Understanding Anger: Why Anger Isn't Irrational
Anger is the natural emotion created in a fight or flight situation by the physiology of your mind and body. Any time you sense a threat of harm or pain your mind generates fear and anger. The fear you generate is part of a flight response from your physiology. Anger is the emotional energy you generate for the fight against that perceived threat of pain. What can be confusing is that your mind creates fear and anger even when the threat is just imagined.
Emotions like anger are natural and real. Even if the hurt and pain is imagined the anger you create is just as real and powerful. However the reasons you generate anger aren't always real. If you aren’t aware of how your mind is imagining scenarios of hurt your anger will appear irrational.
Understanding Anger that is Real vs. Imagined
Sometimes it can be difficult to differentiate between a real threat and imagined threat because they can happen at the same time. An example of this is someone cutting you off on the freeway. For a brief moment a car maneuvers in a way that could cause an accident and possibly injure your body. There's a natural fight or flight reaction to your emotions and you create a combination of fear and anger. The reality of this harm usually passes very quickly and so do your emotions.
However your imagination may takeover and creates worse scenarios. You begin to consider the possibility you or someone in your car being hurt or killed. You might recall similar events from your past and project those into your mind and add more emotion. After the real physical threat passes the mind still projects scenarios in the imagination. Your emotions then respond to those imagined scenarios.
Even later that day when you replay the event in your mind, your emotions respond to the imagined version. The emotions you create from your imagined scenarios are no longer based in anything real. Because of the natural response of emotions to what you imagine you can amplify fear and anger to the degree that they become irrational.
Awareness
If you are not aware of how your imagination is projecting these scenarios you will blame the other people unnecessarily for your emotions. Understanding how your mind dreams images and scenarios of outcome is critical to understanding your anger and other emotions.
The initial moment of fear and anger was from a very real scenario that could have caused you harm. However, most often the anger and fear people generate is sourced from their uncontrolled beliefs and imagination.
Anger is Rational
Anger is the natural emotional response to pain or hurt. It is part of our instinctual system for protection and preservation. It is a force of energy that we project in order to push away a threat when we perceive being hurt. However anger ceases to be a form of protecting your life and becomes a means of destroying your life and relationships when the threat isn’t real.
Anger itself is a completely rational emotion to have when you perceive the thoughts and scenarios in your mind. There is nothing irrational or wrong with the anger from imagined scenarios and beliefs. Your emotional response system is working properly. The problem is with the thoughts, beliefs, and scenarios in your mind that generate an anger response. They are often not rational at all.
Other problems are created when you do not have the awareness and will power to refrain from outbursts of your anger. It's easy to assume that your anger is the problem because it is what you notice. It is the outbursts of anger that we see and that cause destruction. However your emotions of anger are just a natural response to what the mind imagines. If you perceive and believe what the mind imagines you will create emotions as a natural response.
If you accidentally touch a hot stove and burn your hand you will feel pain. Naturally you would want to pain to stop, but the pain in your hand isn’t the problem. The pain is just a natural response to touching a hot stove. Touching the hot stove is the is the cause of that pain. The pain won’t go away until you take your hand away from the hot stove.
The same is true when it comes to your emotions such as anger. You may want to stop your anger however anger is just a reaction to something else. Anger is the natural emotional reaction to what the mind and imagination are doing. The way to overcome anger is to address how the mind imagines scenarios and how much you believe them. When the mind imagines painful scenarios you naturally produce anger. Just the same way touching a hot stove produces physical pain.
To effectively stop or change the anger in your life address the core beliefs, assumptions, and interpretations of the mind. You can find the steps to do this in the Self Mastery Audio Program.
Understanding the Reaction to Emotional Pain
Your mind can generate anger and fear even when there's not a physical threat of pain. Your emotional response mechanism can generate anger just as easily by imagining a scenario involving emotional pain. When your mind is out of control imagining scenario’s of emotional pain, your anger goes out of control. For anger to happen the emotional pain doesn’t even have to occur. If you just imagine that you will be hurt in the future, you can become angry before anything has happened.
Understanding Anger – Example of Misplaced Blame
Here's an example to help you understand anger. Jack and Jill are in a dating relationship and have been for a while. During an evening out, Jill observes Jack interacting with other women. There is no physical threat or harm to Jill in this situation. There is not even a direct emotional threat. However, through indirect mental scenarios Jill can still generate fear and anger.
In Jill's mind, she might compare herself to one of the other women Jack is talking to. In that comparison the voices in her head might conclude that she is not as attractive, not as thin, not as funny, or not as smart. In her mind, she creates a mental image of being less than, or not being good enough in some way. This leads to self judgment and results in a hurtful emotional pain. The natural response to feeling pain is to create anger and push away the cause.
If Jill isn't aware of how her mind creates a self judgment, she could easily blame Jack as the cause of her hurt. Jill notices the fact that Jack is laughing and talking to someone else and that she feels hurts. Her mind draws a simple relationship between Jack's action as the cause and her pain as the effect.
Without awareness Jill overlooks the self judgment her mind created and only notices the trigger of Jack. In order to push away the cause of her pain, Jill directs her anger at Jack to punish him and push him away. Not only could this potentially end the relationship, but it doesn’t address the real cause of the anger. Even if Jill goes on to another relationship she will bring her interpretations of self judgment with her and create her pain again.
Understanding Anger In Each Person
There are other possible sources for Jill's anger. Instead of creating a self rejection, Jill imagines a scenario of Jack running off with someone else. In her mind she will likely interpret this as a rejection. However the imagined scenario will likely conclude that she will be alone in the end. By imagining these scenarios and believing they will happen Jill is generating painful emotions of abandonment and loneliness. The natural response to this emotional pain is to create anger as a defense and push the cause away.
However without awareness Jill is likely to misconstrue the cause of her pain. She will become angry at Jack or become angry at other women Jack interacts with. This dynamic of jealousy can completely destroy her relationships and happiness.
With awareness Jill has the opportunity to see the cause of her pain lies in her own imagination and what she believes about herself. As Jill gains awareness of the core beliefs behind her self judgment and changes them she can overcome the real cause of her anger.
For practical steps in identifying and changing core beliefs that cause anger, listen and practice the exercises in the Self Mastery Audio Program. They will help you understand your anger and make changes in what your mind is doing. You will also find more on understanding your emotionsby listening to the Free Audio
