Anger is a complex emotion. It is something we feel that can come about because of an ordeal; just as how we experience joy or sadness. Anger is a secondary emotion; primary emotion is felt right before we feel anger, for example, afraid, disrespected or trapped. However, emotions don't hurt others, practices do. Anger can also be portrayed as a strong emotional response to displeasure. Anger is a common feeling made in a battle or flight situation by our mind and body because when you sense danger your mind creates fear and anger; fear is the flight response and anger is the fight response. (Understanding Anger. n.d.) Sometimes our feelings can be real or imagined, but the response is just as real in both the situations. Our anger is mainly motivated by a desire to not be blamed followed by not wanting to feel hurt or experience fear.

Fear is a feeling caused when we feel that someone or something is dangerous or is likely to cause a threat or pain. You start to procrastinate and are not able to think sensibly or logically. Fear forces limitations upon your ability which in the process ruins the relationship with others. For example, I fear talking to bullies as I feel they would pick on me. The immediate reaction to fear is anger most of the times; What triggers this anger in us? (what triggers our anger, n.d.) It is the way we translate an event as it decides our emotional response. Like trauma or abuse, if something horrible happened to us in the past and we are struggling to get over it, we may react with anger and keep away from others. Also, when we are furious we have the tendency to protect our views and our self and draw out the “negative emotions”.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Yoda (Yoda Quotes, n.d.)

Negative emotions are feelings that make you miserable and depressed. Negative emotions prevent us from thinking right and acting sane. And when this happens, we tend to see and recollect just what we want; often times fueling anger and preventing us from having a peace of mind.

Anger can be broken down into different types. Firstly, passive aggressive anger, it is one of the most common ways of expressing anger. People with this sort of resentment never directly say that they are angry but tend to utilize mockery or deliberately forget to do things. For example, procrastination, rather than telling the person that they cannot do the work they were requested to do, the passive aggressive person will wait until the very last moment to deny the request in order to punish the other person. Secondly, anger based on shame, these people are sensitive and needs a lot of attention, when made fun of they have a mindset that they are worthless and unlovable which makes them blame and criticize everyone around them which leads to hurting their loved ones in the end. For example, in high school, I would be called mean things. These words would haunt me and would make me believe in it. Even though it may not be true it would still be true in my head. Accordingly, I behave in such a manner to the world. Thirdly, paranoid anger is feeling threatened by others, they start arguments and make false accusations which are a delusion they are going through; they tend to get extremely angry and feeling like everyone is against you. For example, I have only a certain number of friends I truly trust. My other friends may be good people but I don’t trust them enough to give them my most personal information as I fear it could be used to hurt me later. Finally, sudden anger implies that the anger seems to appear unexpectedly and has a tendency to happen rapidly and is over before you even know it, sudden anger is basically the sudden loss of control. For example, I punch something or be verbally aggressive to someone just because I felt like doing so to get over my frustrations. Anger is an emotion we tend to ignore and the same time judge others on it. Our anger doesn’t always show up as bursts of rage but can be subtle.

Another side of anger is it does not always lead to violence. Different individuals behave differently when in the state of anger, some might include silent treatment, some might just walk out of a situation. Sometimes people use other ways of getting by, for example, calling a friend, listening to music, putting out feelings into art, or even just going for a walk. Often, people find that some of their angry behavior work well for them and some might bring some issues. For example, when I yell at my little cousin for repeatedly asking for my help, he will eventually stop asking for help, and I think that my methodology is helping him be more independent. But on the other hand, I will find that the negative outcome of my behavior is that when my cousin doesn’t ask for help, he will make mistakes and may not like me as much. On the other hand, anger can be used to solve a very important problem or against the bad. For example, when someone tries to do something to me I feel insecure and scared which leads me to get angry; this helps me stand up for myself and overcome the problem. Even though getting angry can be a bad thing. Sometimes anger can be appropriate and effective.

Anger signs are one way to identify when a person is getting angry, more like warning signs; it can either be physical, a behavior, or an inclination. Understanding these anger signs can help prevent further issues. Some of the signs are physical which is the body’s response to anger which includes sweating or feeling a surge of vitality; behavioral sign are actions taken when angry, like yelling, door slamming, etc.; emotional signs refer to feelings encountered while getting angry, like jealousy, stress, hurt, humiliation; thought signs are thoughts that influence a person to get angry, like thinking or interpreting an event can increase unwanted anger. (Anger Cues and Measuring Anger, n.d.)

Self-talk influences how we respond to a situation. Most of us participate in self-talk without even realizing, it can either be negative or positive. An example of an angry thought- “well, my manicurist is 15 minutes late already, that ruins the day” an alternative self-talk could be “it’s really not worth getting angry about this, it’s not going to ruin my day”. The most common statement used while having a self-talk is ‘should’ and everything related to the word should, like ‘shouldn’t’, ‘need to’, ‘must’, etc. For example, I and my brother live together in an apartment, When I get home after a workout to find the house in a mess that my brother made; I feel since we share the apartment the responsibilities must be split equally. Thus seeing that my brother does not respect that and does not clean up after, I end up yelling at him telling him to clean up his mess. But rather I should try to understand why it’s in a mess. Thus finding out he has had a long tough day at work and has a lot on his plate. Few things in life cannot be controlled, similar to people and circumstances; anger is not always a solution to everything in life, it could just make everything worse; we have the rights to our wants and needs but not the wants and needs of others, we should learn to accept few things in life the way it is because not everything goes our way always. When angry one must challenge themselves and the negative self-talk by saying “I’ll just take it easy”, “it’s not worth getting angry” or “getting angry won't solve this problem”, and there are many more lines that could help you get back into your sense.

Anger has its pros and cons while some people only see as something negative. But there are some pros are that anger makes you feel capable, and in charge, even though you aren’t. You feel in control and stronger while yelling and giving out rude words. Anger frequently gets you the results instantly, instead of resisting the urge to panic and remain calm, you may get what you need. For example, as a group leader, it is more effective to be a strict and tough leader as it makes the other group members afraid of your anger and make them do their parts right. Since anger is the most respected response in most cases, people often see anger as defending themselves, and everyone around them may see it the same way and label them as strong. The cons of anger outweigh most of the pros; it gives you different things to stress on. It can make you sick; when you’re angry or stressed out your body reacts the same way, which makes the body want to protect itself from any harm that may come; and if a person’s anger is very frequent the physiological effects can be destructive, your health is at risk and that frightful anxiety related illness is something you are likely to expect in the long run. Especially the heart, since the heart rate increases and the flow of blood is not normal. People who tend to get angry a lot have few friends or lose them, and those who are not socially connected have no one to talk to about their feelings or just about anything which will lead them to isolate themselves and tend to participate in unhealthy practices, like overeating, drinking, etc. which results in having negative effects on your body.

One effect of anger is the increase in heart rate as mentioned before and muscle tension; these are signs of stress; ways a person can deal with stress is by using some relaxation techniques. Deep breathing and muscle relaxation are the two main ways to calm your mind and body.

While it’s true that anger is a widespread feeling; everybody communicates it in an unexpected way, however, everybody experiences it. Some ways of coping with anger and helping one with anger: take a couple of minutes to calm down and think before talking about the issue. Exercise or work on a hobby for a while. Take timeouts when things start to get really stressful and have some quiet alone time. Search for ways to fix the problem other than building up the anger. Use ‘I’ statements in order to avoid blaming or criticizing. Learn to forgive; do not let the negative feelings conquer the positive. Using humor to lessen the tension but avoiding sarcasm which would lead to making the situation worse. Practice relaxation skills as mentioned above. If nothing else works out seek help. (Adult health, n.d.)

Conflict resolutions is a route for two or more individuals to find a solution to a disagreement between them. It may be emotional, personal, financial, day-to-day activities, etc. For example, I threw a surprise party for my friend. And my other friend insisted that she would take responsibility for the food. On the day of the party she completely forgot to place orders for the food nor did she prepare anything herself, so we all ended up having chips and cake for dinner which made me very unhappy because the party didn’t work out as expected and left many hungry. Thus, I ended up yelling at her for not being responsible enough which made our friendship go on a break for a while. A clearing structure would be ‘I get upset when the responsibility that was given was not dealt with properly because it was an occasion that meant a lot to me and the task was not fulfilled what I need is for words to be kept.’ Another example could be, for spring break me and my friends planned a trip to Miami and one of my friend was in charge of booking the hotel. Few days before the trip the manager of the hotel calls and says that we had to pay an extra $50 per room and my friend agreed to it without consulting us. A written statement about the extra charges was not given by the hotel and we couldn’t do anything because it was last minute to find another place to stay. It resulted in me and my other friends not trusting her with any negotiations or anything that included money issue. A clearing structure would be, I was disappointed when I found out that our hotel booking was not done properly because what we had planned did not turn out the same way, what I need is for responsibilities to be taken seriously.

Payoffs: It makes you feel like you rule the world; when we feel powerless, victimized or even frustrated anger helps us get our way by helping us speak things we tend to regret later. This makes us feel good but it is a short-term payoff and then we are back to reality when we start to lose important things or people. Anger reduces stress; every individual stresses out for some reason or the other; the more stressed out the person is the more tension they tend to get which makes them want to get angry. Anger hides emotional pain. Individuals tend to stack up feelings and just not deal with it in the right way but rather get angry in order to make themselves feel better. Anger gets you attention; sometimes it seems that no one will listen to you unless you yell; because anger catches attention. In the long run individuals who uses this form of anger tend to lose people in their life even faster, which makes it even worse for the angry person and they tend to increase their anger even more to get attention. It is used for punishment or revenge; when someone lets you down or hurt you and doesn’t do anything about it, you tend to want to punish them for what they did and teach them a lesson by making them feel as much as pain as you did. The problem with this is that it sometimes never ends because once you get back at the person they will want to get at you and the cycle repeats; it ends up creating enemies which are mostly loved ones. (Campbell, J. (2010, June 17))

Anger is a response to fear and we secure ourselves by utilizing negative feelings. Anger is an inclination everybody experiences eventually in regular life; what we have to comprehend is that there is always a reason as to why a person is angry and we need to look at it from their perspective; because not all that matters works as per our will. Each individual ought to figure out how to control their anger since it is by all account, not the only approach to solving any situation. Controlling our primary emotions can help us prevent the secondary emotion that is anger.

Reference/Works Cited
Understanding Anger. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/anger/understanding-anger.htm

Yoda Quotes. (n.d.). Retrieved March 18, 2016, from http://www.yodaquotes.net/fear-is-the-path-to-the-dark-side-fear-leads-to-anger-anger-leads-to-hate-hate-leads-to-suffering/

Anger Cues and Measuring Anger. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://mhrecovery.tripod.com/anger_cues.html

Adult health. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/anger-management/art-20045434?pg=2

What Triggers Our Anger? « Newcastle Psychological Services, Newcastle Healthy Minds. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.newcastlehealthyminds.nhs.uk/anger/what-is-anger/

Campbell, J. (2010, June 17). The Character Therapist: T3 - Five Payoffs of Anger...Or Not. Retrieved June, from http://charactertherapist.blogspot.com/2010/06/t3-five-payoffs-of-angeror-not.html