get angry in response to frustration. The state of our health is only ever part of the explanation of our expression and management of anger.
We have already looked at how the way we perceive a trigger affects our anger response. But let’s now consider other important ways in which anger can influence our minds.
Anger and Self-Esteem
Our attitude to anger can affect the way we think about ourselves, and therefore it has the power to affect our self-esteem and self-confidence. In our culture, because anger still has such a negative aura for many people, even feeling the emotion, let alone expressing it, can damage self-esteem. I often hear people admitting that they keep even minor feelings of irritation well-hidden because they are ashamed of them.
As most people’s ideas of ‘goodness’ include benevolence, tolerance, generosity, kindliness and affability, angry (‘negative’) feelings are often banished to the private worlds of fantasy and dreams. These can, of course, be very natural safe healing abodes for difficult feelings – as long as we do not hate ourselves for actually experiencing them there. But how good are we likely to feel about ourselves when we are carrying around images in our heads of the awful things we would like to do, or dreamed last night of doing, to get our own back on someone who has hurt us? Certainly very many of my clients report that they have found it excruciatingly difficult to ‘confess’ their angry fantasies to me, because they are convinced that when they do, I will see them ‘for what they really are’ and I am bound to reject them out of fear and loathing.
Similarly, many people have told me how they are ashamed to admit that they are gaining vicarious satisfaction from books, films and plays where anger is expressed, sometimes quite horrifically and destructively. They are worried that their interest proves that at some deep level they are just as evil and violent as the fictional characters, and that if they were to release their anger they would be just as destructive themselves.
Many other people have their self-esteem damaged because they have actually experienced disapproval and rejection in direct response to the expression of their anger. If this happens frequently, it can make them feel very despairing about themselves, because they begin to wonder if they will ever be capable of loving or being loved, or of achieving success.
There are two main reasons why the expression of anger can be followed by disapproval and rejection:
1 The recipients themselves have such low self-esteem or are so stressed that they are not able to cope with the anger which is being directed at them.
2 The anger has been expressed in a threatening or unjust manner.
Identifying which of these two reasons is involved is vitally important, because the first is neither the fault nor the responsibility of the angry person (unless, perhaps, the other person is in our care, e.g. a child). But the second most certainly is our business and we do have the power to do something about it – we can learn to manage our anger more assertively! If we do, we will find that not only will our relationships improve but so will our self-esteem.
ANGER AND SANITY
Another way in which people allow their self-esteem to be damaged by anger is by thinking that not only can it make them ‘bad’, but that it also has the power to make them ‘mad’ – and, of course, that label may have even more power to eat away at our self-image! We often hear variations on these themes:
‘He was so angry that he just lost his reason.’
‘She flew into a rage and went quite crazy.’
So let’s try to separate the myths from the reality around the relationship between anger and mental health.
To feel and express anger healthily is actually the antithesis of madness.
THEODORE ISAAC RUBIN
Links between anger and mental health have been made for many centuries. Horace, the great philosopher, who lived from 65 to 8 BC, is quoted as saying ‘Anger is a brief madness’. Nowadays, we may not equate anger with madness, but very many people still believe that it can directly cause it.
In fact, like many fellow therapists, I firmly believe that an ability to express anger in an assertive, healthy and controlled manner is indeed one of the most important signs of good mental health. But I do acknowledge that mismanaged anger can aggravate mental health problems. At this stage I would love to be able to quote irrefutable scientific evidence to support this belief, but I cannot, because it does not exist, and I very much doubt that it ever will. Unfortunately, disorders in this field are not easy to research because it is obviously very difficult to keep tight scientific control over human subjects without depriving them of freedom and privacy and the help they often need and deserve. So research data on the exact causes of mental health problems is still frustratingly inconclusive and most of the debate, therefore, has a strong subjective ring to it.
Much of the disagreement and argument centres around what is commonly called ‘the nature/nurture debate’. On the one hand, there are those who believe that almost all problems stem from biochemical or genetic faults (nature), on the other hand are those who believe that all problems can be traced back to parenting and other socialization factors (nurture) – and many other people retain a foot in both camps. Those who believe that the mismanagement of anger can be a cause of mental ill-health are most likely to be found closest to the nurture end of the spectrum.
MY OWN EXPERIENCE
My own views on this subject have certainly been largely formed as a direct result of both personal and professional experience with anger. When I first entered the profession of psychiatric social work I was firmly positioned at the ‘nature’ end of the continuum. I felt very comfortable embracing the medical model of mental illness and quickly became skilled at the art of making elaborate diagnoses and prognoses. I was particularly ‘hot’ on spotting the difference between a psychotic and neurotic illness. I had a very clear idea of what was ‘mad’, what was ‘sad’ and what was merely ‘bad’ behaviour. Although I was not trained as a doctor, I prided myself on the fact that the psychiatrists could always rely on my advice concerning medication and rehabilitation programmes. I could be trusted to work with patients because there was no fear that I would upset them by delving too deeply or stirring their troubled emotions. I was not uncaring, in fact, I was completely dedicated to my work and cared very deeply about patients’ welfare. I was an energetic force in the campaigns to unlock wards and abandon white coats. In the community, I argued the case for mental illness to be seen with just the same compassion as any other illness because ‘they’ needed our help and protection.
With the wisdom of hindsight obtained through many later years of personal development work, I can now see that I adopted this professional patronizing mode to protect myself. I had spent much of my twenties secretly suffering and being treated for depression. On being cured, I was advised (by my psychiatrist!) to seek employment in a psychiatric hospital. I had a great need to see myself as completely cured and quite sane, and what better way to prove that than by becoming a valued and respected side-kick of eminent psychiatrists! For me, ‘feeling sane’ was actually feeling that the nice caring side of myself was in complete control of the seething pool of unexpressed and denied anger about my childhood and past life
