Mad, Irked, Miffed, upset, outraged, furious, indignant, irritated, or pissed off these are all ways we describe being angry. These are all varying degrees of anger. No matter what you call it we get angry from time to time. Where does anger come from? Why do we, as normally balanced men, get angry?
For the longest time, I use to say Anger is a useless emotion. all it does is cause destruction and it makes the situation worse. If you fly off the handle and get angry you might turn a simple misunderstanding into a situation where there is either emotional or physical damage.
I almost thought that when it came to anger you want to be like a Vulcan and show no emotions. Yet that is at odds with my thinking of don’t hold stuff in. You need to experience the different emotions you are faced with. That way you are able to understand yourself in a more complete manner.
What is Anger?
Simply put it is an emotion. It is a very strong emotion but an emotion none the less. Many people see it as part of the fight or flight conditioning we developed back when we were just trying to stay alive and got become cat food for the random saber tooth tiger.
Nowadays we often feel anger when we feel that we are threatened in some very different way. Say we perceive someone who is jockeying for our position or if we don’t get a promotion we want. We are often quick to anger when someone doesn’t say what we want to hear, or we are offended.
Frustration
Most men will get grumpy and angry when they are feeling like they are getting pressed for time. Things don’t work they way they “should”. Pile on all the other points of stress and a guy can get flat out angry fast.
A good example was here very recently I was trying to sit down to work on this very blog post. Every time I would get seated and start outlining or working on the flow of this post I would get a call from my day job saying that I needed to go out.
This last time I had gotten a few paragraphs into the post, I was frustrated and I was told we were getting a little time off. So I huffed and grumbled to the truck. As I was walked around the truck I remembers a few things that needed to be done. So I would have to stop by the yard and change trailers. Always fun my 5th wheel likes to hang when unhooking so changing trailers can be a bit of a headache.
I finally get out from under my normal trailer and started looking for a good replacement. Found several but these are the older trailers so there are minor issues with them. Thought I found one all the tires were good Backed up to test the lights and air system. Those all checked out. So I hook up and continue the check. Check the hubs and I bust a viewing window out which makes the trailer unusable.
What do you do? Well me? I lot it. I pulled Ralphie, I didn’t say fudge I said the queen mother of all dirty words. The F- – – word. Rather loudly I may add. I stomped back to the front of the truck lowered the landing gear and with no problems what so ever unhooked the truck pulled out and found a better trailer. A friend of mine was unhooking a trailer so he could grab a different one.
So frustration heaped with more frustration will often cause a guy to say some very choice words. Many times there will be hopping around and physical items being tossed about at the same time. Most of this depends on the level of frustration.
Fear
Often when guys get angry there is an element of fear involved with that whole fight or flight aspect of our old instincts. When we feel like we are trapped and there appear to be no options. We lash out.
The most common instance of this is men who lack confidence in who they are or their abilities. Jealousy is a fear based emotion that often causes people to lash out. They see the person of their affections paying attention to someone else. The feature that this new person is somehow better than they are causes them to do some pretty dumb things. Most commonly can lead to their partner leaving because the fear induced anger is too much for them to bare. To the other extream where the anger becomes aggression and physical altercations and abuse my form.
All because a person is afraid. The fear that something could possibly happen, that is the unknown. Yet the fear that it may happen is still strong enough to move to the act of aggression.
An example is from a young man I know. He is from a small town and had some serious health issues in his life. He was dotted over a good bit by the town. After graduating from high school he really wasn’t going anywhere. He had the mentality of he couldn’t be in a bigger town because e4there are too many people who “Piss him off”
Well, eventually his girlfriend had to find a job and to do that she moved to a larger town. the young man followed suit. They moved in with her mother. It was only a week until he was starting fights with the homeowner and eventually put his fist through a wall and had assaulted mother.
Where did he go with his girlfriend? Back to that same small dead-end town. All because he was afraid. That fear leads to the anger that his options were not what he wanted and so he self-sabotaged his opportunity.
Concern
As a parent, you will understand this scenario. Your son just got his driver licenses about a month ago. He went out and blew past his curfew.
1 hour goes by, then the second hour. He has been later before but what the heck. You are trying to decide should you start calling the local hospitals? How about the police? Are they in jail on account of that no good friend of his?
Then as you hang up from the second hospital you see the lights flash across the window. He’s home. how do parents act? They are mad. The moment he walks his the barrage of questions kick in
Where were you? Why are you so late? Why didn’t you call? You know what your mother was going through? Are just the tip of the iceberg. The parents are mad because they were concerned. They get upset and angry because they were put through a small personal emotional roller coaster. All because their son didn’t call and let them know that he was stuck in the sand at the river.
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Immaturity
Many times people also get angry because they don’t know that there are other emotions they are allowed to experience. There are times instead of anger they could allow themselves to experience fear, or sorrow.
Folks don’t realize that emotions are actually good. Allowing yourself to experience them fully is better. Yeah, there are some emotions that can be messy and uncomfortable to experience. Yet, allowing for those emotions to be examined in a more complete manner can allow you to grown and become a more well-rounded human being.
Without the experiences of different emotions, a person doesn’t grow as fast. The experienced they have can often cause their emotional growth to be immature.
Who does anger hurt?
Anger when unchecked can be very damaging. If you choose to not experience that emotion. If you mix aggression with anger you often have the same results of mixing oxygen and gasoline together. It can be violent and devastating.
The results are contingent on a choice you make. Do you react or do you respond?
Now I first heard this concept from Zig Ziggler. To show the difference between the two, the best example is in the medical field. When you are giving a treatment for any ailment. Which do you want to hear
“He had a reaction to the treatment” or “He is responding to the treatment”
Reacting to an event is often emotionally laced. There are often negative emotions and thoughts fueling the reaction. A reaction to an experience is no a great experience.
Now if you respond to that treatment then you are often growing you’re coming through that experience, Often you are also stronger because of it. Responses often happen when a person allows for the emotions to be experienced. you can take a clear thought and make a better insightful decision.
When you react with anger in particular and you add aggression to the mix there are so many aspects of your life that you can damage. Relationships have been obliterated channels of communications are often severed when they most need to be open because someone got angry and spouted off a hurtful retort.
Don’t act when you are angry.
Yeah, this can be tough to do. Don’t act when you are flying off the handle. Is that even possible? It is but it can be a challenge because anger is a strong emotion. It shows on our faces and how we hold ourselves. Anger, as mentioned before, is a powerful negative emotion.
It is best to do a 5 by 5 or step back from the problem that is irritating you and wait 5 minutes. So if you are working on something for a long time and you are getting frustrated cause the single offer is not fitting into the thingamajig like it is supposed to. If you walk away for 5 minutes and come back you will see that there is a screw that a tab wasn’t fully inserted.
If you are online and you are faced with a critic the best this to do is write out your response. Experience that emotion, but do not send it for 24 hours. Allow your anger to simmer down a little then reread that response and edit accordingly. This often results in you hitting delete and writing a whole new response.
You are giving them control
Another point about getting angry is that you are surrendering control of yourself over to another person. Most often that person is someone you really don’t want to have control of your life and your thoughts. So when you are with a person who intentionally makes you angry, ask yourself why are you letting them live in your head rent free and control your life?
Don’t hold it in
The worst thing you could do with anger though is to keep it buried. Let it simmer and build and build. Often resentment and bitterness are birthed by people who have anger stuffed down and avoid experiencing and analyzing the reason behind that anger. We all know that one guy who is just unpleasant. They seemed to be pissed off all the time. Those are often the people who have had hurt feelings, anger and other negative emotions tucked deep inside and avoid them at all cost.
Don’t do that. The first moment you have a chance to examine it. Throw your curious nature to the problem. Find out all the who, what, where, and why’s, you are angry. is it because you didn’t have enough peanut butter on your sandwich? You can find the reason why. Then address the problems and fix it. Doing so helps you grow as a more balanced person.
So how do you handle Anger? As a man who is looking for some self-improvement maybe you have a unique way of approaching anger. Share it in the comments below.
featured Photo by Mean Shadows on Unsplash
