If you’re reading this article it is likely that you struggle with anger. In this case, it is important to know that you are not alone! 45% Of people report losing their temper at the office regularly and a study by Romanov (1994) found that 15% of people scored very high on hostility. 

Basic emotion

Anger is one of the basic human emotions; we all experience it now and again to varying degrees. However, intense and poorly managed anger can cause distress and problems in your daily life. It can hurt relationships, mental health as well as your work. Think about shouting at your colleague, or acting aggressively toward a friend. Poorly regulated anger can worsen situations and often ends up increasing your anger. 

Learning about anger, how to express it appropriately, and gaining insight into it, can have a positive impact on your practical and social life. The goal of this article is to help you understand it, as a first step to help you learn better skills to manage it. 

Importance

Anger is an emotion that lies on a spectrum ranging from annoyance to frustration, intense rage, and hate. Intense anger can be a very powerful and overwhelming experience. It charges you up and prepares you to take action. It is part of your natural defense system; your ’fight or flight’ response. It doesn’t necessarily make you ‘fight’, but it is an emotion that helps you to stand up against injustice. It helps you stand up for yourself and others if you feel attacked, and make changes where necessary. 

You experience anger when you detect that something is wrong, you sense a threat, or if you feel that you are being mistreated. It tells other people to listen to you. Therefore, anger is often also warranted and a very important emotion! Think about important social movements for equality and the motivation to right wrongs.

Common causes

Common things that cause you to feel anger:

• Situations you perceive as threatening. For example, when someone insults you or a loved one. This can be considered as a threat to your well-being or status.
• Being prevented from reaching an important goal. For example, being stuck in traffic causing you to be late for work. 
• Unpleasant physical or emotional sensations such as pain. For example, after accidentally cutting yourself with a cooking knife. 

As with any other emotion, anger is a brain and body response or reaction to events or thoughts we are experiencing. It is therefore temporary and will flare up and die down if you allow it to run its course. This is important to keep in mind if you are learning to manage your anger! 

Exercise

Now that you have a good understanding of what anger is, a good first step to managing it is becoming aware of when you are experiencing anger. Try to keep track of when you feel angry in the NiceDay app. Turn on the custom tracker ‘Angry’ and register each time you feel angry and include a note with a description. Write down what caused you to feel angry and any thoughts, feelings, or sensations you might experience. Look at your registrations from the past week/few days. Do you notice any patterns? Do you often feel angry in certain situations, after certain events, or at certain times? What makes you vulnerable to the feeling of anger? What helped calm you down? Write down your insights in your NiceDay diary. 

NiceDay

Would you like to learn more about anger? Check out our psychoeducation library on emotions. Are you struggling to control your anger and would you like to learn some skills to help you effectively manage it? You can follow a treatment via NiceDay at various organizations, click here for more information.

You probably know someone who has a deep envy for someone? That there is no compassion at all anymore. How come you can hate someone so much? More about feelings of hate in this blog.

Hatred is a stable and intense feeling of dislike towards a person or group of people. It’s more of a long-term feeling than for example anger. Hatred arises in the absence of compassion. Not being able to put yourself into the shoes of someone else can lead to misunderstanding. When we feel we’re being belittled, we’re feeling inferior or jealous, feelings of hatred can arise.

Evolution

There has been said that not everyone is capable of hate, because hatred only arises under certain circumstances. You can see this in part of the evolution. Ages ago, chimpanzees and bonobos lived on opposite sides of a river. On one side there was plenty of food, but on the other side there was a shortage. You can probably guess, but there was a constant battle of territories on the side of shortage. On the side of abundance there was a peaceful harmony. The smaller the chance of survival, the more hate there is.

Tribalism

The us-against-them principle is still visible in politics, religion, but also sports. In our childhood we learn certain norms and values. Our surroundings help us create a certain view of the world. Including prejudices about other groups of people. Negative experiences can wrongfully confirm your view, which can cause a huge contradiction. When you feel others can’t understand you, but at the same time you are not able to understand them, hatred can arise.

If you feel another group of people is trying to harm your own group, this can lead to a kind of primal instinct arising to protect your own people. This protective response can thereafter lead to resistance of the other group. And so a circle of hatred arises. 

Confirmation

When we believe in something, we usually (un)consciously search for confirmation. This is also called the confirmation bias. You want to find similarities in others that hold the same beliefs. You’re looking for stories that match your beliefs. Facts that support your beliefs also stay more present in your memory. Things that collide with your frame of reference seem to appear a bit off. You prefer to avoid them, which causes a distorted image of the world. You won’t explore other beliefs very quickly. It might feel a little as self-denial if you would suddenly have to change your deep-rooted norms and values!

Social media reinforces feelings of hate

Unfortunately, this confirmation bias is also one of the factors that makes hate possible. It can even lead to extremism. Especially since social media has become such an important part of daily life. The algorithms of social media have the main goal to show you things that match your likings. This causes your beliefs to become stronger each time and there’s a decreasing amount of space for the beliefs of others. And if you actually see one of those beliefs, there’s a huge chance it will be seen as criticism on your own belief. Which causes more hate to be stirred up. This extreme form of continuous confirmation is an unfortunate reason why things like racism, nazism and wars still exist.