Anger Management
thepointmag.com
thepointmag.com
One day my counselor said to me “listen, here’s what I want you to do. When you’re starting to feel angry, just ask yourself ‘does this really matter?’. If it matters, go ahead get angry. If it doesn’t matter then why bother getting angry?”
I rarely get angry now because almost nothing actually matters enough to get angry, once you start to ask yourself the question.
Choice where there wasn’t any.
Great counselor ;)
* People are angry about different things. Maybe different kinds of things, but a taxonomy isn't important to the exploration.
* Telling people they SHOULD NOT be angry and should calm down is common.
* Telling people they SHOULD be angry (about some injustice) is also common.
* These are both kinds of the titular "anger management".
* Anger seems to involve moral insight: e.g., one is (at least sometimes) angry _in response to_ "reasons to be angry" that one perceives.
* Anger seems to involve a corruption of moral vision: e.g., revenge and maltreatment of the offender seem good when one is angry.
* Callard (the author) has an impulse to resist both kinds of "anger management" and believes others do, too. (And that we're not exactly wrong to.) Why does one not experience the call to calm down as help to dispel the corruption of vision, nor the call to be angry as help to see truths about injustice?
* Callard argues we are split in our ability to respond to [in]justice: "the more perfectly one attends to the gravity of the wrongs done, the less sensitive one becomes to the gravity of the wrongs one is poised to commit in response. The perspective of the angry person is sharply divided from the non-angry one: each can see only the side of justice they are looking at."
* "This anger divide lies at the heart of our political predicament, and structures our interactions with one another at the deepest level. And yet, for this very reason, it is itself difficult to recognize."
* We can understand the society level anger divide better by considering the anger divide in oneself.
* Personal story beginning with "A few weeks ago" illustrates the incompatible values of the angry self and the non-angry self: we can't really rank the values or even hold both at once, only switch between them.
* No wonder people angry about issue A can't see eye to eye with people not angry about A. "There is no rational way to adjudicate their conflict—the best a third-party mediator could do is flip back and forth between who they want to side with."
* "The anger divide is frequently experienced as a political disaster: How can we ever hope to get everyone on the same page? Why are people so impervious to having their minds changed, anger-wise? ...it is because they are rational, and care about justice, that ... [they] are refusing to allow others to banish them from their property, the truth."
* There is truth in anger and in not-anger. Justice may be "something on the wrong scale to be taken in by a single human response." Instead of wanting (and trying to make) everyone to feel the same way, we should recognize we are not individually emotionally complete and be glad that others cover our blind spots.
* Callard's personal story dilemma was resolved in favor of love, away from vengeance in part because her son was around, and she would have felt ridiculous explaining her vengeance to his impartial position.
* "The very presence of other people can make us better, even when they don’t make us more like them, or change us, or even understand us. Sometimes other people help us exactly by not feeling what we feel, exactly by remaining resolutely who they are."
> Consider the conflict between the person whose sense of justice makes it impossible for her to give up on her anger, and the person whose sense of justice makes it impossible for her to become angry.
There is a lot of discussion, but I don’t really see the author come to any useful, supported conclusion. The ending comment about people being nicer to each other seemingly comes out of no where.
I’m not sure what to make of it. Maybe I’m expecting an informative article when there isn’t one, or I’ve grossly missed some stated point or necessary context.
In my reading: This author is acknowledging that they're "not nice" in small personal interactions, but is feeling others are "not nice" in large structural interactions with groups and systems. And they're lamenting that others commonly praise a "water under the bridge" thinking about small person-to-person things that this author struggles with, whereas the author's choice to view larger forces that way is scolded as deserving more anger.
Does that interpretation ring with you? (I'm not saying I agree with that interpretation btw, but it's a new thought for me.)
> Does that interpretation ring with you?
Not really. I have no frame of reference for understanding either group.
I struggle with extreme emotions all the time, to the point where everyone considers them to be inappropriate. For the safety of everyone, I've learned to read and accept my emotions while also letting them go.
I find their friend problem particularly irritating. All anger do is prompt me to logically double check my relationship with the person. Then I would determine if my anger is either justified. If it was justified, I would have to decide if I need to act on it or not.
For most people, this is not a conscious process and they spend a lot of time rationalizing after the fact. If I'm going to act emotionally, I don't need to justify it.
My therapist loves me... I'm not sure if that's good or bad. :)
> My therapist loves me... I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
Yay for therapy :) Just had my first session today
This speaks more to the author’s selfishness (more accurately childishness) rather than anger. The need to be completely reciprocated in every gesture is selfish and speaks to a zero-sum mindset.
I know first-hand: Like the author I have been prone to fly off the handle much of my life, and only recently (past year or so) have realized that I was equating reciprocity with justice, and that is an incredibly narrow view of the world.
This was an eye-opener: If everyone gave only as much as they got, the world would be a significantly meaner place. Rather, it’s those who give without receiving that make the world a better place.
Since then, I stopped keeping score, give what I can when I can, and receive happily whatever is given to me, without judgement, although I am still working on that last bit (You gave me what?!?..), but then I’ve also stopped trying to be perfect.
> He was by my side as I experienced the flash of anger—which wasn’t so much about the fact that my friend hadn’t gotten me a gift, but the fact that he had endeavored to explain it away, to make excuses for himself, and the larger pattern of behavior that was embedded in…—and that was when my eyes darted in the direction of where I knew the trash can was.
That's not even mentioning that we are not privy to all the details and history of the author's relationship with her friend.
I'd bet many people might make a small joke about the situation - but the joke depends on precisely that small unhappiness, even if they won't admit it (or can't, because they're not aware of it).
"A flash of anger" (in the author's words) is very different from "fly[ing] off the handle" (in your words). Only the latter is childish.
Being aware of the former sounds like your mature, balanced last sentence, where you still might have a little judgment about what you've been given but you're still responding with grace to the other person.
Aren't these just degrees of the same? I'm not sure the value of cultivating positive view of the small manifestation, but then scolding it when it becomes big. Imho, yes it's understandable, but not a perspective we should value as part of our growth -- we should just work to will it out of our minds, and maybe someday succeed?
Yours seems like a perspective that's valorizing the control of the impulse, putting fault in "lack of control", but still aspiring to salvage a wisdom compass from the feeling...? Many would say the core feeling doesn't truly serve us in any way that something more positive couldn't equally stand in for.
Regardless, I appreciate your sharing your perspective. I'm willing to consider we're both right, and mumble mumble "different strokes for different folks", and the world works out only when we can both push for it as we please :)
Say you are talking in a small group of people. You perceive something that someone says to you as an implied insult. You _will_ feel a flash of anger, you should observe that you are angry as it bubbles up through you, but you MUST choose (a) whether or not they meant it as an insult , (b) whether or not to let it show on your face and (c) if you are going to call it out gently, call it out with a "Hey!", or turn into a pillar of rage in public (unwise, of course, but an option).
But in that moment, when you feel that initial impulse of emotion, I assert (without evidence) that the emotion cannot be suppressed -- only your outward appearance can be modulated.
In mindfulness practices, I've heard it mentioned as "noting without judgement". Maybe this is all just a matter of labels :)
Feelings are tricky to control even after you’ve noticed them, and maybe even after you’ve evaluated them. Therefore spending energy on them is not always judicious. However, every action is a choice, and letting your feelings drive you to doing something regrettable is, well, regrettable.
That said, she doesn't say that she acted on it (and only implies that she didn't), so a lot of this thread reads as melodrama.
I find the same with any impulse. I struggle to eat healthy, spend healthy and stay focused 100% of the time. But the more I do these things the less effort they require.
> Aren't these just degrees of the same?
The big immediate difference is how you treat other people. If you get angry internal emotion and then think about it, you end up treating other people well. And that emotion just helped to not be complete pushover - you noticed issue and can be assertive of needed.
Fly off handle implies that other people have to deal with your emotions, because you are throwing them at them. Basically they are more "victims". It also does not work as well as healthy assertivity, because they will seek retaliation or conclude you are asshole or avoid you etc. They will respond to you acting aggressively by protecting themselves and reacting to their feelings.
The author experiences emotion which the author recognized, controlled, analyzed where it came from. The emotion itself helped the to realize long term pattern of behavior of the other person and think about it more and decide what to do about it.
So it was both useful emotion and author succesfully controlled reaction to it. What is also good is that author does not pretend the emotion did not existed and is not trying to pretend that everything was pure logic whole time.
I think it speaks more to a lack of organizational skills. Have a single, low-impact moment of indignation on your birthday, then plan accordingly. :)
If you ask people to divide something fairly between themselves and someone else, they'll probably do it 60/40 in their own favor, while being convinced it was a fair split.
So it can make sense to apply an "I'm maybe being a jerk" discount in many situations. Or think that they probably can't see their own bias.
Many thanks, kind and helpful mods.
Stockholm syndrome?[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
I remember a lyric by Rage Against the Machine that went:
'Anger is a gift'.
I don't know if this can be squared with the Buddhist view however. Is seeing it as poison meant to say it's bad in all measures, or is there an appreciation of the dose making the poison?
There is no exception for "good anger" or "motivating anger".
At least, I'm pretty sure that applies to all strains of Buddhism, but there are many, so YMMV.
In the end I think most important is to keep perspective on things and don’t get stuck at anger which so often seems to be the case.
Would this anger Sue Johnson and the EFT brigade? (EFT stands for emotionally focused therapist)