Anger Can Be a Problem. But So Can Love.

Should Emotions Be Managed?

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First, a quick recap. I’ve been taking a deep dive into forgiveness. Forgiveness is an antidote to anger. In my last post, I shared insights on anger from philosopher Martha Nussbaum. From Nussbaum, I learned how anger can sometimes work against us and sometimes work for us.

Here’s an excerpt from that post:

Drop the wish for payback, drop the (somewhat narcissistic) obsession with status, and figure out how to turn anger’s energy into productive action. It’s easier said than done.

…philosophy is often better at telling us what we should do than showing us how we can do it. Knowing what’s best for me and doing what’s best for me aren’t the same thing. But often the knowing helps me with the doing.

When it comes to the question of how, religion and psychology may have more to offer than philosophy. Future installments of Not So Random Thoughts will explore some of the ways these fields deal with anger.

Onward…

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Anger Can Be a Problem. But So Can Love.

People don’t usually complain about an excess of joy and love. You can feel and express joy and love as exuberantly as you like. But if you feel and express anger energetically, you might want to do something about it. Are there also times when love needs to be tamed?

It doesn’t feel good to be angry and it doesn’t feel good to have someone else’s anger directed toward you. Therefore, we assume that anger should be “managed” while other emotions are given a free pass.

At age fourteen, I had an unrequited mad crush on a nineteen-year-old camp counselor. It made me miserable. I confessed my feelings to her, and she gave me some wise advice. “Love,” she said, “isn’t necessarily a good thing. If love is making you unhappy, you have to figure out how to make a change.”

What are emotions?

If someone cuts us off in traffic, we are likely to get angry. We tend to think we’re angry because of the behavior of the other driver. But Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of the book How Emotions Are Made, says it’s more complicated and more interesting.

According to Barrett, emotions are a combination of the physical feelings in our bodies and the thoughts we ascribe to those feelings. Thoughts can produce the physical sensations and physical sensations can produce the thoughts. It’s a “chicken and egg” situation.

Here’s an example:

You’re driving along the highway peacefully when someone dangerously changes lanes right in front of you. Your heart beats faster and you have the thought, “Hit the brakes!” followed by the thought, “What a jerk!”

You’re angry. You aren’t angry because your heart is beating faster. Nor are you angry because you think the other driver is a jerk. It’s the combination of the thought with your physiological response that you interpret as anger.

Functionally, Barrett tells us, emotions are predictions.

The experience of being cut off in traffic creates a conflict with how we predict the future will unfold. Before we were cut off, we predicted that traffic would flow in an orderly manner. Having been cut off, we recognize that our prediction was wrong. And after being cut off, we have to incorporate the new information about traffic into our future predictions.

We think we’re angry at the other driver. But we’re actually angry because the world is more dangerous than our predictions had led us to believe.

The importance of predictions

Without predictions, the world would be much more difficult to navigate. As I go down a typical flight of stairs, I predict that the distance between stairs is uniform and that the staircase is stable. Without this prediction, going down stairs would require much more energy. Energy is a valuable commodity. Making predictions allows us to conserve a tremendous amount of energy.

Joy might be a prediction that you will derive pleasure from an activity or from someone’s company. Fear is a prediction that you, or someone you care about, might be harmed. Jealousy is a prediction that your relationship might become unstable. Love might be a prediction that being intimate with a particular person will bring contentment, excitement, joy, and peace.

We tend to believe our emotions are a response to what is happening in the moment. But this isn’t quite right. Rather, what is happening in the moment meets up with our predictive models. If the world is more welcoming than we expected, we feel good. If the world is more dangerous than we expected, we feel bad.

Anger management

If your boss criticizes you, you might predict that your job is in jeopardy. You might get angry and have the urge to share a few choice words in a loud voice.

Do you want to yell at your boss even though it will damage your career? Or, when a family member annoys you, do you want to lash out at them knowing the harm it brings? If not, then choose a different way to respond.

The most common method employed to teach anger management is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT teaches people to notice that they are getting angry. Before the anger gets to a boiling point, CBT teaches techniques that can moderate the feeling. And then, CBT teaches ways to create a space between the feeling and the response. In that space, a person can choose how they want to respond.

CBT teaches that anger isn’t always a problem. How you act in response to anger is (potentially) a problem. The trick is developing the capacity to notice the feeling arising and then finding enough time and equanimity between the feeling and the reaction to make a rational choice. That’s the approach of CBT in a nutshell.

In the case of my unrequited teenage crush, my counselor suggested something similar. Did I want to be miserable? If not, I needed to find a different way to respond to my feelings.

As a fourteen-year-old, I predicted my unattainable camp counselor was the key to my future happiness. This prediction wasn’t accurate. I learned to manage my feelings and after a few days, I was immersed in camp activities and relationships with my peers. I still had feelings for my counselor, but those feelings made me wistful, not miserable.

Our emotions aren’t simply a reaction to people and events. Emotions involve predictions. And our predictions aren’t always accurate. If our emotional predictions lead to problematic behaviors, CBT can teach us to override our instinctive reactions and make different choices.

CBT and forgiveness

When it comes to anger, CBT isn’t the only approach psychologists recommend. Some psychologists suggest that in certain instances, the best approach to managing anger is to make an irrational choice.

The irrational choice they recommend is to swap out anger’s desires to lash out and punish and substitute feelings of compassion and benevolence—even if the person doesn’t deserve this kindness. These psychologists call this approach “forgiveness.” (I wrote about this here.)

CBT and forgiveness both have their place. And there are numerous studies confirming their effectiveness. If anger was causing me to self-sabotage, I would use the techniques of CBT and forgiveness. But when it comes to the daily ebb and flow of emotions, I don’t find either approach satisfying.

Emotions, including love, may sometimes require management. But the notion of regularly “managing” my emotions doesn’t sit right. It feels too mechanical, too intellectual. I only want to manage my emotions if they send me into a tailspin.

Forgiving by cultivating positive feelings toward someone who doesn’t deserve them strikes me as a bridge too far. I’d prefer that positive feelings toward people arise naturally rather than as a result of my mental and emotional gymnastics. And I’d rather direct my compassion to friends and loved ones than to people who have hurt me.

CBT and forgiveness have helped many people. For some, they may be the very best approaches to choose. Yet after learning about them, I wanted to know whether there were other approaches to anger. I was looking for an approach that respects and honors anger rather than teaching how to manage or manipulate it.

My search turned up two psychologists who have developed novel approaches to dealing with anger. These approaches require emotional courage to implement but for some people, they may be preferable to either CBT or forgiveness.

I will share these two approaches in future posts of Not So Random Thoughts.

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Do you have a friend who enjoys spiritual inquiry? If so, think about giving them a copy of my book. You’ll feel good giving the gift and you’ll make them happy. I’ll be happy too. That’s a lot of happiness packed into one gift.