Welcome to our discussion on understanding anger and its causes. Anger is a universal emotion, but have you ever wondered where it comes from and why it affects you the way it does? In this post, we’ll get into the essence of anger, exploring its origin, your personal triggers for anger and how our thoughts play a main role in this emotional journey.
What is Anger?
Anger is a basic emotion / feeling like happiness, anxiety, disgust. It gets triggered in you when you experience someone or something violating your rule book (in your mind) on what you believe is right or wrong in the world. When this rulebook, or in other words your view of the world and how things should be or not be, is challenged, attacked, criticised or even ignored by other people, anger is likely to express itself in a number of ways.
You may choose to express anger as an attack in order to defend and protect yourself from greater pain.
So, what are you actually defending and protecting? Emotions that go even deeper than anger. Emotions such as hurt, fear and abandonment. These feelings are often experienced as greater “pain”. Consequently, we cover it up by expressing anger in unhelpful and aggressive ways such as yelling, screaming, verbally abusing, hitting and many other forms of attack.
Personal Triggers for Anger?
It’s important to note that I am using the word “trigger” very deliberately. That is, I am not saying what is “causing” your anger or who is “causing” your anger. That implies that someone or something outside of you is “making you angry”. Unfortunately, we even use statements like “YOU’RE making me angry”. Anything can trigger your anger. It depends on the amount of value and importance you place on those triggers, your beliefs about yourself and the world you are defending and/ or protecting.
The interesting thing for you to consider is what may trigger your anger may not trigger anyone else’s anger. It’s a very personal thing and is dependent upon the following factors:
A. Personal History: Our past experiences shape our emotional responses. If we’ve encountered situations that made us feel threatened or unfairly treated, we may be more prone to anger in similar situations.
B. Biological Factors: Our genetic predisposition and brain chemistry can influence our propensity for anger. Some individuals may have a naturally lower or higher threshold for anger.
C. Environmental Triggers: Environmental stressors, such as work pressure, financial issues, or family conflicts, can trigger anger. These external factors can build up over time and make us more susceptible to anger outbursts.
D. Unmet Expectations: Anger often arises when our expectations are not met. Whether it’s unfulfilled personal expectations or violated social norms, disappointment can fuel anger.
Potential Triggers Based on Its Importance to You.
- Someone makes a mistake and blames it on you.
- A driver cuts you off
- Someone abusing you
- A stranger saying something about your family
- Someone you know saying something about your family
- You are late for an appointment
- Believing someone is disrespecting you
- Being accused of something you didn’t do
- Bias and favouritisms within your work place
- Child labour around the world
- World war
- Ethnocentrism: bias towards one’s own culture and race and against everyone else.
In fact, even colour and temperature, everything outside your eyeballs, can trigger your anger based on the value and importance you place on these things and how you think about them.
Anger comes from your own thinking. That little voice inside your head that tells you what should or should not be happening, how people should or should not behave. The rulebook you have for life in your own head.
How an experience affects you is determined by your rulebook and the value and importance YOU place upon what meaning it has for you. That is, how you think about a particular situation or event and the importance you place on it determines the level of the emotion you feel. People and events do not give you anger or make you feel angry. It is your thinking/interpretation of those events that contributes significantly to your anger and emotional state.
Where Does My Anger Come From?
What and how I think about other people and events make me angry? YES.
The Fact That Our Thoughts Influence Our Emotions Date Back Through History.
Here are a few examples:
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Shakespeare
“It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves”. Carl Jung
“People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.” Epictetus
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes”. William James.
“What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds”. Wayne Dwyer.
There are many other examples throughout the ages that clearly show that our thinking process, which includes our beliefs, values and attitudes, form our personal rulebook for life. This rule book contributes significantly to our emotions such as anger, hurt, fear and other emotional states.
Imagine that you are having a great day, sitting in your backyard enjoying the sunshine. You start thinking about an unpleasant event that occurred two years ago, and before you know it, you start to feel upset.
Now imagine, you are still having a great day but then you start to think about something in the future that hasn’t happened yet, but is predicted to be stressful and unpleasant. In a very short period of time, you start to feel tense and stressed right now, in the present moment about something in the future that hasn’t occurred.
You can see from the above examples, simply thinking about things, people and events triggers an emotional state in you. Consequently, no one can make you angry. It’s your thinking about what they’ve said or did not say that is causing your anger.
Attribution of Responsibility
This is a big word that means who do we really want to hold responsible for your thoughts, feelings and actions.
Is there a tendency for you to blame other people, things and events for what emotions and feelings you have or is there a tendency for you to accept responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings and actions in spite of other people’s comments and behaviour towards you?
Learn how to further Understand anger and it’s causes as well as evidence based strategies here.