Don't Look Back in Anger

I just got through reading "Make Anger Your Ally." by Neal Clark Warren, PhD (One of the co-founders of eHarmony).  I can't believe that I came across this title just now.  I found that he outlines a lot of useful insights and strategies.  It would have been enormously helpful, had I picked this little title up like fifteen or so years ago.

It is almost relieving to read the initial premises of the book, which states that:

1) Anger is not a primary emotion, but an almost automatic inner response to hurt, frustration or fear.

2) Anger is physiological arousal (nothing more)

3) Anger and aggression are significantly different.

4) How we use our anger is learned

5) The expression of anger can come under your control. 

These premises appropriate anger as something quite natural, that simply exists.  When we learn that God himself gets angry, in some ways it is a portal of connection between us and our Creator.  This allows for an awareness that it first of all, exists, whether in me or you, chronically or from moment to moment.  These premises allows a person to examine his or her own patterns. 

Warren profiles four broad categories of people who mismanage their anger:  

1) The Exploders (Externalizers)

2) The Somatizers (Internalizers)

3) The Self-punishers (Depressed)

4) The Underhanders (Passive-agressive)

While Warren states that most people with anger problems primarily lean towards one of the above categories of undesirable manifestation, I have noticed myself employ a combination of all of the above, contingent on the circumstances and situations.  So at least, in my own mismanagement of anger, there is some measure of controlled risk.

But the point seems, that none of the above are healthy ways to manage anger.

As the title would suggest, Warren tries to offer suggestions on how to use anger towards a beneficial way:  Self-awareness, building up self-esteem, journaling and so forth.  But in final analysis some questions arose that leads me to believe that had he dug a little deeper, the volume might have ended up far more substantial than it was.

While reading I could not help but to arrive at some different conclusions with some of the initial premises Warren outlines.  If anger is merely a response to hurt, frustration or fear, this kind of anger is reduced to an arousal out of instinct of self-preservation.  I don't know if I believe this to be the case.  Broadly speaking, anger is a response to the way things are, vis-a-vis how things should be; not necessarily for just the individual who suffers, but also for others who suffer.  

When a child wants candy but the parent withholds it or prohibits it from her, she may throw a tantrum.  That child believes that she should have the candy, but is not getting what she wants so the tantrum is an expression of anger, to have some sense of control over her dissatisfaction.  But it will take a long time before the child understands that candy before dinner will ruin her appetite for food that will be far more nutritive, that in the long run, what was withheld was for her own benefit.

When injustice is being perpetrated, however, like for instance when a bully constantly harasses someone weaker than him, that weaker person may not retaliate but a third party may respond in anger.  In this case, we have anger that is not quite out of automatic response of "hurt, frustration or fear," but out of an understanding that the things as they are unfolding are not the way they should be.  The third party who intervenes may have all kinds of complex reasons why he or she might be motivated to "set things right," especially when it may not even be his business but this is exactly when anger finds its rightful place.  It is right to be angry when things are wrong, it is right to be profoundly angry when the status quo is unacceptable (Moses comes to mind, who killed an Egyptian that was maltreating a Hebrew-although I am not saying that he was right in taking matters into his own hands).

Anger then, speaking more generally, is an emotional state that is aroused for change.  The problem is, that the anger itself, which has the potential energy to create positive change, more often than not, creates worse problems.  Being sick and tired of sick and tired is a kind of pattern that one may sink into, but needs fuel like anger, for desirable change.

Warren provides us with an example of Lee Iacocca, of how the frustration of being helpless in a depressed economy was expressed as a force of motivation to bring about positive change.  The Civil rights movement led by Dr. M. L. King for another, is a supreme example of a profound sense of dissatisfaction (anger) being employed to create positive change.  Dr. King had a significant number of white supporters who were angry with him.  But Malcom X's approach to the unacceptable status quo, in some minds may have been accepted as the necessary "equal and opposite reaction" to a larger systemic problem that saw no other recourse.  Although in X's case, his approach had no room for white empathizers.  The point, however is, that how we respond to felt anger is not without choice. The best choice is not conducive to promoting more violence (multiplying anger). 

There is a section that suggests that mishandling of anger often comes from self-esteem issues, so self-talk, self esteem reinforcement strategies, as well as to somehow connect to the source of unconditional love become indispensable parts of "Anger Management Principles."  But right away,  I thought of the anger in the narcissistic personality.  How does the narcissist deal with anger?  Often times, it is done in orchestrated and damaging retaliations.  But then again, I don't see a narcissist picking up a self-help book on how to manage anger, either.  In the world there are people who think that they are always right and can do no wrong, while doing wrong to many.  And this too, makes me angry.  I think that before God, every person can be open to the possibility:  "Hmmmnnn, maybe I am wrong."  That one, has gotten me out of many pits.  I think a useful book may be oriented towards how to deal with people who are angry but think they can do no wrong.  Admittedly, I have had those blind moments too.

Some useful points I take away from the reading and reflection in response:

1) The problem with anger, is that it is often expressed in destructive patterns.

To become loosened from that cycle, to be freed from that downward spiral some important steps are:

a) Being aware of one's own anger and to accept it, don't sweep it under the rug.

b) To evaluate whether it is rational or irrational.  (Not all anger is irrational.  This, I think is an important distinction and by the time we get to this point of evaluation it can be diffused)

2) Angry disputes or hostility almost always escalate  (sometimes to the extent of a destroyed relationship of mutual apathy, or even worse, to tragic mortality).

a) So before responding whether in action or speech, (or even inaction,) sufficient self-reflection may foster temper.  (Can one be angry at anger?  I think so.  I think it works on the same principle of being in love with Love or being at peace with Peace:  In other words, not feeling the need to stir things up because peace had become somehow boring)

b) Before any kind of reaction or response, forecast the damage.  Growing up, I remember I used to fight with my brother and sometimes, with physical violence.  Both of us were high school athletes and it came to me as a very possible reality, that this was not just little kids throwing punches in a school yard anymore.  One reckless fight could end up in very serious injury or even death.  I think that in the continuum of anger one does not need to go that far.  Even before words are exchanged, where we may hurl insults or speak in a tone of derision, the understanding that this can contribute to certain damage undesirable to myself as well as the other may remind us of the principle of reciprocal causality.  In anger, common sense often flies out the window.  I was reminded, that although the guy is now big enough to kill me, that I love him.  Gee whiz, I love my brother! 

3) Anger carries the potential energy to bring about positive change. 
The habit to develop then, is to harness this energy to change myself first.  There is very little that we can to do try and change others.  But human relationships as designed by God, is intended to be in community and communities work together synergistically.  When a person sees something that is useless, another person may pick it up and put it to wonderful use.  Anger may be harnessed in such a way, to be fashioned into a power, under God's control.  And of course, this is where prayer becomes crucial.  Let us not defang the Lion, Jesus is described as lamb that was slain, yes, but He is the Lion as well as the Lamb.  

Warren offers a "keyword" used to pause for a moment before any angry reactions, in his example that word is,  THINK.  It reminded me of an episode on Seinfeld where the phrase "serenity now!" was the kind of this magical incantation to try and dissolve outbursts of anger.  But it takes a whole different level of spiritual discipline to make anger not a destructive wild fire, but a focused flame that can cut through shackles of evil, and sin.

There is a spiritual dimension that Warren touches on very little, when addressing the problem of anger.  I am pretty sure that when young sheep herder David stepped up to the plate to take down Goliath, it was not without anger.  Likewise, when David had recognized the wrong that he had perpetrated against God when abusing his authority to take Bathsheba, he had not been so quick to forgive himself.  After all, the casualty of that particular affair included not only Uriah, her husband, who died only because he was insisting on being the good soldier he was.  There was a child just before Solomon, who didn't make it.  Many of David's psalms indicate an agonizing wait for God's absolution: Not an immediate self-soothing self-forgiveness, but worship that led him towards self-forgetfulness.  Before being so generous with ourselves, I think that it is appropriate to fix our eyes on God, whose generosity is simply outside of our variety of self-directed mechanisms of coping when we are the ones who did the wrong.  Perhaps then, we can be more authentically forgiving of others, as well as of our selves.  

There may be something very wrong with me, if I am happy and well when confronted with my own sin and evil as well as those that exist in the world.  Anger exists quite possibly out of love, because True Love keeps room for antipathy, not apathy: Hatred against evil and sin (not just speaking broadly as in the world, but especially of the weeds that grow in my own heart).  And to this effect, I invite you.  Be angry with me my friends.  Like Qoheleth allowed himself to madness and folly, still guided by wisdom, let your anger by guided by a Spirit who is Holy, into positive action.

Then God asked Jonah, "What right do you have to be angry over this plant?" Jonah answered, "I have every right to be angry-so angry that I want to die."  (Jonah 4:9)  Sometimes this is exactly how we get.