Have you ever wonder why do we get angry? I know it’s because of some situations or because of some people, but that is not the real reason. We get angry because of what we think about the situation or about the person, and most of the times it is connected with the feeling of loss. I think that we get angry because somehow we feel that we’re losing something and we don’t like that. For example, when we get mad on our bosses because they give us some extra task, we get mad because we’re losing our time and we get nothing in return. When we get mad for someone not replying to a text message, we might feel that we’re losing the relationship with that person. When we get mad that our best friends go out without us, we might feel that our connection will disappear and they’ll no longer want to be best friends with us. Jealousy is all about this loss feeling. We get jealous because we feel we’ll lose our partner and we’ll be alone again. Sometimes we even get angry because we feel we’ll lose control of the situation.
This loss feeling is all around us, and most of the time we can’t control it. It appears due to some automatic irrational thoughts and if we don’t counter them with some rational thoughts, the loss feeling kicks in and we get mad and us getting mad might make things worse. Our irrational fear of losing something will get real because we got mad and acted based on that feeling. The people around us might not understand why we got so mad and they will create some distance between them and us and this will make the loss real. It’s unwanted self-fulfilling prophecy. This is another reason why we should get in control of our thoughts so we can control our feelings, and therefore we can control our behavior.
If we understand how this loss feeling works, we can understand why other people get mad. We can create a connection between the situation and their feelings. Maybe we can’t understand what they feel of losing because their reality is not the same as ours, but we understand that they feel of losing something and that should be enough for us.
The better we understand ourselves, the better we can understand the others.
Good insights.
Thank you! 🙂
Very interesting way of looking at anger though if it’s true I should be angry all the time because I’m continually in a place of loss. Still it does explain why I’m frustrated a lot.
Brilliant post. You are right in so many ways. I also found that if I could understand why a person does something, I don’t get mad. A friend of mine, psychologist told me that anger is not an emotion, it is in fact an reaction to an emotion.
Anger is often displaced anxiety in my experience. By getting angry or acting out you end up exhibiting dominance over others in an attempt to control them and your environment in general. Especially if you pair it with a fear of appearing weak. Because the healthy alternative in a lot of these cases is just to express that you are feeling lonely or sad, or unappreciated. But vulnerability often means relinquishing control of the situation, which triggers the anxiety response. And around and around we go. That’s just my personal take on it though.
I absolutely agree with you. One other thing, is people use it to get people to do something. I knew a woman that very seldom did something unless some bad words were thrown her way.
Thank you very much for reading and for sharing your thoughts!