Introduction
In this post, I’m writing about what anger is, what causes it, and how it resolves because so many of us are feeling it. We’re feeling angry for different reasons. Some of us feel angry about being mistreated or falsely accused of doing wrong. Many are angry about what’s going on politically, regardless of their political party. Many are also angry about the broken political promises, the war, tariffs, and the increased costs of living. Still others are angry about many other things going on in their personal lives, others’ lives, and the world. I hope you’ll find value in what I share about what anger is in the context of Life Therapy Education, what causes it, and how it resolves.
What Anger Is: A Type of Energy and Emotion
In the context of Life Therapy Education, anger is a type of energy. Specifically, it’s an emotion stirred up in your human spirit. It’s stirred up by what you actually experience first-hand or by your own thoughts, memories, or imaginings in your mind. When you feel angry it effects your body, mind, and relationships with others.
Like all emotions, the energy of anger is just an emotion. As such, anger might be unpleasant to feel, and it can’t hurt you. For others, expressing anger feels good to them. Either way, it’s just an emotion and is temporary. It gets stirred up by an external stimulus, lasts a while, and resolves. Resolving is exactly what it wants to do.
Specifically, anger is an emotional energy that does two unique things that no other emotion does. First, it informs you that you have been wronged. And it fuels your response to stand up for yourself and make things right again.
Two Kinds of Stimuli Cause Anger
Two kinds of stimuli stir up the energy of anger: experience-based stimuli of being wronged and mind-based stimuli of being wronged. Experience-based wrongs are experiences we see, hear, or feel firsthand as they happen to us or someone we care about. They can also be wrongs that we learn about secondhand from a reliable source.
Experience-Based Stimuli
A few examples of experience-based stimuli of being wronged include being ignored or ghosted by someone, cut off in traffic, falsely accused, betrayed, robbed of your identity or money, having someone take credit for your work, put in harm’s way without consent, and being verbally, emotionally, physically, or sexually abused. It’s normal to feel angry when you have these experiences.
Mind-Based Stimuli
Mind-based stimuli of being wronged are caused by your thoughts, memories, or imaginings of being wronged. For example, you’re ruminating about how angry you are about being wronged by someone recently, and you’re thinking all kinds of thoughts that stir up anger inside you. These stimuli happen only in your mind. No one is actually doing anything wrong to you in the moment. Your thoughts are causing your anger.
Remembering past wrongs can also stir up the energy of anger inside you. One example of how this often happens is when you hold a grudge and ruminate on the past harm done to you. As you replay the memory, you experience the harm again and feel angry even though you’re not being wronged in the present moment.
Next, imagining that someone not currently with you is somehow wronging you also stirs up anger. It stirs up your anger even though you haven’t actually experienced being wronged by anything first- or second-handedly. Usually, the imagined wrong never happens.
So, know that mind-based stimuli of being wronged rarely, if ever, inspire life-affirming actions. More often than not, they inspire life-denying actions that harm you and damage your relationships with others.
How to Resolve Anger
The best way to resolve both experience-based and mind-based anger is to come to your senses. Coming to your senses means directing your attention to your five physical senses. Direct your attention to what you are actually seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting right now. If no one is doing you wrong, then it’s likely that your own thoughts, memories, or imaginings are stimulating your anger. However, if someone has actually wronged you, take the following steps
- Recognize that you are feeling angry and verbalize it: Say, “I’m angry!” in a tone of voice that matches the degree of anger you feel.
- Verbalize the Wrong Done: “I’m angry because I saw/heard/learned that I was wronged by (describe the person and/or event that wronged you).”
- Validate feeling angry: “I’ve been wronged, and I’m allowed to feel and express my anger.”
- Spend some time journaling about how you were wronged: Name the people involved, describe the setting, describe what happened from beginning to end, include when you felt angry, where you felt that anger inside you, how intense your anger was 0 to 10, and the urges you felt.
- Identify a range of options for how to defend yourself and make things right. Include everything that you think of within legal bounds.
- Decide on the best, life-affirming option and take action: The best option is a win for both you and others, including those who wronged you. Those who wronged you experience the consequences of their actions. Experiencing the consequences makes it possible for them to learn from what they did and become more life-affirming.
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