Anger, Rage and Management (Arm with Understanding)

Many books have been written about anger, a feeling viewed as a ‘bad trait’ in our society because we focus on the downside and its negative expression. The goal, however, is to recognize anger as a normal human emotion and to learn to deal with it in appropriate ways. We’ll benefit from understanding its complex roots and avoiding labels which stigmatize.

A person with uncontrollable anger is, first of all, a threat to himself.  Anger affects our bodies by releasing stress hormones-adrenaline and cortisol- which increase heart rate and blood pressure. In excess, these chemicals can damage blood vessels and weaken the heart. Anger can also suppress the immune system, increasing one’s susceptibility to illness.

An angry person may turn to food, alcohol and/or cigarettes in order to keep angry feelings at bay and even become addicted to one or more substances.

Anger affects interpersonal relationships, driving away friends and family, creating problems at work, and contributing to social isolation.

Neither anger nor rage, its extreme manifestation, is categorized as mental illness. Yet these undergird many of the random mass killings with firearms. Contrary to common public opinion, it is a minority, or about 20 percent of these rampages, that are committed by seriously mentally disturbed people. Quoted in The New York Times on January 16, forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Stone said, “(M)ost mass murders are done by working-class men who’ve been jilted, fired, or otherwise humiliated_ and who undergo a crisis of rage and get out one of the 300 million guns in our country and do their thing”.

For me anger is unpleasant, whether it is my own or others; it is dissonant, and jars like a musical note played off-key. Displeasure motivates me to transmute and analyze it, probing its source. My observing self asks my experiencing self, what has aroused the ire?

The real tragedy is that violence sells: First, in the manufacture and sale of firearms, and second, in the media.  Sadly, the factors that would dissipate violence are far less lucrative, such as:

1. Teaching parenting skills that include nurturing, limit-setting and acting as role models who solve problems and resolve conflicts.

2. Teaching conflict-resolution in the classrooms.

3. Propagating positive role models in the media.

Conclusion: Our society glorifies anger and violent expression as a sign of strength and power. The media propagates this message. In actuality, the opposite is true: Real strength lies in containing frustration, anger, and rage. Genuine strength lies in the power to transform anger and rage into constructive expression and action.

Dear Reader, I welcome your thoughts. jsimon145@gmail.com