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Anger: The Most Dangerous Emotion
Anger Defined
While there is one facial expression of anger, anger can have two different adaptive functions, represented in separate neurological structures. The first and most recognized function of anger is defensive, a response to threat or danger. The second is the consummatory anger of the predator. The facial expressions, the loud voice, the bared teeth, and the clenched fist all say, “I’m ready for a fight, so stop and submit (Tomkins, 1963; Greenberg and Safran, 1986; Izard, 1971).”
Defensive anger allows the object of the anger to withdraw. The predator’s angry expressions are merely the first part of an attack. Played out this way, anger expresses dominance. It says, “You might as well submit, because I’m going to have my way.”
Anger motivates and always provides energy. As a defense, anger is part of the amygdala system’s red-alert fight/flight response (Adams, 1979). Anger prepares us for a defensive fight, which, of course, can quickly transform into a predatory offensive attack, where no prisoners are taken and dominance and consumption become the purpose.
Clinical Case Study
I was co-director of Compose, a program to prevent domestic violence. Most of our clients are court-ordered. John and Marsha were a couple participating in our program. Both were court-ordered. John explained:
“Before we came here, it was real bad. We would be talking, then suddenly we would be yelling. Sometimes I would push her.”
“Or hit me,” Marsha interjected.
“Yes, and sometimes it was her that hit me. One time, she came after me with a knife. I left, got in my car, and drove off. She got in hers and followed me. Before I knew it, she was driving beside me, her window down, cursing me, banging into the side of my car with hers. I punched the accelerator to get away from her, but she was right behind me. We were going one hundred m.p.h. plus, weaving around cars. I was scared something bad would happen, so I got in the right lane. I let her get up close beside me on my left. As we were about to pass an exit and before she could ram me, I suddenly turned the steering wheel right. I about rolled the car. But I made it off the exit, and she kept on going down the Interstate. Our cars were banged up. Some door handles were gone. I went home, shaking. Marsha came home soon after that. We didn’t talk for the rest of the day.”
“Anger seems to ambush us,” Marsha said. “It just comes up suddenly and takes us by surprise. We become stupid in less than two seconds.”
The Neurology of Anger
Anger can follow two paths in the brain in order to put this emotion into action.
The first has to do with the thalamus-amygdala system. It is several synapses shorter than the second path that goes to the neocortex via the limbic system. The first quick path is the route of red-alert defensive anger.
The second path is longer and more cerebral in nature. Indeed, anger as an offensive attack is a complex emotional response, according to Gray (1977). Anger expressed this way is more considered, more calculated. It can be a decision to attack rather than a reflex to defend. In this second path, a larger brain circuit, the appetite circuitry, provides much of the neurocircuitry for anger. This includes the rest of the hypothalamus and the limbic system, as well as the neocortex. The neurohormones that are present in anger act as stimulants, giving power and energy to the whole body, while providing opiates to keep pain from affecting performance. Endorphin B and norepinephrine (NE) reduce pain. Vasopressin (VP) raises the blood pressure and increases heart rate (Koolhaas, et al., 1990).
Intelligence and Anger
Anger, especially defensive anger, shuts down the transmission of information from other parts of the brain. Endorphins render the neocortex inoperative. Our brains, therefore, are reduced to the paleomammalian brain, which is about the size of our fist. This part of our brain is fully mature by the age of five, while the neocortex is not fully developed until age twenty-six, (Panksepp, 1986).
Anger shuts down sensory input. We accept no information that does not support our reasons to be angry. Angry people rarely perceive reality as it is. They omit facts that don’t support their anger. They use high-risk/reward, decision-making strategies that often result in poor decisions (Baumeister, 1996).
Anger is full of cognitive distortions, particularly dichotomous thinking. Without the neocortex and with only the small mammalian brain, we cannot process complex thoughts. In red-alert situations, vigilant responses need to be immediate. Excess consideration would be dangerous. Doubt and second thoughts could get us killed. Therefore, we think in only two polarities: enemy/ally, good/bad, black/white, and so forth. Not only does anger filter out unwelcome information, it restricts our ability to think deeply.
Offensive anger is more complex and can include cunning and intelligent predatory planning. Still, dichotomous thinking dominates, and we filter out painful stimuli. Our intelligence remains compromised by this form of anger as well.
The Physiology of Anger
Anger increases the heart rate. It pulls blood toward the bone and away from the skin to protect the body from bleeding to death when injured. It increases blood pressure. It dilates the eyes and increases our food digestion to get rid of food so our bodies are filled with energy. It provides a keen focus and sense of purpose.
Anger is associated with many physical problems. Chronic anger negatively impacts the immune system. Angry people are frequently ill. Anger is particularly associated with hypertension, coronary-artery disease (Siegman and Smith 1994), and alcohol and drug abuse (Allan and Scheidt 1996).
The Negative Consequences of Anger of Anger
In addition to the physical problems anger can cause, it is easy to see to see the psychological damage and not to speak of the social pain anger can cause. Anger is singularly the most socially controlled emotion. In order to deal with anger, police departments, courts, and prisons employ millions of people. No other emotional behavior receives such legislative attention, nor is any emotion more frequently spoken of from the pulpit.
Anger causes violence in families. It creates fear in others, destroying the social fabric of families and friendships. It creates paranoia and the impetus for delusional thinking, as we construct the justifications used to excuse anger.
Although it can certainly become an expression of insanity, the worst thing about anger is not so much that it makes us crazy. The worst thing about anger is that it makes us stupid. It also inhibits us from realizing how stupid we have become because of the justifications that follow.
“I wouldn’t have hit her, if dinner had been ready. She deserved it.” This is the second worst thing about anger: It creates righteous indignation and a sense of entitlement, where no justification or righteousness exists.
The Positive Consequences of Anger
Anger creates energy and a sense of purpose. It protects us from pain and powerfully focuses our attention. Angry people are often very successful. Tennis great John McEnroe is a celebrated example of a man who used anger as a powerful motivating force in competition. How many athletes have played without pain during a game, only to find out after the game that they were playing with a broken bone?
Anger helps us get things done. It speeds up our thinking. It gives us a sense that we are right. Confidence and focus come with this sense of purpose. Self-esteem is a part of anger. We feel entitled to our anger. It is here because we must right some wrong. We must do something. As an example, we know of angry people who have picked up automobiles to release people lying under the tires. Anger has been a powerful force in righting social wrongs in the American Revolution, the abolitionist movement, desegregation, and equal rights for women.
Anger comes from caring deeply and passionately about something. We would never be angry if we didn’t desire something that we were frustrated by not having, or if we weren’t protecting ourselves and those we love from some potential loss.
In a way, predatory anger is a compliment. It means that the object of this obsession is wanted and desired. Many people want to be the prey for a particular person’s desire. When this works for the predator and the object of the predator’s desire, some call this love, magic, or romance. Certainly, both parties are fortunate that one has the desire for the other and the other wants to be the object of that intense passion. But there are times when the object of this passion does not wish for this attention. Then, predatory anger is at least intrusive and at worst dangerous.
Resolving Anger
Each emotion can resolve every other emotion, but the resolve might not be a healthy one. Let’s consider each emotion, one at a time, as a potential candidate to resolve anger.
Fear can resolve anger. Children’s anger is often resolved by the fear of a parent’s disapproval. Resolving anger with fear only represses the anger and creates a feeling of cowardice. Also, fear is rarely a choice one can make coming from anger. If we assume that the amygdala mediates the fight/flight response in an emergency, if we assume anger is the fight half, and if we are thrown by the amygdala into anger, it is not easy for us to return voluntarily to fear. To resolve an emotion, we need a path that we can choose, and fear is not an easy choice from anger.
Let’s save sadness for the last emotion we nominate as the emotion to resolve anger and get us back into the flow.
Next, consider joy. Of course, when anger achieves a goal, joy resolves anger in the victory. If the victory is truly a reasonable achievement, the anger was justified, and joy is a healthy move from anger. But many times the victory and joy that can come from anger only perpetuate tyranny, and joy becomes an unhealthy resolution to anger.
Shame is an obvious resolve to anger. The problem is that shame is often toxic and, with toxicity still a part of shame, it will only create more hurt, which requires anger as a defense again. This is the typical batterer emotional cycle: anger → shame → anger → shame, and so forth. Shame, then, becomes the precursor to anger, not its resolve.
Interest/excitement/desire transform anger from a defensive emotion into an offensive one. Becoming a predator is not necessarily bad, but we should not encourage it in a ritual, as it might create a painful legacy.
Surprise is a neutral emotion. It will take us out of anger, but no one knows where it will go from there.
Fatigue/rest/trance/sleep never harmed an angry person. These might provide moments of calm and peace, but all too often, once an angry person awakes from the trance, he or she might find anger again.
Disgust is an important cog in the CAD (contempt-anger-disgust) triad (Rozin, et al., 1999). But disgust adds fuel to anger and provides anger’s justification. It does not resolve anger.
Treating Anger
Treating anger requires a carrot and stick. Fear will always overcome anger. The angry-confident person easily can flip the switch to the flight part of the fight/flight red-alert system in the brain. Similar brain circuitry is at work. Many neurohormones are shared. Though fear can be almost as stupid as anger, often it has a bit more intelligence.
Fear is the emotional base of respect. And an authority must have respect in order to be effective. Having a stick that creates fear and respect will stop anger quickly. Sometimes fear is an important treatment resource. Police and the courts can serve as the stick. Therapists and treatment programs can be the carrot. As I noted earlier, fear is a poor end-point for the journey out of anger, and we can rarely choose fear on our own. If we submit just because the other individual is dominant and we are afraid, we can hate ourselves and the other person. No real internal change occurs. When the source of fear leaves, the same behavior returns. This creates much shame and resentment.
Once our anger is contained for whatever reason, the next step is to help the angry person find a path to sadness. When we reach sadness, we will discover the intelligence embedded in that emotion. Sadness is a healthy path of resolve for anger. When the angry person lets go of her predatory goal and grieves the loss, the healthy resolution of anger is not far behind.
Steven Stosny founded the Compassion Program based on this premise. (We modeled our Nashville Compose Program after this.) Stosny treated sexually offending priests for the Catholic Church in the Catholic psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. In a visit to a Duluth-(Minnesota) model batterers program, he discovered why that model had been so ineffective in treating perpetrators of family violence. These programs test anger with shame. At conventions of domestic violence counselors, defenders of the Duluth model declare that these men are difficult, if not impossible, to treat. Incarceration is clearly the only option. This blames the batterer for the program’s ineffectiveness, much like the batterer often blames the victim for the battering (Stosny 1995).
Stosny’s premise was that anger is a defense against hurt. Shaming the batterer only creates more hurt. And, hence, more anger. This is why the Duluth model cannot accommodate couples and why battering often recurs in families when the program participant returns home after attending a Duluth-model program.
According to Adele Harrell (1991), Duluth-model participants are as likely or more likely to batter after completing the program than they were before treatment. This is the one place where therapy seems to break the Hippocratic oath “to do no harm.”
In contrast, Stosny’s Compassion Program graduated 75% of its participants, and 90% of its graduates did not re-offend for one year post-treatment. This contrasts with the Duluth model that graduates less than 50% and 90% of whose graduates re-offend within one year of treatment (Stosny, 1995).
In introducing his program, Stosny began by discussing his own violent father, whom he loved. According to Stosny, coping with anger is a universal problem that we all must master. And, of course, he stated that mastering our anger is not easy.
The Compassion Program was there not to condemn. It was there to teach skills, primarily the skill of focusing below the anger to feel the sadness and hurt first. Feeling sadness derails anger’s momentum. Sadness pushes different neurohormones in the brain other than those associated with anger. It takes courage to give up the defense of anger and to feel sad and hurt. It is easier just to let the anger take over the brain.
Sadness neurohormones dissolve anger neurohormones. After focusing on the hurt that the anger defends, the next step is to contain shame and self-attacks by offering compassion to one’s self. The final step is to learn perspective-taking and empathy by having respect and compassion for the person who was, at one time, the focus of the anger. This brings self-esteem and pride (joy) in one’s own character–pride that we have the capacity to give compassion and understanding, even to an opponent. This last step focuses on the universal sadness and tragedy of the human experience and ends in the joy, self-esteem, and pride that are by-products of compassion.
Stosny calls the skill he teaches the HEALS technique. It is an acronym. I have adapted this technique and rewritten it for our Compose Program. My version is the HEART ritual:
Step 1: Imagine seeing in flashing images before you, the letters H A L T or H E A R T. Focus on these to contain your anger. This step uses will power, which only lasts about forty seconds.
Step 2: After you have contained your behavior, Examine the hurt below the anger. Nominations for words that express your hurt and sadness are: unimportant; disregarded; valueless; accused; powerless or inadequate; unlovable or rejected; and disgusting or unfit for human contact. Choose one or more. Feel these feelings for about twenty seconds. This will put in your brain the real feelings of sadness that your anger protects you from feeling. This changes your neurohormones from anger neurohormones to brain chemicals that signal your body that you are sad.
Step 3: Once you have realized that you felt unimportant, disregarded, unworthy, or valueless, and so forth. Ask the question of common sense. Is it true that at your core you are unimportant or do not matter? The answer is always NO! This inoculates you from toxic shame.
Step 4: Now that you have reaffirmed your basic worth, look inside and give Respect to the other person or look inside them and see that what that person feels. Possibly, that person feels some of the same feelings that you do. He or she is most likely feeling one or more of these: unimportant; unworthy of regard; valueless; accused; powerless or inadequate; unlovable or rejected; disgusting or unfit for human contact. This is a tragedy. You were hurt, and the other person perhaps still is hurt. Respect this person and his or her feelings. You are now sad for yourself and sad for your adversary, as well. In this state of respect, you are expressing compassion as well. The next step becomes easier after you have completed this one.
Step 5: Together solve the problem, or wait until you can work together to solve the problem.
Step One, H, requires self-control, self-discipline, and will power. To exercise this control, you must be aware of your emerging anger. Even if you feel out of control, you can achieve this level of awareness by recognizing your body’s physical signs that indicate you are about to be angry. Is your heart racing? Are your teeth and fists clenched? Is your voice loud? Is your back tense? Will power is important in any effort to change. But will power by itself will work for only about 40 seconds. It is a way to prepare us to do something that will be more effective in managing our emotions. Too often we use only will power, either because we don’t know what else to do, or because we don’t want to do anything else (especially to stop and feel the sadness in the hurt). Will power–this first step–will get us started on the process of self‑awareness and self‑responsibility, but it won’t get us all the way to our goal. To get closer to the goal, move to Step Two.
Step Two, E, requires self-awareness. What hurt are you defending with anger? How do you feel below your anger? After you have contained yourself, Examine the hurt feelings below the anger: “I am feeling . . .”
This emotion is always a sense of one of the following:
Unimportant — Powerless or inadequate
Disregarded — Unlovable or rejected
Valueless — Disgusting or unfit for human contact
Accused
The temptation here is to hope Step One, self-control, will numb our feelings so we do not have to feel them. Step One alone is rarely enough. We need to feel and express what we feel. Once you have identified the hurt below the anger, remember another time, long ago, when you felt the same feelings. For twenty seconds, let yourself remember and feel those feelings. This takes courage. Sadness is usually a safe way to express a powerful feeling, but it is hard to do. Anger is easier.
Self-awareness is the base from which all personal growth and responsibility begins. If we are to change, we must feel our real feelings. We must have the courage to feel sad and face the loss. Feeling the sadness from a time long ago reminds us that we are not working on this situation that hurt us now. We are working on ourselves and transforming our anger to sadness. Labeling our feelings takes us out of the hypothalamus and engages the neocortex. This is the point at which the anger neurohormones are exchanged for the sadness neurohormones. (You can see when this happens because the participant’s eyes often look downward.)
Step Three, A, requires we realize that the socialization process has lied to us about ourselves. These lies conclude that we are unimportant, worthy of disregard, valueless as a person, powerless or inadequate, unlovable, disgusting, or unfit for human contact.
Although we might know that these descriptions are lies, they still hurt us. When we fight others to protect ourselves from this hurt, we really are fighting years upon years of shame. It is like an electrical burn. On the outside, there appears to be no injury. But if someone touches the skin of a part of the body that has been electrically burned, a blister will appear. It will seem as if the touch caused the burn, but it didn’t. The burn rose from deep under the skin. In this step, our job is to tell the truth about who we are at our core. We are valuable, important, lovable, powerful. These feelings protect us from the toxic shame that comes from an actual experience that is not now present. In Step Three, we are simply using common sense and telling the truth about who we are. We are at the core important, worthy, valuable, well-intended, powerful, lovable, and fit to be a good friend.
Step Four, R, requires we respect the other person and consider how that individual feels. In this step, we use the skill of spiritual connectedness. After we have defended and respected ourselves in Step Three, we are in a position to respect and love others. We ask ourselves if we know enough about the other person to know what he or she might be feeling. If we are having trouble figuring this out, a good guess is that this individual is feeling the same hurt we were feeling when we identified our hurt below our anger in Step Two.
Step Five, T, tells us to move forward, solve the problem. Sometimes we cannot find a collaborator in problem-solving. They may not trust us. Or, they may be trapped in their own anger. If we have reached this point, we have solved the problem of anger in us. This may be all we can do for now.
Working With a Chronically Angry Client
Often other people want to push their hurt on to us by passing the blame and shame they feel onto one of our many mistakes. If we accept the shame they give us and reinforce it with anger, we injure and re‑injure each other.
In a relationship, when one partner stops this blame-shame-anger-hurt-blame cycle by containing his or her hurt, that person can begin the process of spiritual connecting, which is also called love or compassion. Anger leads to more anger, but compassion leads to more compassion–most of the time. Certainly, compassion will stop the anger cycle.
When treating a chronically angry person, placating anger only reinforces anger. Trying to help an angry person by giving in to this individual will encourage an angry person to continue to escalate angry behavior. Anger can become an addiction. There is the internal drug event that anger creates. The drug event feels good and, in addition, people often reinforce anger by giving into it. Like any addiction, treatment begins when someone hits a bottom. A bottom becomes a floor and the foundation for recovery. One hits a bottom when he or she sincerely says, “I will do whatever it takes to get better.”
The stick in the form of the police, the courts, and the threat of jail can help create a bottom. With a bottom in place, giving compassion and teaching compassion in the form of the HEART ritual is an effective carrot with a stick.
Conclusion and Summary
On one hand, anger is an emotion associated with many bad things and a great deal of pain. On the other, anger can be an incredibly powerful force for change and success. If anger is one’s primary emotional expression, the pathology will not only be a part of that angry person, but pathology also will be contagious. It will surround the angry person with fearful, shamed people. The people who are captive of the angry person will be filled with grief and pain, until that angry person meets someone or some situation that helps the angry person to begin anger’s healthy resolution. Probably that someone appears in the form of a police person, not a therapist. If a therapist is asked to help, we hope that therapist will have something to offer, a carrot to the policeman’s stick.
Clinical Case Study: Anger Resolved
For several weeks since John and Marsha told this story about the banging cars, I noticed that John was coming alone. After class one week, John waited to talk with me alone.
“Me and Marsha,” he said, “we broke up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you loved her.”
“I did. I loved her, but you know, Doc, I think its better this way. I got control of my anger. I used that HEART meditation every day. I practiced and practiced it. I got good at it. I figured out I was not so angry as I was sad. And when I feel sad, I don’t feel angry.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“But Marsha, she couldn’t do it. When I had compassion for her, it made her madder. She said I thought I was better than her. I didn’t think that. I was proud that I wasn’t angry no more, and I was sorry she still was. She didn’t think she needed to practice HEART. After that time we tore off each other’s door handles on the Interstate, I knew I had to get serious about this. So I worked on it, and she didn’t.”
“Changing old patterns in a relationship is hard,” I said. “Changing an old pattern in yourself is tough enough, but you cannot change another person. Maybe it is better. Some couples seem to never be able to escape their past. It is better to break up than to break a bone or go to jail. It’s sad. But with learning to control your anger, you can have a new healthy relationship.”
On the last session, John brought his new girlfriend.
“I wanted you to meet Carla,” John said, as he introduced me to her. “She’s good for me.”
“And he’s good for me, too,” Carla added. “John tells me that this class changed his life and that he is better for it. If that’s true, I’m better for it too. Thank you, Doc.”
Part of the loyalty oath to the Duluth model is that it assumes that battering is an all-male disease. New data from other countries indicate that women resort to domestic violence more often than men. Women hit more frequently during domestic disputes than men, but their blows do not do the physical damage of the blows from men.