Last update: February 15, 2017
Even if they want to convince you otherwise, getting angry is your right and your emotional need. Feeling disagree, feeling the indignation and anger of bewilderment is the first step to addressing a problem. If we just bite the bullet without addressing what makes us feel bad, our self-esteem will suffer.
We must be clear: allowing yourself to feel angry does not mean losing control or even showing yourself weak. Often, influenced by spiritual thoughts, we tend to confuse terms and concepts. We know that whoever makes us angry dominates us, but this does not mean that we deactivate negative emotionality to hide it, avoid accepting it and managing it. Anger has a very clear purpose, it invites us to resolve a concrete threat.
On the other hand, we also know that our emotional balance is continually tested, day after day. There are people who are always offended and others who never take anything personally. Each of us lives his daily life with a certain filter that allows certain emotions and thoughts to pass or block.
However, everything has a limit and an insuperable boundary. We are talking about that barrier that others often cross arbitrarily to insult our self-esteem, to destroy our emotional integrity or to manipulate us. Anger has its reasons for existing and expressing it respectfully at the right and opportune moment is cathartic and healthy.
We invite you to reflect on the subject.
Getting angry and voicing your emotions is a great help
Curious as it may seem, there are few books that explain or argue the benefits of anger or indignation. Traditionally these emotions have always been linked to anger and lack of control, restraint, tact when it comes to dealing with life's contradictions.
However, remember that, as with pain, you need to accept your emotions before channeling and transforming them. Knowing how we feel and why is essential when we have to solve an emotional problem. The bibliography on the subject is rather scarce, but fortunately there is a very interesting book, Annoying (2011), by scientists Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman.
This text explores the theme of anger from a multidisciplinary point of view, therefore there is no lack of neuroscience, sociology, anthropology and psychology. The first thing these scientists reveal to us is that anger is often compared to anger, frustration or repugnance towards someone or something. Experts, on the other hand, propose to conceive anger as a unique and exclusive emotion.
Furthermore, anger does not depend on a specific action. It is the accumulation of many things, it is like the mosquito that torments us every night until we lose sleep and cannot think of anything else. However, and here comes the most important aspect, if there are no problems, there is no possibility of change. In other words, that negative emotion has a purpose: it wants to push us to act.
Getting angry in an intelligent way
Charles Darwin himself once said that negative emotions, such as fear and anger, are warnings that lead us to adopt appropriate behaviors to avoid or get rid of a danger. Paying attention to what bothers us, what angers us and takes away our tranquility is a demonstration of self-understanding. Acting on these emotions undoubtedly demonstrates our emotional intelligence.
Let's now see how we should act in these cases and which aspects should be explored in order to better understand these emotions.
The 4 laws of intelligent anger
The first law is to make it clear that those who live eternally angry are doomed to unhappiness. There are battles that are not worth living, there are aspects that do not deserve our attention and conversations that are better not to start or not to feed.
- Get angry at what really upsets your personal balance, give voice to your self-esteem and defend yourself firmly in the face of those who try to harm you.
- The second law refers to a very obvious aspect: it is possible to defend oneself with respect. Arguing assertively and without verbally assaulting those in front of us is essential. Something that can and should be done with emotional intelligence.
- The third law has very clear passages that need to be internalized: listen, feel, breathe, clarify and act. That is, first listen to the stimulus that offends or hurt you, then become aware of your emotions and accept the anger. Finally, take a deep breath and decide what your priorities are.
I have to take action and set limits by making it clear that I don't want to be treated in a certain way. I must not allow anger to freeze me to the point of stopping me from thinking. I have to use it to act intelligently.
- The fourth and ultimate law of intelligent anger is that you always learn something. Every situation resolved, faced and every defended need must teach us that the lack of action, silence, repressed emotions hurt and make us sick.
We must not be afraid of negative emotions, in fact understanding them and learning to manage them is the real secret of our personal growth.
Images courtesy of Nicoletta Ceccoli
