Anger is the Human Condition

People get angry a lot. Yes they feel others things, love, sadness, fear; but they are most likely to tell you about something that has recently pissed them off. Occasionally someone will come see me in counseling who is unaware of feeling angry. These are the acceptions and with a little proding they soon find that they are angry too. What is everyone so angry about? They're angry about all their other unpleasant feelings. I'll name a few: humiliation, shame, abandonment, powerlessness, fear, sadness, mistrust, and sometimes even love because it brings up these other feelings. It is a strong and courageous soul who will openly display all feelings without jumping to anger. Even love, we hold back.

I suppose you could argue that people hold back their anger too. I'd agree, thank goodness, since we channel so many of our feelings into anger I wouldn't want to see it spilling out unchecked. Some are better at controlling their output than others, thus therapists get paid, prisons get filled, and the divorce rate runs at about 50%.

But, we humans are sneaky, and we find other less obvious ways to "let it out." We criticize the people we love; we hold back our affection; we isolate; we have affairs; we spend all the money; we judge. This makes humans sound really bad, which I don't believe is true. In fact, every person who has allowed me to see their deepest center radiates innocence and love. This is really true, not just psycho-babble unconditonal positive regard.

Then why, why so much anger? I think it is because we are humans and mammals, and we fight or flight just like every other species, and we've got these giant brians that create mazes to our real emotions, to our truest innocent, loving selves. What is anger? Fight or flight? It's both. For a moment I feel humiliated and I run away to anger. It feels safer there. Here I can blame, justify and criticize. And if my tenderest self is touched, and I fear I need protection, I go to anger, fighting to protect the tender self.

It takes a lot of work, lots of probing by me the therapist, to get someone first to share the feelings of which they're aware, and more probing to help them discover the feelings from which they hide. Therapists' job is to work with resistance, each person's natural self-preservation instincts to mask and hide feelings, to uncover the hurt, young, innocent soul beneath. The absolutely gorgeous soul that lies quietly in the center.

I heard the old tune "Smile on your brother, everybody get it together" the other day. I sang along with sadness and joy. Joy at the beauty of the dream of togetherness, and sadness at the knowledge that we will always run to anger, at least some of the time, a lot of the time. Togetherness would mean we had laid ourselves bare, everyone of us. Because it can only be safe if everyone of us were bare. We can't do that; we don't know how and we really don't want to.

We are human, we are beautiful, we defend against the real and imagined. We get angry, a lot.