT). When you are already feeling that way, it doesn't take much to trigger your anger.
The most common universal triggers of anger are as follows: Interference with locomotion. Interference with action. Rejection by a loved one.
Epinephrine and non-epinephrine are the main chemicals which play the vital role in chemistry behind anger. In the absence of these chemicals, the body wouldn't be able to deliver off any reactions while you are in anger or in any other emotion that has involvement of adrenaline.