Understanding Anger & Aggression

We often hear people talk about ‘anger issues’ to dismiss others’ emotions or as a warning to stay away from someone. Further, when eager to maintain a positive relationship, we often perceive we should not get angry at, or in relation to, those we care about. Is anger really the problem?

Anger is like any feeling – it’s never a problem. Our feelings help us have better relationships with ourselves and others. Why are relationships important? To survive, animals need to avoid predators. As humans, we are social beings – therefore to survive and thrive, we need to avoid losing relationships. But what about anger…how is that helpful?

Well, let’s look at feelings more broadly to get an idea.

Evolutionarily, all our feelings confer a ‘survival benefit’ – i.e., they help us stay alive. Think of our ancestors, the humble hunter-gatherer; without fear, they wouldn’t have avoided predators and therefore become lunch! Without feeling love, they wouldn’t have been motivated to connect with people and share experiences, knowledge, and resources. Without sadness, they wouldn’t have found a replacement for something they valued and lost. Evolution has ‘baked’ feelings into us so that we can stay alive and live enriched lives.

So back to anger – it’s like any feeling - what typically brings people through a psychologist’s door is not how terrible people feel – it’s how people relate to their feelings. Some clients usually respond by saying “but I don’t want to be angry, and yell and shout. I don’t want to fight!”. Here we have our first clue at what maintains an ‘anger aggression problem’. Yelling and shouting isn’t a description of anger. Anger (a feeling) is different from aggression (a behaviour). Righteous anger informs us when we have been devalued, undermined, violated or unsupported. Without our anger, we can’t fight for ourselves. Honouring our anger means we communicate in a healthy assertive way, simultaneously valuing our needs as well as others’ (sounds good huh?).

 However, some people have spent a lifetime confusing anger and aggression, sending their bodies the message that ‘anger is bad’. Therefore, when they experience anger (a feeling) their body responds with anxiety (since their anger is ‘dangerous’). But anger + anxiety = aggression. In essence, the anger isn’t the problem, it’s the anxiety that contaminates the process causing anger to manifest into aggression.

What to do about it?

Well, there are three steps to having a feeling.

1) knowing you are angry;

2) physically feeling the anger (i.e., heat in the torso, clenched arms, neck, back, energy in the legs); and

3) the impulse of the anger (i.e., what does the anger want you to do?).

If you’ve ever been unfortunate to see physical violence, you would have seen two people for whom the physical feeling of their anger (i.e., step 2 above) got them so anxious, they skip that step and get the physical feeling out of their body as quickly as possible, for example, by throwing their fists, or in the case of verbal aggression, shouting. There are however many helpful ways we can respond to our incredibly human experiences of anger, including connecting to the message our anger sends us (I didn’t like being treated like that), finding helpful ways of allowing anger to be in and pass through our bodies, and learning to communicate our anger in a helpful manner.

Our team at Person Centred Psychology & Allied Health can help you increase your tolerance for experiencing anger and use it to communicate in healthy assertive ways, so it doesn’t trigger anxiety and therefore unhelpful aggressive behaviour.

Author: Anthony Couroupis

Prinicipal Psychologist