Medical Associates Clinic

 Quality Care Close To Home

Gettysburg Medical News
 The Clinical View
 by P.E. Hoffsten, M.D.
6 April 2005

THE SICKNESS OF ANGER

            I was recently approached to recall a column that I had written several years ago.  The inquirer asked about a column I wrote on the topic of anger and all the adverse effects that came from that. Try as I would, I couldn’t find the old column.  But there is new information since that was written and this can provide an update.

            I inquired about the person for whom the inquiry was made.  I was told that the problem person was a young man about 30 years old, struggling to make his farm operation work.  He had a wife and 3 children, ages 8, 6, and 2.  He was described as always working but struggling to make ends meet.  He was described as never really happy and becoming more estranged from his family.  He was described as becoming very angry with his 8-year old son for leaving the lights on, angry with his wife because of the grocery bills, angry at the bank because of the difficulty with payments, angry with the weather because of the drought.  He just seemed to be angry about everything all of the time.  The person who asked me about the old column recalled that I mentioned that “anger all the time” was a potentially fatal flaw.  She asked if I could write the article again.

            To begin with, anger is the emotion a person feels when they have been treated “unfairly”.  There is a need on the angry person’s part to “get even”.  Most of the time, the concept of getting even doesn’t even apply.  You can’t get even with the weather.  The loan deal that was made with the bank didn’t work out, but no matter how unfair it seems now, business law is business law.  There is no way to get even with an 8-year old child for leaving the lights on or with his wife for the grocery bills that she tries so hard to keep down.  So to summarize, the basic premise upon which anger is based is irrational.

            The second point to make is that almost always a person’s anger behavior will not reverse whatever it is that person is angry about.  Anger relationships come in three forms.  You can be angry at someone that is socially or occupationally above you, equal to you, or below you.  The most common anger relationship with someone occupationally above you is when you are angry at your boss.  This is a relatively helpless position to be in unless the angry person decides to use passive-aggressive behavior.  This is always destructive.  If you are angry at your socially, occupationally, equal person, they simply get angry back at you.  The angry behavior doesn’t work to resolve the conflict. A chronic adversarial relationship is built or the topic of the anger is neglected as both parties learn to be helpless.  Lastly, if you become angry with your socially, occupationally, subordinates such as your children, their anger may change their behavior briefly, but resentment grows over time.  Soon any communication with children is lost and estrangement occurs.  None of these outcomes would be what the angry person really wanted.  Since I last wrote on this topic seven years ago, there have been many more articles published documenting the multiple adverse effects that “angry all the time” has on the person.  The death rate among the “angry all the time” is higher for heart disease, stroke, suicide, and alcoholism.  For heart disease, the rate of death among the “angry all the time” is 5 times that of the general population.

            So, anger is an irrational emotion that does not achieve the purpose for which it is directed and kills you early. What is the alternative to the angry behavior?

            The first step in changing anger behavior is to recognize that it is a voluntary emotion.  Contrary to popular belief, no one ever “makes you mad”.  People do whatever it is that they are going to do, and then a person decides to choose the emotion of anger to respond to what other people do.  Just as the emotion of anger can be chosen, an entirely different response could be chosen that is certainly more constructive than anger.  Step one in anger management is to recognize that the angry response is not required.

            The second consideration in choosing a response other than anger is to recognize that it doesn’t work.  If a person can recognize that they are becoming angry and then recognize that it is not going to work, it is then time to choose another emotion, another response to whatever it is that the person is displeased about.

            I would never be so presumptuous to think that this is easy. It takes training and time, effort and desire and once a person can recognize that choosing a response is ineffective and kills them early, there definitely is a better other way respond.