Anger Illness

[Misselle]

Anger, pain and depression are sometimes perceived as one big emotion, but when you don’t distinguish between them, they could end up fueling each other.

Anger, pain and depression are three negative experiences so closely bound together it can sometimes be hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Pain is a complex phenomenon that has emotional and physical components. The emotions play a huge role in the experience of pain, and pain is intimately associated with depression. It's long been known that the psychic pain of depression feeds anger. But just as often, anger fuels depression.

A powerful emotion physiologically and emotionally, anger often feels good—but only for the moment. It can be a motivating force that moves you to action. But there are good actions and bad ones; it's vital to distinguish between the two.

Many people confuse anger and hostility. Anger is a response to a situation that presents some threat. Hostility is a more enduring characteristic, a predisposition, a personality trait reflecting a readiness to express anger.

Anger is usually anything but subtle. It has potent physiological effects. You feel it in your chest. You feel it in your head. You feel it coursing through your body.

Nevertheless, anger can be insidious. Anger confers an immediate sense of purpose; it's a shortcut to motivation. And if there's something depressed people need, it's motivation. But anger creates a cycle of rage and defeatism.

When you feel anger, it provides the impulse to pass the pain along to others. The boss chews you out, you then snap at everyone in your path. Anger, however, can eventually lead you into self-pity, because you can't slough off the self-hurt.

Anger is classically a way of passing psychic pain on to others. The two-step: You feel hurt, "poor me," "I hate you." It's a way of making others pay for your emotional deficits. It is wise to change that tendency. Whether or not anger fuels depression, it isn't good for the enjoyment of life.

Here are ways to keep anger from feeding your depression.

First, of course, is to identify anger and to acknowledge it. Anger is one of those emotions whose expression is sometimes subject to taboos so that people can grow up unable to recognize it; they feel its physical discomfort but can't label it.

Build a lexicon for your internal states. If you have a word for your emotional state, then you can begin to deal with it. Feelings are fluid; you need to stop and capture them in a word, or else you lose them and don't know you have them. A label improves your ability to understand your feelings.

View your anger as a signal. It is not something to be escaped. It is not something to be suppressed. It is something to be accepted as a sign that some deeper threat has occurred that needs your attention.

Make yourself aware of the purpose your anger serves. Be sure to distinguish purpose from passion. Things that have a positive purpose seek betterment, growth, love, enhancement, fulfillment. Things that have a negative purpose are motivated by a sense of deficiency. Your boss yells at you, you feel diminished; the anger you express at others is driven by the blow you've just received. Are you enraged about an inequity or unfairness?

In order to identify your motivation, you need to look within. It's a matter of becoming psychological-minded and engaging in introspection. Tune into the inner dialogue that you customarily have with yourself.

If your anger is deficiency-motivated, driven by a wish to rectify a wrong you believe done to you, work on acceptance. Give up your obsession about the wrong. See that the opposite of anger is not passivity but more functional assertiveness.
Uproot mistaken beliefs that underlie your response. Very often anger is the result of beliefs that lead you to place unreasonable demands on circumstances, such as, that life must be fair. Unfairness exists. The belief that you are entitled to fairness results from the mistaken idea that you are special. If you feel that you are special, you will certainly find lots to be angry about, because the universe is indifferent to us.
Insisting that life must be fair is not only irrational, it will cause you to collect injustices done to your noble self. Even if you are experiencing nothing more than your fair share of unfairness, such a belief can still fuel rage and lead to depression.

Those who hold the deep belief that life should always be fair cannot abide when it is unfair. That leads directly to rage that is totally inert, because they believe there is nothing that they can do about the unfairness. They feel helpless and hopeless—in other words, depressed. Self-pity is another description of the same phenomenon.

Notice your own complaining. Listen for both overt and covert complaining. Overt complaining hassles others. It's really a manipulative strategy. Know when it's becoming a downer and a barrier to a strategy of effectiveness—like complaining about a fly in your soup. Covert complaining hassles you; it drags you down into passivity and inertia. Once you notice it, determine to give it up.
Once you can accept that life sometimes is unfair, then you can pursue positive purpose. You can work constructively against injustices you find, transforming your anger into passion. Or you can pursue fulfillment in spite of the unfairness that exists.





Publication: Blues Buster
Publication Date: 1 November 2003
Last Reviewed: 17 May 2006
(Document ID: 3132)

[Misselle]

Knowing about this changed my life - I had never recognized this as part of my mother's depression. I also see myself in the deficiency-related aspect - WOW

[mellotripp]

When I was told that all the misery I was going thru was God's way of building up my character. I could not help but feel that I really did not need
all that character building. I must remain patient for whatever God's plans for me now, under the circumstances, can only be destroyed if I choose to tackle them with anger. For anger is only my own insecurity and lack of faith, showing itself on the outside. God help me.

[free2bunme]

Anger is classically a way of passing psychic pain on to others. The two-step: You feel hurt, "poor me," "I hate you." It's a way of making others pay for your emotional deficits.

View your anger as a signal. It is not something to be escaped. It is not something to be suppressed. It is something to be accepted as a sign that some deeper threat has occurred that needs your attention. Make yourself aware of the purpose your anger serves.

Uproot mistaken beliefs that underlie your response. Very often anger is the result of beliefs that lead you to place unreasonable demands on circumstances, such as, that life must be fair.

anger is only my own insecurity and lack of faith, showing itself on the outside

Thank you all for these insights, really needed to read them today.

[Misselle]

Notice your own complaining. Listen for both overt and covert complaining. Overt complaining hassles others. It's really a manipulative strategy. Know when it's becoming a downer and a barrier to a strategy of effectiveness—like complaining about a fly in your soup. Covert complaining hassles you; it drags you down into passivity and inertia. Once you notice it, determine to give it up.
Once you can accept that life sometimes is unfair, then you can pursue positive purpose. You can work constructively against injustices you find, transforming your anger into passion. Or you can pursue fulfillment in spite of the unfairness that exists.

I have had many occasions to think about this lately, and seeing complaining in this light has changed my entire outlook. Thinking about this has stopped me in my tracks from complaining more than once this past week.

[fibiray]

This posting is certainly relevant to me today. I had a day where I was in the foulset of moods and blew my stack on several occasions. Being over tired didn't help but I found also that the demands of others and not setting up my boundaries with them led me to where I was rushed off my feet with too many things to do. As a result I express this in violent words and it gets dished out onto hubby and son, or the nearest person to me at the time.
I find at times simply saying no such an over welming thing and I beat myself up for it. thats me for now

[janbear]

Thanks for the this thread Misselle. Very thought provoking for me realizing the difference between anger and hostility in me.