Why Anger

The back of my brain has been quietly analyzing ideas and mulling them over subconsciously as usual. When it comes up with a possible conclusion it then offers it up to my consciousness for affirmation. These ideas are not timed as far as I can tell, they just appear when they are ripe. They formulate from inputs and updates both new and old.

One of these appeared a couple days ago and I quickly had to write it down before I lost track of it. I have been a little puzzled about the nature and substance of the emotion of anger. People have a lot to say about it and against it and often have such strong opinions about it they cannot be objective or open-minded to new views of it. But I now think that in many cases anyway, if not always, anger may be more of an “intensity indicator” of other emotions than a stand-alone emotion.

In analyzing my own experience of when I become angry, it often does not make sense for the situation. But if I carefully uncover the original feeling that preceded the anger and then see how or why anger follows it, it begins to make a lot more sense. For instance, in my case many times anger follows almost instantly after shame or fear. Because I feel frustrated by either my inability to express those emotions from fear of exposure and shame or my belief that others will not recognize the depth of those feelings, I then employ anger to attempt to force them to recognize how intense my original feeling is.

Of course this obviously is not very effective at all since I never expressed the original emotion to start with so how would they know how intense it was. But my emotional mind is not so much concerned with being logical as it is desirous of being understood. That's why someone who can have the ability and desire to look past the anger and gently expose the original emotion and synchronize with it has much more influence than simply reacting to the anger and thereby amplifying it. This too may be much of what Jesus was talking about when He said, “Do not resist an evil person”. Resistance tends to amplify the frustration whereby a gentle and loving spirit sees past it to the pain and shame that is screaming to be recognized.