Anger gets a bad rap. Almost every patient I've ever worked with and almost every person I've ever met has struggled to view their anger as healthy and to manage it effectively. ALL EMOTIONS ARE HEALTHY! They are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. Emotions are part of the natural fiber of being human. We don't judge ourselves for being thirsty, sleepy, or hungry. Yet we judge ourselves terribly for having feelings, especially unpleasant feelings. Most of us learned at a young age that these feelings are unacceptable, bad, shameful, even dangerous. But none of us were born this way. We don't come out of the womb judging our normal human emotions as something to be avoided. We learn this along the way, usually from a very young age. More often than not, our parents and their parents learned the same things about their emotions, so these inaccurate messages get passed on from generation to generation. If our parents cannot view their own anger as healthy, how can they teach their children that anger is healthy?
People also get confused between emotions and behaviors. Emotions are simply the feelings themselves. Anger, sadness, happiness, fear - these are just pure feelings. Behaviors are the strategies we use to express our emotions. We have choice over our behaviors; we have no choice over our feelings. Every human feels every emotion, maybe even each day. Emotions are fluid and can change often throughout the day. We can no more control what we feel than we can choose not to breathe. When people view anger as unhealthy, I believe they are confusing behavior with emotion. Many people have learned unhealthy ways to express their anger. Some people become violent, aggressive, and lash out in hurtful ways. Others turn to substances or sex to attempt to manage their anger. Still others turn their anger against themselves and become depressed and beat themselves up horribly.
In my last post I discussed pathological accommodation. One of the ways people accommodate others is by splitting off their anger because they view it as bad, thereby becoming inauthentic selves. Therapy can help patients learn about their own relationship to their anger and help them unlearn the faulty beliefs they were taught growing up. It can also help them learn to access and express their anger in healthy ways. This all requires that patients first shift their perspective on the emotion of anger so that they can come to view it as legitimate and valid. I am hopeful when I see that more kids today are being taught about feelings from a young age and being taught how to identify and regulate their emotions. Saying to a child, "You are really mad!" is a great way to empathize with the child and help him identify his anger. To follow it up with, "It's ok to be mad, but it's not ok to hit people" teaches the child to differentiate his emotions from his behaviors. We communicate that our anger is valid and we can learn effective ways to manage it. Psychotherapy can help patients learn the same lessons, which will in turn enable them to become more authentic human beings. Nurturing a positive relationship to one's anger is key!