Addicted to Anger
Everywhere you look, you’ll find people who are angry.
This isn’t the kind of anger that comes and goes, the kind that’s always been around. This is a new kind of anger that, for some people, has become their default emotion. They’re always angry, or on the verge of anger. They seem to be just waiting to find something to be angry about.
It’s easy to believe that this sort of anger is the exclusive domain of a particular political view, but it can been found on both sides of the political divide. Its origins don’t lie in a political philosophy; they can be found in feelings of anxiety and the helplessness that’s attached to it.
Anxious thinking can only bring a feeling of helplessness.
A simple chemical reaction, one that our bodies are always capable of producing, flips the switch, transforming anxiety into anger.
The chemical is adrenaline. Once adrenaline has been added to anxiety, it’s not anxiety anymore. Now it’s anger, and the helpless feeling associated with anxiety has been transformed into the beast of anger.
It’s no puzzle to figure out why people who feel anxious most of the time would prefer to be angry instead of being anxious. When you’re angry, you feel more powerful than when you’re anxious. When you’re angry, you have the illusion of agency. When you’re anxious, there is only helplessness.
If a person is addicted to anger, they’re ripe to believe anything that makes or keeps them angry.
I’ve noticed that people who spend most of their time being angry aren’t interested in finding solutions. A solution might quell their anger, but it would return them to their feelings of anxiety and helplessness. They’re much more interested in finding someone to blame for why they’re angry.
Unfortunately, this tendency has been encouraged by certain politicians. It’s a page taken straight from the dictator’s handbook. Keep your base angry, and they can be easily manipulated. Keep them angry, and you’ve got them in your pocket.
Nothing can veil the love we’re all made of faster than anger. If you’re angry all the time, the love you’re made of simply isn’t available to you. On top of that, anger effectively neutralizes your intelligence. When you’re mad, you’re simply not as smart as when you’re in a more neutral frame of mind.
Curiosity is another casualty of anger. It’s impossible to be angry and curious at the same time.
Does it make sense to disable the love you’re made of for the sake of being angry? It doesn’t sound like a fair trade to me.
Though it’s done unknowingly, this is the trade-off people make when they become addicted to anger, and it is an addiction.
When decisions are made from anger, instead of from your source, which is love, they’re always bad decisions. They may seem right in the heat of the moment, but they will invariably be the sort of decisions that cause harm and regret.
You may also have noticed a close connection between anger and the need for control. For those of us who feel a strong need to control life, anger, or it’s slightly milder cousin, irritability, are near constant companions.
An addiction to anger carries the risk that anger may be the only emotion you’re able to feel, because it numbs you to everything else. Humans need to be able to feel more than this so they can navigate their lives. If all you allow yourself to feel is anger, the world becomes very dark and very small, very quickly.
Does it make sense to you to trade the richness of a life fully lived and felt, for the upsetting, stupefying tone of constant anger?
If you liked this blog, please check out my other articles.
