It's Okay to Be Angry Read online

  The Faces of Anger

  Let’s take a look at some of the many different faces of anger.

  Ire suggests greater intensity than anger, often with a clear physical display of feeling such as flushed cheeks or dilated pupils. Rage suggests loss of self-control leading to violence. Fury is a controlling and destructive rage that borders on madness. Indignation suggests a healthy anger at what one considers unfair, mean or shameful behavior.

  When we don’t deal with our anger, we are more likely to dwell on the causes. The more we focus on how we were wronged, the easier it is for the anger to turn into hostility. We want to punish, hurt or in some way repay the person who caused us the pain. Over time it’s easy for the hostile thoughts to become aggression. Healthy anger lets others know exactly how you feel and why. It is honest and clear. Hostility is neither honest nor clear. The other people know they’re in trouble but they’re not sure why. They know they’ve done something wrong but they’re not clear what.

  Rage is much more than mere anger. It is anger under a pressure that seems to demand immediate action. There’s no time to think about your anger. Rage demands to be acted upon. Anger influences but rage controls. If anger is a stream, then rage is a roaring river that’s flooding over its banks.

  The actions we take under the influence of rage are almost always overreactions. The rageaholic shouts, yells, screams, hits, hurls painful words, half-truths and sometimes objects, damages, destroys and then waltzes off into the sunset with no sense of guilt or remorse. Why? Because “they deserved it.”

  Anger and Hate

  It’s true that anger and hate are both emotions. But they are different emotions. Anger is not hate. Hate is not anger. Hate is the antonym of love. Anger is the antonym of apathy.

  A careful study of the Bible reveals that there is a big difference between anger and hate. Psalm 106 provides a good example. In verse 40 we read, “The Lord was angry with his people.” It is clear that the rebellion of His people caused the anger. But further reading shows this not to be the emotion of hate. The response is not of punishment, but of discipline and correction. Yes, the Lord did hand the Israelites over to their enemies. But in addition, “Many times he delivered them [and] he took note of their distress; . . . he remembered his covenant and out of his great love he relented” (Ps. 106:43–45). These are not acts of a raging and out-of-control God. Instead, God’s anger arose out of His love. It was the means whereby God communicated His character. His sometimes painful discipline has its foundations in His love.

  It’s unfortunate that many people confuse the emotion of anger with the ways some people choose to express or act out that emotion. This confusion has caused anger to take the blame for some other emotions. Anger is not an evil emotion. The emotion of anger has never caused the breakup of a marriage, although inappropriate expressions of anger may have. Anger is not necessarily a dangerous or destructive emotion. Anger is not always a deadly sin. The problem lies in how we choose to express it.

  Anger: A Learned Art

  One woman wrote, “As a child the anger I knew was the stand-on-the-chair, yell-at-someone and throw-things kind of anger.” Another woman wrote that “When I hear the word ‘anger,’ I think of coldness, sarcasm, contorted faces, slammed doors, extended silences, sobbing in back bedrooms, cold eyes and dark moods that kept everyone in the house on edge for days or weeks.”

  As men and women who are made in God’s image, we are designed by our Creator to express ourselves. Given the fact that we are “born to communicate” it’s surprising that clear communication is so difficult for so many people. I think there are two good reasons for this: original sin and our upbringing.

  As part of their learning process children often imitate and then adopt the behavior patterns they see demonstrated in the adults around them. There are also external influences that contribute to a sense of what’s considered appropriate behavior. These influences include friendships and role models picked up from television, movies and books.

  A good example of this is the myth that it’s more acceptable for women to express emotions than men. This starts at an early age when little children learn that it’s okay for little girls to cry, but that a boy needs to “be a man.” (And we all know that being a “real man” involves having emotional bypass surgery, that noninvasive procedure that takes place in childhood by which boys initially aware of their feelings learn to keep quiet about them.) After a while the child has suppressed his emotions for so long that he not only no longer recognizes them but also isn’t even aware of them. By the time many boys become men they have lost the ability to express themselves. They have learned all too well that expressing emotions is not masculine and is thus unacceptable.

  Mismanaged Anger

  Mismanaged anger can be hazardous to your health.

  What is mismanaged anger? It is anger that is not identified or understood and not dealt with in healthy kinds of ways. It is anger that is stuffed, repressed, suppressed, denied or ignored. It is out-of-control anger that keeps us from knowing what we are really feeling—and it does damage to ourselves and others.

  What kind of damage? Consider these statistics from the American Academy of Family Physicians:

  Women who bottle up their anger may be more likely than other women to have a heart attack by age 60, according to a report in Psychosomatic Medicine. In a 10-year follow-up study, 2,000 women who were enrolled in their 40s were followed until five years after menopause. The study showed that women who conceal their anger . . . have rising heart rates, levels of stress hormones and blood pressure, all of which have been linked to thickening of the carotid arteries.4

  What’s So Great about Anger?

  In our survey of more than 3,000 women, we asked the question: When you hear the word anger, do you tend to have a positive or a negative response to that word? In a random sample of more than 500 of the surveys, 77 percent of the respondents said, “Negative.” We also asked: From your point of view, is anger primarily a positive or a negative emotion? Out of a random sample of 850 surveys, 78 percent of the respondents said, “Negative.”

  Yet as we have already mentioned, this oftentimes renegade emotion was designed by God as a gift and has tremendous potential for good. Let’s take a look at some of the specific ways healthy anger can help us.

  Anger is a signal. Anger is to our lives what a smoke detector is to a house or a dash warning light to a car. It serves as a warning to stop, look and listen. It says, “Caution; something may be wrong.” In The Dance of Anger, Harriet Goldhor Lerner observes:

  Anger is a signal and one worth listening to. Our anger may be a message that we are being hurt, that our rights are being violated, that our needs or wants are not being adequately met, or simply that something isn’t right. Our anger may tell us that we are not addressing an important emotional issue in our lives, or that too much of our self—our beliefs, values, desires or ambitions—is being compromised in a relationship. Our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give. Or our anger may warn us that others are doing too much for us, at the expense of our own competence and growth.5

  People who don’t know how to listen to their anger are missing out on one of anger’s greatest functions. As we learn to acknowledge anger’s warning signs, we are more likely to be able to recognize and deal with an issue while it is still manageable.

  When we don’t recognize a problem issue or choose to ignore the warnings of anger, we are more likely to face bigger issues and greater problems down the road. When we ignore the warning lights of our emotions, what we might have been able to deal with fairly simply at an early stage will in time become a major problem.

  Anger can provide a powerful source of motivation and energy to move us to positive action and change. Everyone wants to be different but nobody wants to change. Change is frustrating. Change is threatening. Change produces insecurity and increases our vulnerability to anxiety and fear. Change is one of the most difficult things in the world for most of us to accomplish. Yet change is what keeps us out of ruts. Without change there is no growth. Without growth there is psychological, spiritual or relational stagnation. Anger can be a prime catalyst for change.

  Managed anger can contribute to more intimate relationships. When most people hear the word “intimate,” they think of safety, trust, transparency, security; of dealing with “someone who really knows me.” They think of such people as a spouse or a best friend or bosom buddy. Webster’s Dictionary defines intimate as “belonging to or characterizing one’s deepest and most private nature.”

  True intimacy doesn’t occur overnight. It takes time, a lot of it. Intimacy involves getting to know someone. It involves not only sharing the ways in which you are similar, but also sharing and working through your differences. It is through our differences that we reveal ourselves to one another as the unique persons God has made us to be. It is in working through our differences that we learn to understand and trust one another.

  The emotion of anger is one of the most important ways we become aware of differences. Anger tells us that something is bothering us about another person. When this happens we can choose to move toward a surface or cosmetic harmony and pretend that everything is fine, or we can risk discomfort and awkwardness by speaking the truth in love, resolving the issue and in the process increasing the depth of the relationship.

  The road from not understanding to understanding often goes through the town of misunderstanding. Rarely are we able to communicate everything clearly the first time or understand someone else the first time, especially if it involves something as complex as emotions we don’t always understand ourselves. (Sometimes it is only in the process of trying to communicate our feelings
to someone else that we ourselves understand them.)

  The emotion of anger doesn’t strengthen or weaken relationships—how we choose to express anger does. If you choose to sit on your anger, the relationship is likely to remain shallow at best or, at worst, die a slow death. That is why a woman can come into my office and say, “I’ve been married to this man for 35 years and I have no idea who he is.”

  As we risk expressing and then moving beyond the secondary emotion of anger to its root causes, such as fear, hurt or frustration, we will be able to identify and grow beyond the differences that divide.

  Anger can help us set boundaries and clarify who God has created us to be and to become. An important part of growing up is the establishment of personal boundaries. A personal boundary is part of what defines and distinguishes an individual. A personal boundary is where I leave off and you begin. My boundaries tell me that God has made me an individual with unique needs, wants, feelings, desires and dreams. Boundaries define appropriate behavior and expression of feelings. They let a person know when she is being violated or abused. They identify what is acceptable and unacceptable, appropriate and inappropriate.

  Anger can be a warning that a personal boundary has been crossed, that you are being violated, abused or taken advantage of. It can give you the power to say no. Yet our surveys have shown that many women find it almost impossible to say no. Because they are not clear about who they are and who God created them to become, they direct most of their energy toward taking care of others and making them feel comfortable.

  Not being able to say no makes a woman more vulnerable to becoming overresponsible. If a problem develops, she assumes it must be her fault. She spends much of her time apologizing for something she should have done, information she should have known or something she didn’t do quite right. She has trained herself to take care of others, be mindlessly submissive and follow everyone else’s instructions, not only sacrificing her own needs but becoming substantially unaware of them so that she can more effectively cater to the needs of others.

  One woman wrote, “I feel like my job is to function as the emotional thermostat for everyone else in the family.” When that happens, you don’t have any way to measure your own emotional climate. You deny your God-given talents and gifts. You are unaware of God’s plan and purpose for your life.

  Jesus never asked us to exchange our backbone for a wishbone. Being a godly woman doesn’t mean not having your own ideas and options. A bumper sticker put it well: “Jesus died to take away our sins, not our brains.” That means we are not to be conformed to what our family of origin, our spouse or our friends say we should be. As believers, we have the mind of Christ, and it is to Him that we are to become conformed.

  Take Action

  Dr. Redford Williams of Duke University has developed three questions that will help you identify if you are the kind of person whose hostility places her at risk of health problems down the road.6 Answer the following questions by circling the answer that best describes you.

  When friends or even strangers do things that hold me up or keep me from accomplishing a task, I often think they are selfish, mean and inconsiderate.

  When someone does something that seems incompetent, messy, selfish or inconsiderate, I quickly feel frustration, irritation, anger or even rage. At the same time I often am aware of uncomfortable physical sensations such as a racing heart, being out of breath and sweating palms.

  Whenever I have those kinds of thoughts, feelings or bodily sensations, I am more likely to communicate my feelings to the person I see as the cause of my discomfort with words, gestures, a change in my tone of voice or negative facial expressions.

  Dr. Williams’s research has shown that if you answer “Often” or “Always” to two of the three survey items, it is probable that your level of hostility places you in a high-risk group for health problems. You may have what Dr. Williams calls a hostile heart.

  3

  What Are Emotions, Anyway?

  Gary J. Oliver

  A recently divorced mother of two asked me during a counseling session, “Dr. Oliver, I know I’m supposed to be an expert on emotions, but right now I have no idea what I’m feeling—except bad.”

  “Carol,” I said, “who told you that you are supposed to be an expert on emotions?”

  She responded, “Well, everyone knows that women are more emotional than men.”

  Carol represents the thousands of women we have worked with and surveyed. They believed that because they were women they should somehow magically understand and be experts on their emotions—not just their own emotions, but also the emotions of everyone around them.

  They were the subtle victims of some of the widespread misbeliefs about women, men and emotions. In their extreme form some of these misbeliefs include:

  God designed women to be more emotional than men.

  God designed women to have different emotions than men.

  God designed women to feel but not think. He made men to think but not feel.

  God designed women to be right-brained. He made men to be left-brained.

  God designed women to be nurturing. He made men to be competitive.

  A woman psychologist stated, “It is a myth to believe that women are always in touch with our feelings—or that we have any more of them than men do. One of the strongest feelings that every human has encountered during his or her lifetime is anger. . . . We [women] do not always easily express much of anger.”1

  What Exactly Are Emotions?

  In the first chapter we introduced the issue of anger, its causes and some of the ways we can handle it. Later, we will consider depression, fear and anxiety. But in order to understand and deal with all of these, we must first understand what emotions are, where they come from, how God designed them to function, how sin has damaged them and what we can do about them. We need to know the relative importance of emotions and when we can trust them and when we cannot. We need to know how feelings relate to thinking and how much weight to give to each one. These are some of the matters we will deal with in this chapter.

  Webster’s defines emotion as “a psychic and physical reaction subjectively experienced as strong feeling and physiologically involving changes that prepare the body for immediate vigorous action.” The English word emotion is derived from the Latin word emovare which means “to move” or “having to do with motion, movement and energy.”

  Dorothy Finkelhor, author of How to Make Your Emotions Work for You, says emotions are

  the motivating forces of our lives, driving us to go ahead, pushing us backward, stopping us completely, determining what we do, how we feel, what we want, and whether we get what we want. Our hates, loves, fears, and what to do about them are determined by our emotional structure. There is nothing in our lives that does not have the emotional factor as its mainspring. It gives us power, or makes us weak, operates for our benefit or to our detriment, for our happiness or confusion.2

  In Psalm 139:14 the psalmist states, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Nowhere is the delicate complexity of God’s creation more evident than in our emotional makeup. Our emotions are complex. The experience of emotions involves sensory, skeletal, motor, autonomic and cognitive aspects. Our emotions influence the spiritual, social, intellectual and physical parts of our lives.

  What Are Some of the Most Common Emotions?

  In seminars and workshops I’ve asked participants to make a list of frequently experienced emotions. Here are some of the most frequently listed emotions.

  Acceptance Elation Hurt

  Anger Embarrassment Indifference

  Anxiety Excitement Loneliness

  Appreciation Fear Love

  Boredom Fright Pride

  Concern Frustration Sadness

  Confidence Generosity Shame

  Confusion Gladness Surprise

  Delight Grief Terror

  Depression Happiness Ticked

  Discomfort Humiliation Worry