Replacing Rage with Reason

Anger is destructive - in fact, it may be the most dangerous of all emotions, because it deprives people of their ability to reason. People in the grip of anger often deceive themselves about their own and others’ motivations and actions. They live in a fantasy world, surrounded by a stockade of anger that they unconsciously hope will protect their fantasy from outside threats.

“Anger leads to loss of control and lack of reason. No other emotion - anxiety, depression, even love - erases our control so completely.”

Angry outbursts can cause terrible professional and personal problems. Enraged drivers may get into deadly collisions or fights. Angry spouses may stifle communication between themselves and their children, or even destroy their marriages. Habitually angry people may lose their friendships, their jobs or their health.

“Rational decisions do not occur when we are angry or fearful.”

Those who hope to heal their anger habit need to know that trying to reduce the intensity of their outbursts, moderate their temper or conceal their feelings won’t help. Instead, the best solution is learning to replace rage with reason. Once people learn to interpret their feelings rather than succumb to them, their emotions can provide important signals about their angry state of mind. Feelings can become important sources of personal insight and information.

The Meaning of Anger

Angry people tend to experience fury when they’re swept into a contest for power that, in the long term, they can’t win. Because people and things are not lining up as they hoped, they try to force them. When they launch verbal, physical or even silent attacks, they are trying to use coercion to get what they want. However, expressing anger is not the best way to affect things that fail to unfold according to plan.

“Anger tells us that we are preparing to force others, or ourselves, to comply with some expectation.”

To change their tactics, angry people can learn to heed and examine their feelings of rage. Instead of lashing out, they need to gather more information. Instead of forcing their expectations onto others, they need to question those expectations. If the expectations are legitimate, the next step is to find other ways to communicate them.

“We are, first and foremost, managers of our behavior before we can even think of influencing others.”

Angry people who follow this thoughtful process may even end up deciding that they need to change more than other people do.

Small Habits Support Big Ones

Anger does not come out of nowhere. Like smoking, exercise or any other habit, good or bad, people develop the habit of anger through sustained, almost ritualistic, behavior. The habit of anger is embedded in other habits - of thought, speech and behavior.

“Making clear what we expect from others is a way of influencing what they do. Maintaining that expectation in the face of ’failures’ on their part is a powerful force for change in them.”

Anger is situational, like smoking. Smoking isn’t a matter simply of lighting up and puffing away. People smoke in the context of thoughts, words and actions that may include buying cigarettes from the usual store, chatting with the sales clerk, playing with a cigarette lighter while on the phone, or offering cigarettes to or borrowing them from fellow smokers.

“Anger in those for whom we are responsible is trained and perfected by our own angry responses.”

Quitting smoking is impossible if the smoker still maintains all of those other habits. Imagine deciding to quit smoking, but for social reasons continuing to buy cigarettes, chat with the clerk, offer cigarettes to other smokers and toy with a lighter. Obviously, expecting to quit smoking without changing all of those other habits is absurd. Breaking the smoking habit means breaking all the little habits that sustain the big habit of smoking.

“The cultivation of misery, usually in the form of viewing ourselves as victims, is a necessary part of the well-honed anger habit.”

The anger habit is similar. Critical thoughts, revenge fantasies, the paranoid imputation of cunning motives and designs to others, criticism of the way others live, negative thinking about oneself and feelings of being a victim of injustice can all provide a context for anger. Angry people do not simply blow up, any more than a pan of water simply boils. They heat themselves up to a boil by feeding the flame.

“To reduce anxiety requires that we reduce our preparations for attacking others and ourselves in an attempt to control behavior.”

The solution is to deprive the flame of its fuel, not simply to try to stifle the heat of anger. Angry feelings contain important, necessary information. These feelings can tell infuriated people that they have acted upon certain expectations, made certain observations, interpreted the data obtained through observation and arrived at certain conclusions. Generally, they have made these observations, interpretations and conclusions without being aware of all the steps. Generally, too, they have not questioned their interpretations. To stop angry outbursts, though, they must learn to do so.

“Communication is nearly impossible when people are struggling to control others...because the information they exchange is constantly being sorted for clues of attacks.”

Often, people who criticize the motives and intentions of those around them are projecting their own discontent or lack of self-satisfaction onto other people. In fact, angry people may perceive shortcomings in others based primarily on their own unrealistic expectations. To cure anger, they must examine what they perceived and how they concluded that the best thing to do under the circumstances was to go on the attack. This is difficult, because anger can have a paralyzing effect. However, people can overcome it by examining their feelings during outbursts - those fits of blistering rage that are usually unproductive at best and counterproductive at worst.

Self-Respect, Not Self-Importance

Often, angry people are self-important - and this is their greatest weakness. They fear any suggestion that, in fact, they may not be so important after all. Self-importance is not the same as self-respect. Self-respect is based on an honest self-evaluation, whereas self-importance, ironically, may arise from unjustified self-contempt. Anger often reflects the frustration that enraged people feel when they attempt to control what others think of them and what they think of themselves. Moving from self-importance to self-respect can enable them to realize their full potential and to respect the personal potential of their co-workers, family and friends.

“The fear-panic cycle begins with chronic anger grounded in a struggle for control that produces feelings of alienation.”

Self-important people may believe they are the powerless victims of powerful injustice. Their feelings of victimization provide a reservoir of negative energy that sets off their angry attacks. Just think of managers who react with unhappiness and displeasure to every mistake by their employees.

“When parents recognize a child’s anger as a response to distress and a signal that the child may need help, parents do not become angry. They may be able to do something rational, like reducing the pain, comforting the child, feeding the child...in short, they can do some parenting.”

On the level of personal relationships, think of parents who make their displeasure clear to their children, and of their children, who believe they can never measure up to their parents’ expectations. These children believe their parents constantly make unfair and unreasonable demands.

To break this cycle, angry people must learn to turn away from seeing themselves as victims and begin to see themselves as breaking free of the burden of rage.

Poor Communication

Anger is deadly to communication. It makes honesty impossible. Just as warring enemies attempt to deceive each other, angry people attempt to conceal their own vulnerabilities and to exploit other people’s weaknesses. In both cases, their deception and concealment result from the fear that other people will exploit their vulnerabilities to gain the upper hand. This expectation creates relationships that are the opposite of honest and trusting. In fact, sharing secrets about vulnerability is an important step in developing healthy intimacy.

“Most of our attempts to control others - that is, most of our anger habit - are below our awareness.”

However, anger is not just a failure to communicate. It often involves force. Although force is an attempt to demonstrate strength, it is the dangerous product of fear. Fear and anger reinforce each other. In fact, anger may lead to panic when those in a furious struggle for control begin to feel that they are losing the struggle. Because angry people fear losing control, they turn to threats, which they sometimes carry out.

“The feeling of guilt is related to anger and is a kind of fear.”

Angry people often seek support and encouragement from those around them, since they find it difficult to be angry alone. Consider the cliché of the enraged husband who shares confidences with a sympathetic woman. Hearing the husband’s account, his confidante may affirm that his anger is justified. This reassurance protects the indignant man’s self-importance. Sadly, it also adds fuel to the fire of his anger by affirming his observations, interpretations and conclusions, although they may be very mistaken. Thus, the ideas that led to his anger are strengthened. Such misguided communication and support can lead to divorce. Once he is no longer with his wife, who was the immediate stimulus to his fury, the angry ex-husband may feel happy and free for a while. But because his struggle for control is a chronic habit, he is likely to enter the same kind of relationship all over again. Habits are by definition repetitive.

Angry people feel guilt but not remorse - and these are not the same thing. Remorse is honest. Remorseful people understand what they’ve done wrong and try to repair the damage. Guilt-ridden people, in contrast, deny responsibility and try to escape from the truth.

Alternatives to Anger

Alternatives to anger are within reach. Anger is a habit that depends on a context - usually a power struggle. Anger is a way that people lash out when they are losing that struggle. To reduce their anger, they should face facts and take responsibility for their behavior. Angry feelings provide important data. To learn from anger:

• Replace self-importance, self-contempt and guilt with self-esteem and remorse.
• Replace the contest for power over others with an acknowledgment of their freedom.
• Replace criticism and attacks on others with an open mind.

To break the anger habit, people must first acknowledge the legitimate rights of others without abandoning their own values. Then, they must learn how to remind others of their expectations by the way they live - not by shouting in fits of rage.

Anger between Parents and Children

Angry attempts to control others are often the misguided results of failed self-control. For example, parents who made mistakes in their own lives may desperately try to control their children and force them to walk the straight and narrow path.

Many parents make rules and demand that their children obey, under the threat of punishment. Parents who use rules as springboards to anger may indeed remind their children of the importance of rules, but they do not remind them of the importance of self-control. Parents should use rules to build credibility and confidence. The parents’ real goal when making rules should be to teach their children to control their own behavior. Parents can use rules productively to demonstrate their confidence that their children can meet their expectations and govern themselves wisely.

When people with the anger habit become parents, they must be doubly aware of the feelings that spur their anger. Emotions such as fear and rage carry important signals. To be good parents, angry people must deal with their own feelings before making decisions about their children. People in the grip of anger or fear may have difficulty thinking rationally. Rational thought is even harder if their children, reacting to their own anger and fear, do things - such as pitching tantrums - that make angry parents even more upset. Yet, even those parents who are still learning how to investigate their own feelings have the obligation to find out about their children’s feelings as well.

Children’s anger is similar to that of adults. Often, it is rooted in their recognition that their expectations and predictions are not coming true. But recognizing such outcomes, and coping with them, is a life lesson. Parents must teach their children to deal with disappointment without erupting in anger - but first, they must teach themselves.