The Emotion of Anger
Anger: Good or Bad?
Whatever your belief, the vilification of anger is more damaging to us than educating us correctly about its reason for being.
Understanding Anger
Anger:
Anger is one of the most vilified yet productive emotions you can have and also one of the healthiest when understood correctly.
Not being allowed to express anger and being socialised in to believing we are bad for feeling and showing anger leads us to swallowing it and internalising its damaging effects. This leads to personal illness and depression not to mention the sociological impact it has on our immediate and wider environments. Our children suffer, our parents suffer and we suffer all because we have been taught NOT to feel and subsequently express anger safely. Being taught anger is bad, is bad in itself!
Anger is a useful emotion. It can be productive as it's a natural response to threat. It's a motivator as it sits above despair and depression on the emotional scale. It is a self preservation response designed to keep us safe and beyond that; alive!
Because we have been socialised to perceive anger as dangerous to us we focus on the aggressive nature of the person displaying anger and it is this unpredictable element of anger that we become scared of. Being exposed to the aggressive element of anger in our personal environments growing up teaches us to be wary and develops within us an understanding that aggression equates to a lack of empathy and compassion. All anger is not like this.
Utilising anger for good
Anger as an emotion in and of itself is a necessary emotion. It can help us move up the emotional scale creating space for a better feeling emotion than the one we are stuck in. Moving from depression to anger creates momentum helping us to move to the next higher emotion. Being focused on the task at hand because you are angry is better than having no focus and feeling like a failure achieving nothing and remaining in bed all day.
Anger also provides the physical strength that is necessary to protect ourselves or others. It may be to gather strength to perform a rescue or survive a life threatening event. Warding off external threats and protecting those you love uses a lot of adrenalin which is produced when anger is evoked.
Whatever your perceptions and struggles with anger you can learn to understand its root cause. Begin your journey in living a life without fear of this very important emotion. Reach out for a free phone consultation by just filling in the form below.
