Emotions

Anger Is Only Hurting You

By  | 

There was a tragic scene at the end of a Dr. House episode where Wilson’s girlfriend Amber, who had been in a terrible accident, was woken up only to be told there was no longer anything that could be done to save her. As soon as they took her off of bypass she would die.

Her reaction was a mixture of shock, terror, and finally grief, as would be the case for anyone. But as Wilson and Amber lay together in bed knowing the end was near, what she felt was love. When Wilson asked her “Why aren’t you angry?” She responded by saying “Because I don’t want anger to be the last thing I feel.”

Her decision was beautiful and brave, but it was also the only good one for her. She would have been hurting herself  in the short time she had left by filling her last moments with destructive emotions rather than the one emotion that, as Erich Fromm has said, might make all the suffering that human life implies worth the struggle.

It’s too bad that it often takes an event of tragic proportions to jolt us into coming to our senses, deciding to rearrange our priorities and cast aside the bitterness that seems so justified but is really only holding us back from living a happy life.

Why not realize right now, while you still have lots of time, that your anger is hurting you. You are burdened and ultimately pulled down by a destructive emotion that is incompatible with happiness. Letting go of your anger is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of courage and strength. If you were on your death bed, which is the last emotion you would want to feel? If your answer is love, why should this be any different on every other day of your existence?

Related posts:

  1. About To Explode It’s not like most people with anger management issues don’t know they have these issues. What’s interesting to note though is that the environmental damage their anger causes, the explosive outburst where they say or do destructive things, is actually first and foremost their attempt to deal with their anger and only secondarily a consequence of […]...
  2. Frustration If you’re feeling frustrated then what you’re probably really feeling at a deeper level is helpless. Frustration stems from the inability to manipulate variables in your environment to your liking. This inability of course amounts to the same thing as helplessness. This is why frustration is likely to turn into anger. The psychology is pretty […]...
  3. Energy of Mindfulness Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that the energy of mindfulness is what allows you to transform emotions you don’t want like fear, anger, or loneliness into emotions you do want. The energy of mindfulness wraps around that other energy, much like the way a mother goes to a crying baby and tenderly embraces her, and instantly […]...
  4. Fiery Rage Fire is sometimes associated with rage and the symbol is a good one. Fire is intense, hot, powerful, and can leave a charred path of destruction behind it. I was considering the metaphor of fire to help people dealing with unwanted feelings of intense anger and came upon the idea of forest fires as a […]...
  5. Emotions Are Not Facts If you often find yourself carried away by your emotions, behaving in a way that makes you regret the consequences later, it can be useful to come to the philosophical realization that emotions are not facts. They can certainly seem like facts when we are gripped by them though. The funny thing is that for […]...
  6. Frustration And Anger To most people frustration and anger seem inextricably intertwined, almost one and the same thing, just sort of a ball of negative emotions. But from our existential point of view when frustration and anger are found together it’s frustration that actually appears first, as its own entity. Anger can be understood as the solution to […]...
  7. Anger As A Fire A fire can be a beautiful thing to look at but if you add too much fuel it grows unruly before getting completely out of control and becoming quite dangerous. We could say the same thing about anger. We all know it feels good to be angry sometimes. That burning need to right some wrong […]...
  8. Anger And Vulnerability Anger Makes Us Feel Powerful Especially for males in our society the expression of anger often acts as a mask for the threatening sense of vulnerability underneath. This is classic reaction formation, which is the tendency of a repressed wish or feeling to be expressed at a conscious level in a contrasting form. Anger acts as […]...
  9. Choose Love Over Anger In The Face Of Injustice We have the right to be outraged when norms, values, and rights we hold dear are maliciously trampled upon. And anger is a powerful, powerful motivator, no doubt about it. That rising tidal wave of rage makes us keen to act, keen to go out into the world to right the perceived wrong in order […]...
  10. Care With Anger Reason is no match for the passions, something Spinoza realized. His solution was to elevate reason to a passion. Our solution is to try to minimize the downside of emotions by focusing on consequences. Emotions grip us with intensity and often compel us towards actions that we have little control over. But with most of […]...
  11. Sadness and Anger Anger and sadness have an alliance. One emotion often stands in for the other in situations where consciously experiencing the proper one feels threatening. This ability we have to shift away from the authentic emotion in order to protect ourselves can lead to a lot of problems in general functioning and in our human relationships. […]...
  12. Venting Anger A common strategy that Western psychologists use to help people with anger management issues is to instruct them to vent their anger once in a while in a safe space. Maybe they head out to the garage, get in their car, and scream their heads off. Or maybe they punch a stuffed animal or some […]...
  13. Anger Your anger can be a gift or a curse, and it all depends on you. Many come to therapy on their own or are referred by someone else because they are labeled as ‘angry’ and either want to change or are urged to change by those close to them. But the idea of an ‘angry […]...
  14. Dealing With Anger I was recently asked how to deal with clients when they are really mad. I think this is a worthwhile topic because all of us find ourselves in situations with people who are extremely angry sometimes. The common responses are usually to shy away from the encounter or meet it head on and get angry […]...
  15. Ambivalence Around Anger Issues It might sound counterintuitive but if you are struggling with anger issues you’ve got to isolate all the positives, all the things your anger does for you, all the areas in your life where it helps you and supports your endeavors. Regardless of the proposed lifestyle change there is always going to be ambivalence, simultaneous […]...
  16. Frustration Tolerance Is Anger Management People dealing with anger management problems are less aware of their surroundings at and around the onset of their anger episodes. They get tunnel vision, they can’t think logically or rationally, they usually have a hard time even forming a coherent sentence. Maybe this is one of the reasons why they neglect to see the […]...
  17. Supporting The People We Care About When They Are Hurting Try to be That Supporting Shoulder Despite our best efforts many of us don’t do a very good job at supporting the people we care about when they’re hurting. What they need is not always advice or encouragement but rather someone to simply exist in that painful space with them, what they need is a […]...
  18. Anger As A Chimney Fire We’ve written about why some people like being angry. If you’re struggling with anger management issues you probably used to like being angry too, and maybe in many ways you still do, which means you’ve got to consciously address your ambivalence around moving to a more adaptive way of being in the world. At first […]...
  19. Transforming Anger Into Compassion Most of us aren’t peaceful monks. We live in a fast-paced, often cruel world, a world where the people around us say and do destructive things that make anger arise in us, anger which in turn compels us to say and do destructive things. The gap between anger and compassion seems too wide to bridge. […]...
  20. Mindful Breathing For Anger Management There is a lot of well-meaning anger management advice out there but much of it is counterproductive. One strategy you have probably heard of is especially problematic because it makes so much sense on the surface yet it actually reinforces anger, giving it more room to breathe and grow, the chance to become a more […]...
Related Items