Causes Of Anger

• Don’t make the mistake of ignoring your anger.
• Be careful your anger doesn’t lead to violence.
• Anger gives you powerful motivational energy, so use it!

Unlike the feeling of boredom, the feeling of anger is a far less socially acceptable and admitted to feeling. If and when we do become angry, we then risk being judged negatively by others.

As a result of this social stigma most people try to suppress their anger, especially if they are in public. What they fail to realise however, is that their anger was trying to communicate a very important message to them.

A message which if listened to would allow them to not only respond more appropriately to their anger, but also prevent that anger from accumulating in their subconscious and unconscious mind.

So even though anger gets a bad rap, it is important to realise that the feeling of anger itself is not what’s bad.

Rather it’s what you do with that anger that determines whether this feeling is good or bad.

Why You Get Angry

Since all of our emotions come from our perceptions (how we view something to be), we can better understand anger by looking at the two main perspectives that lead to it.

Current Beliefs

The first perspective consists of our beliefs about what we consider to be “right”, “wrong” and how things “should” be.

If things are right, or how they should be, then we feel that the situation is fair.  However when things are wrong, or not as they should be, we automatically feel that the situation is unfair, which then causes us to feel anger.

The intensity of anger you experience, will be directly proportional to your perception of the amount of injustice you think you have received.  Therefore the more unfairly you are treated, the more angry you are likely to get.

Your Current Mood

The second perspective is related to your current mood. If for example you put a lot of time and effort into something, but don’t feel that you got the recognition or reward you deserved for your efforts, you are likely to feel tired and frustrated because nothing you do seems to be working.

This frustration may then cause you to think that what is happening to you is “not right” and “not fair”. As a result of this perceived injustice, you will again start to feel angry.

The Meaning Of Anger

The message anger communicates to us is one of fairness and of right and wrong.

If you perceive something as being unfair to yourself, or to the people and things you care about, then you will feel anger. This anger is meant to motivate you, so that you can take action to correct the injustice you received.

Destructive Anger

The trouble with anger is that because it is such a powerful emotional energy within the body, it can be very difficult to control.

So rather than being constructive, most of the time the anger we experience is destructive to ourselves and to those around us.

A good example of this can be found with “crimes of passion”, a term which describes a criminal act that was fuelled by a powerful emotion.

Most of these crimes of passion are murders, murders which were fuelled by the emotions of jealously and/or anger in response to a perceived injustice. Although in this case a more appropriate term for anger would be rage.

Constructive Anger

Although most people tend to associate anger with destructive consequences, it can also be used constructively.

For example, there are many organisations that have been created as a result of anger at a perceived injustice.

One such organisation is Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which was created after a mothers child was killed by a drunk driver.

This organisation now fights against drunk driving, and supports of the victims of this crime.

Motivation From Anger

As you can see from the above examples, the motivation anger generates can be a powerful force in helping us to correct a perceived injustice.

What actions we take to correct this injustice, will then determine whether we have used our anger constructively or destructively.

An Angry Open Mind?

Another message anger reveals to us is the rigidity of our thinking. For if we have firmly fixed ideas about how people should act, or the way things should be, then we are likely to become angry when things occur that conflict with those beliefs.

For example, if a child really wants to go out with their friends, but their parents won’t let them, they are likely to become angry.

The more the child refuses to give up their position, the more anger they will experience from not being able to do what they wanted.

However should this child be made to understand and accept why their parents wanted to keep them at home, their anger will quickly fade away.

This is one reason why it is important to always have an open mind, listen to new ideas and be willing to modify your existing beliefs if necessary.

Closed minded people who refuse to accept that things might be different to how they thought they were, open themselves up to experiencing lots of frustration and anger from the challenges everyday living imposes on their firmly rooted beliefs.

Anger & Fear

The final message anger reveals to us, is that of our fears. Whenever we feel angry at something because we perceive it as being unjust, our body reacts as though that injustice could also cause us harm.

The body does this through the release of “fight or flight” hormones such as adrenaline, which cause you to feel “pumped up” and full of energy.

In this state of mind an angry person may resort to violence, because essentially their body has been prepared to fight and defend itself.

For example, if you have ever felt like hitting someone who made you really angry, then what you experienced was the fight or flight response. This is why anger can so easily lead to (and often does) violence.