Anger

On the short list of primary emotions, anger often gets a bad rap. I guess that isn’t surprising. Anger can lead to violence, and it feels like a threat in our polite, civilized world. All of us experience anger, though, and repressing it causes other kinds of damage that are harder to track and control.

People sometimes talk about anger as a secondary emotion. When we feel sadness, shame, or fear, we sometimes express it as anger because the vulnerability of those other emotions is too much to bear. Anger can exist as a true primary emotion, though, when it’s a response to injustice. In that context, anger can serve as a call to action. Throughout history, people have risen up against oppression, tyrants, and live bullets because anger gave them strength. Sometimes we need to fight, and anger makes that possible.

When we aren’t manning the ramparts of revolution, however, we need to find a way to manage anger when it arrives. Rather than stuffing it back into our skull lockers, or giving it unbridled freedom to lash out at others, we need to treat it as a message. Is it alerting us to injustice--a wrong that needs to be righted? Is it the iceberg tip of some more vulnerable emotion? It’s real and it’s telling us something. It’s probably worth listening, before it auto-repeats.

Above all, we need to be aware when anger crosses over into contempt. Anger, when aimed at a person, is about actions, behaviors and consequences. Contempt is about character, personality and worth. Anger pulls us to act and to engage. Contempt makes us withdraw in despair and disgust, and that seldom leads to anything good.