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Anger (in real life) ...

19:04 / 15.03.06

Some of the response in the Anger on Barbelith thread in Policy got me thinking. I think there's a degree of crossover with my response to anger in real life and that on the board. So I thought I'd ask the board how people approach, feel about and deal with this emotion. Do you bottle it up? Hit things? Hit people? Scream? Cry?

How do you feel about it's expression - is it righteous? A self-indulgence? A bad habit? A strength? Do you find it's expression in yourself blocked or easy to "let rip"? Do you experience this as a gender issue?

I'm more interested in HOW people express and deal with anger, and how they feel about it as an emotion, rather than what specifically makes you angry. The world is filled with opportunities to get pissed off after all. I know some of this ground has already been covered in the thread linked to above, but it I thought a specifc off-board focus might lead to some interesting answers.

I'll post my own answers further down the thread, providng anyone answers .. but you better do, else I'll be really pissed off...

19:17 / 15.03.06

I should probably add something here about not wanting to take away from people's experiences when they have righteous cause to be angry. Still interested in how people process this though, if it's not too emotionally loaded.

I was going to go into stuff - probably will - about how I manage and deal with my own anger, but I'm white (looking), hetrosexual, male and 6 foot 4, so I doubt if I have to put up with as much shit as some people.

19:23 / 15.03.06

I really dislike feeling angry because I feel out of control and I want it to stop. Because of that I try to fight it and sometimes that works. Sometimes fighting it makes it much worse and then I turn into a horrible raging, crying person. Mostly I think the crying is the frustration of being angry.

I find breaking things helps. Maybe it's like throwing the rage away? I haven't done it very much but I recall when I have the anger has almost instantly gone.

I really do hate being angry.

19:48 / 15.03.06

As a guy I used to get very angry, very easily. It's like I was always almost angry. The anger would rarely last long but it felt almost uncontrollable while it was there, and I punched holes in doors a couple of times while angry, and kicked the wall more often.

Since I replaced most of the testosterone with oestrogen I usually wind up laughing at either myself or the person causing the anger, or else I just don't get angry at all, just cold and calculating.

I wish I'd been like this when I was a guy.

Oh, but I still tend to say really evil things when I’m angry. I’ve got to learn not to do that because it’s scary and stupid (and I’m never actually going to do the things I talk about, please god).

20:14 / 15.03.06

Its rare I get angry, I find when I have reacted angrily in the past to resolve a situation it can have the opposite effect. Some people can control their anger and use it effectively. As I do not have the experience of being an angry person I tend to be uncomfortable when angry and can say the wrong thing or make mistakes.

I have a friend who is easily angered and we often have arguments as a result of his temper tantrums, I act calm when I am dealing with him and I stay in control.

I have another friend who has real anger problems so much so that he attends anger management classes with other angry people.

One day they turned up to class and found out that their class had been cancelled and the teacher had not bothered to let them know, they were really angry that day. I think it may have been done as a test to see how they were progressing.

*

20:16 / 15.03.06

When I was living as a woman I would often get angry, a slow simmering anger that would build and build and made me feel out of control for the rest of the day, even if what I was angry about was a really small thing, like a traffic irritation. I had plenty of violent urges which I kept tightly under wraps.

Now that I'm on testosterone anger comes on me in a flash, as soon as there's something to be angry about, and then disperses just as quickly. If I can maintain control and keep acting like a human for just a few seconds, there's nothing to worry about.

However, it's harder to act like a human for those few seconds. Not that I'm prone to violent rages, but I used to be so angry and so practiced at controlling it, and now that I don't have that practice of hanging on for hours or days at a time, I'm more likely to slip and say something I don't mean, or raise my voice in frustration.

A few weeks ago I was late for my injection, without realizing it. I didn't notice until I began to feel sort of violently depressed and snappish, like the ground was sliding under me and the least little thing might make me lose my balance. It was scary for me to realize for the first time how much the chemicals I've chosen to take actually affect my moods, and to realize that at this point I've truly become dependent on them. It was also scary to be back in that state and not be as good at controlling myself as I used to be. I pretty much withdrew from everyone until I got myself back in balance, and it was really useful to have that option, let me tell you.

And I used to think people who talked about how going on hormones affected their moods were just reflecting unconscious stereotypes.

20:17 / 15.03.06

Anger is very complex subject for me on a personal level. When I was growing up, my mother was in a rage (in effect yelling, screaming, threatening, etc.) a great deal of the time... and as kids, my younger brother and I were very angry in general and at times violent toward each other for what are, now, obvious reasons. We were forbidden from expressing frustration, anger, or pretty much any negative emotion in any form so this led to a lot of suppressed rage that we covertly unleashed on each other whenever possible.

Mirroring that somewhat, when my parents split up (I was 20) my mother told me that one of the biggest problems in the marriage, for her, was that she was "never allowed to be angry." That shocked the hell out of me since I perceived her as nearly always angry. I think that probably her parents did to her what she did to us... and then as adult her susceptibility to anger just spiraled out of control. She would, for example, scream at us for five full minutes just for dropping cookie crumbs on the floor, if she'd just swept it.

Meanwhile my dad was much slower to anger (slower still now that he's more happily married), but being a very religious man he tended to express what you'd call "righteous anger," not so much losing control or seeming rageful as loudly and forcefully preaching at and morally rebuking whomever had provoked his ire.

For me any expression of anger is almost impossible to untangle from my feelings about my parents', and mainly my mother's, anger - particularly in the context of my romantic relationships, as you'd expect. When I'm angry it's often because I feel my point of view is being devalued, that I'm been silenced or shushed, and I feel helpless and want to lash out... but then a part of me always reacts by worrying that I'm going to repeat my mother's pattern of always feeling shushed but always being angry.

But actually I don't get angry often. Annoyed, yes, often... but as I've crept towards 30 and gained some healthy distance from my family (and am almost cut off from my mother), I've gotten pretty good at either putting things into perspective or eliminating them from my life if necessary.

21:03 / 15.03.06

Lula: I really dislike feeling angry because I feel out of control and I want it to stop.

Same here, but that's also a physical reaction for me. I kind of... shake when I'm angry. Properly angry - the sort of angry that doesn't happen very often, but comes down like a thunderstorm when it does. Like shivering. I don't really know why that is. That then affects my voice, which begins to waver as a result of my body doing the electrocution shuffle, which then embarrasses me, which then makes me more angry.

I tend not to let it out immediately, though - it stays inside, gets focused for a while so that I don't end up ranting and raving, matures like a fine wine, then comes out in a concentrated stream of vicious bile once there's too much in there to keep the lid on. And then I worry about the fallout from it and become angry with myself again. So yeah - not productive.

The good thing about it is that the physical reaction acts as an early warning system to myself - it's like a flag that goes up, telling me to move myself out of the situation. There are times where that's more difficult than you'd want it to be - it's not something that's very easy to do if you're at work, for example - but if I can put myself somewhere else, then I do. Best if I can talk with other people - it snuffs out the fuse, takes my mind off whatever it was that got to me and means that it isn't given the opportunity to start fermenting.

I do make a conscious effort to place myself elsewhere when I feel it coming down now.

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

23:27 / 15.03.06

I get really angry sometimes, but I've noticed that in the alst year or two I can't stay angry for more than 10 or 20 minutes, after which point I completly mellow out.

When I was growing up I got picked on a lot, so I tended to blow up on people (I seem to recall repeatedly slamming a kid's head into a desk in grade 7 becuase he was harassing me), and my late stepfather tended to respond very angrily towards me when I did something wrong. So it was weird moving from one house where being angry was fine so long as you didn't hit someone, to moving to live with my father and stepmother, who HATE any displays of negative emotion.

WHich is to say that you can be angry, but you're not allowed to show it, or act it. Doesn't matter what the situation is, or how much cause you have. It really used to piss me off when I lived at home, how I'd get annoyed about something and told not to riase my voice...despite them being happy to raise their voices to tell me to shut up.

Now...I dunno. Its not that I don't get angry. I do. I tend to get annoyed by little things (I get into a bad mood, for instnace, if I step in water...dunno, it just pisses me off somehow), but it really takes someone directly insulting or physically touching me to get me angry. I'm really picky about non-relatives touching me in ways that aren't handshakes (I don't mean sexually...I mean that a casual slap on the back just...gah).

Generally, though, I have two ways of dealing with anger: socially acceptable, and not socially acecptable.

The first is that I just shut up, find some place that's out of the way, and just seeth until I feel better. This, my father and stepmother told me, is apparently the only acceptable way of dealing with being angry.

Socially unacceptable? I find that I stop being angry a lot quicker if I howl. Y'know, sometimes how you feel like you just have to make a sound? Yeah. I feel a lot better if I do that. Also, punching something helps (inanimate objects are fine...one of these days I'm getting a punching bag). I find that when I'm angry I have a lot of excess energy. Howling and hitting something. My parents would be shocked by such a...well my father would probably say that I'm not a low class punk and shouldn't act like it.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

08:03 / 16.03.06

I find breaking things helps. Maybe it's like throwing the rage away? I haven't done it very much but I recall when I have the anger has almost instantly gone.

My hairdryer stopped working recently at a crucial moment and paid the ultimate price for its betrayal.

When I'm at work and my energy gets up, I'm almost always in rage mode. If something isn't where it's supposed to be I'll curse everything in sight and threaten to cut peoples' heads off. How do I deal with it? I don't, really. I think I'm using as fuel, most likely to the detriment of my co-workers (so far no one has complained, but maybe they are just frightened).

But y'know, outside work I very rarely lose my temper. There's only been one time I can remember being so angry I actually put hands on someone in an aggressive manner. Rebellious electronics (hairdryers, playstation controllers, graphing calculators) are a different story.

09:15 / 16.03.06

Ah, a good opportunity to post the picutre of my 40 GB ipod, that I threw along my hallway, when it once again refused to cooperate. It bounced a few times like a flat stone on the water and then unfolded like a little butterfly.

I still get angry about once a week, but I can control it much better now. Tuesday a policeman told me to cross the street and refused to say why. He insisted on his "order", even when I told him, that I got an appointment with my doctor, and that the doctor´s door was only 15 feet away. But instead of kicking his shins, I only got his name and can now file a complaint, if I can overcome my lazyness.

10:52 / 16.03.06

Hmm, if you do suffer weekly outbursts of extreme anger, it's possible you could suffer from high blood pressure - as I discovered I do, when registering for holiday inoculations last year and the nurse performing routine tests looked at me like I was going to do a Scanners.

I've certainly been a lot calmer since they gave me my meds.

11:02 / 16.03.06

Oh no, I haven´t had extreme outbursts ever since I quit my job.

These days, (like with the policeman), when I feel the anger bubbling up, I can control it. I´ve learned just to walk away from the situation, before it gets out of control.

But on tuesday, I couldn´t do that, because the policeman was between me and my goal, and walking away would have meant missing my appointment with my doctor. And that would have meant, I would have had to pay € 50,00 to her. That would have been another reason to get upset.

13:15 / 16.03.06

It's a really corny cliche I know, but having a dog has really evened out my moodiness in the last almost-year. It's true what they say about petting a dog... instant calm. Arguments with the SO barely last two minutes with the little Poop Whisperer, as we call him, running interference. And how could anyone wake up grouchy when this is the first thing you see in the morning?

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13:19 / 16.03.06

I rarely get angry these days. Like most people here, I don't like the loss of control over myself. I envy those who experience cold, calculating anger because I lose all sense of rationality when I'm truly angry. It's like an explosion inside my head and there's nothing left but red vision and loud yelling. It's also a very, very righteous feeling because I rarely get extremely mad, so there's a feeling that if I'm angry I deserve to be.

When I'm simply ticked off, I usually swear, grimace, internalize it, and keep quiet until it passes. I think it's unfair to take out my own problems on those who don't deserve it so I do my best to keep my trap shut and not snap at people. Unfortunately, sometimes silence is taken as equally insulting as a rude comment.

14:03 / 16.03.06

Whenever I feel angry, I make sure I don't act on it. That's bound to lead to a stupid decision, such as saying something I will really regret.

I then 'make friends' with it, and see where it's come from and what's caused it. The things that normally make me angry usually seems to be from a percieved affront to self image or closely held beliefs - obviously I'm very egotistical. If I can give myself enough 'mental room' around the emotion, I then try to see whether the slight (for example) has any basis in reality, in which case I try and change myself for the better. If it's not got any grounds in reality, then I just see it as the product of someone being unhappy and taking it out on me for some reason that makes sense to them.

Frustration-based anger's a different thing - seems, in my experience, to be based on frustrated demands and expectations. Letting go of such things stops the pain that such anger can cause, and teaches me an important lesson.

I suppose what I really try to do is to de-condition myself from going along with anger and feeding it. It goes soon enough, although bottling it up doesn't work in my experience, since that means I will be going over the cause of the anger again and again.

unheimlich manoeuvre

17:47 / 16.03.06

Slim - I envy those who experience cold, calculating anger because I lose all sense of rationality when I'm truly angry. It's like an explosion inside my head and there's nothing left but red vision and loud yelling.

Yeah it's like that for me too, on the rare occasions when I get extremely angry. It's like a dam bursting, I get madder and madder... then snap. I also get blanks in my memory, even if it happens when I'm sober.

I see myself becoming like my father. A genuinely decent person now that he's retired and weened himself off his happy pills. He was a repressed angry depressive when I was a child.

How do I deal with it? Well I used to medicate myself with weed but I'm much more keen on walking or other exercise now that I've realised marijuana isn't helping.

21:40 / 16.03.06

Thanks to everyone who responded. I feel like giving everyone a little handshake when they respond to a thread of mine, so here you go ...

*shakes hands*

I particularly interested in what Ibis, Id Entity and Elene has to say. I might come back to specific points you raised later.

My own take on anger is shaped a lot by my readings in Buddhism and Tantra. I'm wary of posting some of this stuff because I'm wary of sounding like a demeted hippy, but I suppose after four years of posting in The Temple, its far too late for that. A lot of this reading, in conjunction with my own thinking and meditation, has flagged up the negative and self-perptuating side of anger for me. It's not to say it isn't profoundly valuable sometimes, but it's a quality I'm wary of. I think the thing I dislike most about it is it tends to strip out my understanding of people and they become a sympton I want to squash, rather than something complex.

I've found it very valuable to use anger as a subject for my meditations, fuel if you will, rather than a "given" that overwhelms me, or a "fact" about the world that I must act on. When I do get angry I'll often try and deconstruct it, and try and strip out my passions of their content - acknoweldge my own part in generating them, or summon up persepctives that are contradictory to what I've been thinking. This can put one in some really interesting, altered head/emotional spaces quite quickly. One can find this idea in Austin Spare ("free belief"), as well as Tantra, and you can use it to charge teh sigilz, but these days, I tend to just open up and enjoy the view (I try this with other my other passions in addition to anger also).

What I find most interesting about this is I often find a lot of compassion welling up spontaneously as I result of these kind of practices, often for those I'm angry with. Very worthwhile IMO.

I might add, like a lot of these practices, it's something I'm continually failing at, as well, but find it valuable enough to continually re-try. Also, as I was trying to indicate above, if my life circumstances were very different - if I was suffering badly from one of the many kind of prejudice or other stresses and strains - I don't know if I could or would sustain these kind of practices.

22:20 / 16.03.06

I find myself almost completely incapable of staying angry for more than twenty minutes at a time.

When I get angry, I'll let it quietly play out allowing myself to get pissed off at the tiniest things. Within that twenty minutes though, without fail, a seperate, totally rational voice just clicks on in my head and appraises the situation. It's not a concious effort, I don't will it to happen, it's just that another aspect of my personality starts a dialogue with my anger.

It asks me what I have to be angry about, whether that compares to those who do have stuff to be angry about, what the anger is accomplishing etc. etc.
By the time it's run through it's questioning, it is me and the anger seems like a small, exhausting and counterproductive thing that's best off dropped. If I can address the thing that's made me angry I can do it with the same level of urgency but with a level-head.

The same process kicks in when I feel down or frustrated too, but not when I'm being lazy or unproductive. Go figure.

Bubblegum Death

00:11 / 17.03.06

It's very rare that I "really" get angry. But when I do,(or when I feel any strong emotion)it's like my mind goes numb and all there is inside my head IS that emotion. I don't stomp or throw things when I'm "really" upset. I just tend to sit there. Somebody will ask me what I'm thinking, or tell me to say something and I can't.

I've learned ways to distract myself from feeling this way, though(probably not very healthy).

Brigade du jour

09:28 / 17.03.06

Anger lands upon me in a flash, and it gets set off by the most meaningless things, such as stubbing my toe on a chair leg or a photocopier breaking down quite predictably for the fourth time in a row. At this point I take my noble, righteous fury out on the offending inanimate object, by way of a kick, punch or smack (incidentally I do this less since I started channeling my anger a bit more through studying karate, but there's no magic wand). I think Lula put it best - I'm "throwing the anger away". Or maybe I'm just channeling other deep-seated
'infuriants' (is there such a word? Well, there is now, yay!) so I don't have to face them in a more mature and honest way.

I like to think I'll never kick, punch or smack an actual living creature, but I try to remain vigilant in case I get pushed just a little further than usual (perhaps by something or someone that I actually 'ought to' get angry about, for example).

Of course, I'm sure all this kicking, punching and smacking looks from the outside like some overgrown idiot child hurling its toys from the pram (ask Stoatie for a more objective point of view - he's seen me lose it a few times!), and the funny thing is - I'm fairly acutely aware of how silly I'm behaving, immediately after (or perhaps even while I'm) doing it. But I still do it. Sigh.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:52 / 17.03.06

I can't stand my anger. I get serious rages, real red-mist stuff that I can barely handle.

It usually stems from frustration and hurt, and it can very quickly get out of control which just kind of validates the person who was hurting/frustrating me. Oh, look at this stupid irrational woman/vicious thug, obviously we don't need to pay any attention to her/were justified in our behavior. Sometimes I've literally run away from people who were making me angry, just put my head down and fled, because I was scared of what I might do if I stayed in the situation.

I really hate getting angry with my partner. I can't stand screaming or saying mean things to him, but I also can't always stay on top of the anger so that doesn't happen. I yell, hit walls, bang furniture around, slam doors. I've got quite good at time-outs though; often the only thing I can do is just leave for a while. I have to get out of the house and go for a walk (well, more of a stomp). Going down the bottle-bank always helps a bit, I get to smash things without smashing anything I'll miss when I've calmed down.

Yeah, walking, running, recycling. Those are where it's at.

10:09 / 17.03.06

Is there any sense in which people's difficultly with this emotion comes from an inability to express it when it's building up? I'm quite good at supressing my temper, so when it does let rip, I'm incoherent and trembling? Possibly more directness/willingness to say NO earlier in whatever circumstances would avoid this?

This kind of clarity about stating your disatisfaction can also be a side product of the stuff I talk about above.

10:51 / 29.03.06

I think so yes. I can't verbally elucidate what is is that has made me angry when I'm in the angry state, I just end up ranting about something irrelevant, or crying and I think that's what I find so frustrating. the anger I am feeling can be valid for me but I lose all ability to make that clear for anyone else, and I just look like a red-faced, drippy-nosed, yelly person.

11:58 / 29.03.06

A lot of this reading, in conjunction with my own thinking and meditation, has flagged up the negative and self-perptuating side of anger for me. It's not to say it isn't profoundly valuable sometimes, but it's a quality I'm wary of.

Interesting; in Catholicism, this is why anger is a Deadly Sin. All seven of them are things that are positive forces when controlled or channeled, but destructive when too powerful. Sloth/tranquility, Lust/love of others, Pride/love of self, etc.

I'm definitely a slow burner, but have done my share of stomping and throwing on some occasions. It's always kind of a relief, in a way. The feeling of releasing something contained. Unchaining.