Welcome back, everyone. Let’s continue with the same theme addressed in the last monthly article, emotions. This time we immerse ourselves in anger. Culturally, it is seen as an emotion to be kept more under control than others because it can generate aggressive behaviors towards others. As a guideline for a healthy development of the same, it becomes essential to be able to know them through their proper expression and make sure that this process is properly managed by those, who will become figures of reference. Knowing emotions, corresponds to learning a new language,…?
Analysis
Thanks to emotions the mind:
is activated and directed towards a goal…
people are able to create a bridge to other people’s emotions by understanding, understanding, putting themselves in other people’s shoes, in short, empathizing.
The greater the flow of emotions from the inside of a person to the outside, the greater the psychological well-being. A large part of mental wellbeing derives from an adequate functioning of the emotions with which we create “healthy relationships”.
As analyzed in the last monthly article, “shame” protects and creates a zone of safety from the outside. It communicates that something inside us would like to remain private. We use this analysis of shame, to capture in it a certain kind of anger, that is not direct but indirect. We do not directly tell the other not to enter into our innermost self, but we express it indirectly with a closure; we can read it as a form of anger expression. We introduce how its healthy functioning lies in using it “as a tool” to give voice to all needs, making them exist in consideration of an external context with which we relate.
Let’s connect what we said before, to that mode of expression of anger, known as aggressive-passive, in which the emotion that reaches the other, precisely the anger, does not.
Is directly communicated. Emotionally it is made to feel anger, but explicitly it is shown in a different way.
We cannot face psychological dynamics without inserting them in a relational framework where anger gives the person a way to “confine” the outside. In everyday life all this corresponds simply in saying what we think by expressing ourselves.
Within a conversation. Everything that creates relational movement from the inside of us to the outside can be read as moved by anger, not in the sense of “aggression” towards the other to hurt him, but simply as “self-assertion”. Then there is clearly that kind of anger, classically known as physical or verbal aggression, heated discussion, shouting. We always see these dynamics as the same type of anger described above but with a greater intensity. Qualitatively, we can see the result as identical, making the outside feel “how we want to be recognized”.
We see examples of how anger can be born and exist in everyday life.
Lived/experiences of non-recognition (not being recognized and considered on the basis of one’s own needs). These can lead to an accumulation of anger which, in later stages of life, may emerge in a non-functional way. A spiral is created where a continuous external recognition is sought to fill old wounds. However, everything happens in a way that is not harmonious and excessively charged with anger.
Experiences, where the education given, has been that of not having to bring out anger from the outside. In these situations, the person develops an excessive control of this anger, without being able to use it in a functional way, if necessary, running the risk of letting it all come out at once. We see here, those situations of people who apparently calm, explode in episodes of strong and intense anger. A possible side effect of a non-fluid existence of anger in everyday life, can be identified in a reduced expressiveness and vitality of the person as a result of a lack of energy (positive anger).
Conclusions
A mentally healthy wellbeing cannot be separated from a healthy emotional functioning in the person and in the relational context. By healthy emotional functioning, we mean the flow of emotions towards the environment, without intervening in modifying them and with a corresponding respect for the environment itself. The greater the repression of them or the non-consideration of the environmental context, the greater will be the possible dysfunctional experiences.
Anger becomes the spokesperson for each person’s internal experiences. With it, there is an important boundary in the relationship and we communicate: I end here, where you can start to exist; to cross this limit, will mean to make mine disappear.