Mastering Anger: the surprising power of learning ou to be Sad

Author's note: managing anger is a challenge we all face, as it often brings along its companions—frustration and sadness. Dive into this essay to explore the complexities of anger and discover strategies to navigate these powerful emotions.

Knowing how to recognize and manage emotions is essential for physical and mental health, because they often determine the way we think and behave.

Naturally, this management is not something you can learn instantly from a book or by following popular tips on social media. It requires time, consistency and persistence, and depends on each person's maturity, experiences, expectations, needs and goals.

Of course there are setbacks along the process, and as with everything of a social nature, when it comes to emotions there seem to be some that are more accepted than others. If you don't believe me, try laughing at someone's funeral.

Today I'm going to talk about one of those emotions: anger.

Anger is one of those emotions that we instinctively tend to hide because we think it might be a sign that we are dangerous or malicious. However, it's just another emotion that allows us to adapt and deal with reality. And like all of them, anger can be a valuable source of information about what's going on with us.

Anger is just a sign that we are Human.

The main message we send out when we express anger is “get out of the way!”, thereby showing others that we feel dissatisfied, threatened or afraid.

Many things happen, some of them unconscious, before we feel angry. One of these things is frustration.

So, when we feel that we don't have what we want, things aren't as we expected, or when people don't live up to our expectations, we usually feel frustration, which also serves to camouflage fear, sadness or powerlessness. In short, when the world doesn't turn out the way we want, we get frustrated and angry.

When managing any emotion, it is necessary to understand its origin and its causal factors (conscious or unconscious); Anger is mainly derived from the sadness we feel when something or someone causes us frustration, in other words, when our expectations are not met.

Therefore, to manage anger, we first have to accept it as natural and legitimate and recognize it when we feel it.

It's important to find strategies that allow us to manage the expectations we have of ourselves, of others or of something we're involved in (such as our profession); managing expectations can be done by adjusting our objectives, gathering as much information as possible about people and contexts, or lowering the standards we set ourselves, because it's natural to fail and this will happen several times along the way.

Another essential ingredient in managing anger is recognizing the sadness that may be at the root of it:

• what caused it,
• what reactions does it provoke in us,
• how can we interpret sadness so that it has the potential to grow rather than destroy?

Although anger is usually directed outwards (at people, situations or things), the truth is that we are always its first victims, because we feel the effects of anger in our bodies;

Being essentially the result of feelings of threat, at the first sign of anger, the entire limbic system is activated, triggering a series of psychophysiological processes that culminate in the release of hormones such as Cortisol, Adrenaline and Noradrenaline, which in the long term lead to hypertension and/or cardiovascular problems, for example.

In addition to these effects, anger also induces an increase in muscle tension, changes in facial expressions and body posture; therefore, long before it affects others, anger exerts its effects on our body.

Anger has an impact on our lives and the lives of others, because it easily triggers manifestations of aggression and violence. But we can also learn from it, if we know how to identify its triggers, what feelings they arouse, how they influence us and how we usually behave in the face of them.

Human behavior is the final link in a chain of emotional and psychophysiological reactions. But it is the most visible and has the greatest impact.

Faced with the feelings associated with anger, we tend to have automatic responses of attack or flight, which are naturally detrimental to individual and social development and well-being. I believe that many wars originate in the accumulation of sadness and frustration, which consequently explode into anger.

Therefore, if we want to learn to manage anger, we must first learn to be sad and deal with sadness. If we know how to deal with the moments when we are sad, we will hardly ever feel angry.

Otherwise, in some cases it will turn into rage, which is like a revolt against the world, which almost always ends up affecting us more than others.

I often say that it's normal to be sad, just as normal as it is to be happy.

When you don't learn how to be sad, your body and your life are the main victims of your anger.

Original post: Blog