Anybody can become angry – that is easy; but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. – Aristotle
It’s easy to get caught up in emotions, to follow the flow and intensity of our impulses. It’s natural… animal… primal. And without intervening with our consciousness, it can be dangerous. This is how we operated throughout much of human history… which is why most of human history was so terribly, horribly violent.
But it’s not how most of us today usually operate, because we have a choice. Over time, particularly through the Enlightenment, we’ve culturally refined our ability to choose – and that ability is central to what makes us human.
When we feel like reacting with anger, fear or hurt feelings – anything that feels like it’s an automatic, purely emotional response – we can react without thinking, blindly following the tides of our emotions.
Or we can choose to do something different.
Stephen Covey talks about this ability to choose as being a “pause button.” A moment between stimulus and response, that transforms that response from an automatic, rote behavior to a conscious, human one.
When we feel like reacting to a situation, instead of going right into the reaction, we can “press the pause button” and consider what we genuinely – from our consciously chosen values and priorities – want to do.
During the ‘60s, ‘70s and well into the ‘80s, the idea that we should “let our feelings out” was a common message in psychology that found its way into popular culture.
This had a positive side. Our emotions are where we live. Awareness of our feelings deepens our experience, and can help us understand one another and even think more clearly. Love, joy, excitement, elation, satisfaction, peace, warmth… as well as fear, pain, grief, anger, and sadness… These all bring us essential information about how people and events are affecting us.
Our emotions are how we experience the meaning of life. To be more in touch with our emotions is to be more in touch with ourselves. To be able to easily and appropriately express our emotions allows us to live a rich, full life with satisfying connections with others.
“Appropriately” is an important qualifier here, though. There can be a downside to emotional expression, in two ways:
- It can be harmful over time to practice “releasing” anger. Because anger – particularly intense anger or rage – is fueled by the fight branch of our sympathetic nervous system, it’s often less of an emotion and more what I call a reaction: a more primitive protective response. Because of this, anger doesn’t actually release, it just intensifies. It becomes a well-worn path; a stronger habit.
- Emotions are useful if we integrate them with our conscious awareness. Without conscious awareness, our emotions can guide us all over the place. Maybe some good places, maybe some bad places, but almost never the places we consciously want to go.
When we practice venting our anger, we get very good at venting our anger, with all of the interpersonal and health problems this can bring.
The fight branch of our sympathetic nervous system gives us a burst of power and focus to fuel a last ditch effort to fend off and escape a predator. That’s what it’s for. That’s the level of intensity that flows into our system. These days, a powerful expression of anger is almost like our appendix: a vestigial remnant of a bygone function. There is very little use for a full-blown blast of anger for most people most of the time.
The pure emotion of anger may have served a stronger purpose long ago when the world was a much more violent place (the world or our ancestors was, taken as a whole, far more violent than it is today. See Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature and Lawrence Keeley’s War Before Civilization).
As an emotion, anger is often a response to a sense that a boundary has been violated in some way. The difference between an emotion and a reaction is that a reaction includes a full burst of energy to escape a threatening situation (or with a freeze reaction, a drop in energy to endure and survive it); whereas an emotion is more about learning how to respond better next time. (I go into much more detail about this, with references and skills to practice, in my Mastering Emotions, Moods and Reactions Workbook).
Once we identify what we’re angry about and which action would best deal with the situation, continuing to fuel the emotion of anger does little good.
Beyond asserting our boundaries, expressing anger is often the least effective strategy for resolving conflict, in part because – above a certain level of escalation – our higher brain functions recede, along with our capacity to understand one another.
Our emotions are important, but they are not infallible guides. They are often a result of neural pathways we have established in our brains over years of practice. They can be automatic reactions to what we may believe is going on – before we even get a chance to think.
One of the common features of criminals is that they don’t stop to think about what they’re about to do. They tend toward immediate gratification – basic reactions of pleasure and pain – and haven’t developed the interest in or awareness of the long-term consequences of their actions.
Which brings us back to Covey’s “pause button.” If you feel yourself swept up into a tide of emotion in reaction to something somebody has said or done, you may decide to express your feelings… or you may not. The pause button is the key to our conscious awareness; it allows us the time and space to observe and choose.
You may decide that you really do want to let someone have it with a verbal lashing. In that case, make sure you do so with full conscious awareness that this is your choice… and accept the consequences (and there will be consequences).
You may decide to express your feelings more effectively, relating to the other person in a way that they can hear you and understand your experience and perspective, in the hope that the two of you can deal better with similar situations in the future. That will require you to have a better understanding the other person, too; what happened for both of you and how best to handle it. There will be consequences to that, too, but you’re likely to be happier about them.
Whatever you decide, use your conscious awareness to put a step between yourself and your automatic reactions. The next time you feel drawn to vent your emotions, give yourself a moment first. Press the pause button and decide what you really want to do.
PS: I’m currently expanding my life coaching practice. Go to my website to sign up for a free 30-minute initial conversation.
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