my so-called sanity: I didn’t like myself (after all I knew that I was a ‘phony’); I still secretly nursed very black depressive thoughts; my body was becoming literally crippled with tension (I was having regular treatment for rapidly advancing arthritis which has now disappeared) and my personal relationships were far from perfect! I am now convinced that if I hadn’t dealt with my backlog of anger and subsequently learned how to manage frustration in a healthier manner, I could have become even more seriously mentally disturbed.
So, initially, it was this very personal experience which convinced me of the link between anger management and mental functioning, but now I can add the weight of years and years of professional experience as a therapist, plus the testimony of many colleagues doing similar work, to reinforce this conviction.
The Psychological Effects of Mismanaging Anger
Here are some of the ways in which I believe mismanagement of anger can affect your mind (even though many other factors such as genes, biochemistry and physical damage and addiction may also be upsetting your mental equilibrium).
Firstly, let’s just clarify what I mean when I am talking about depression. I am not referring to the occasional ‘blues’ caused by ‘feeling a bit off colour’ or by life just not going as well as it could. Neither am I talking about the short temporary feeling of sadness and despair we can feel when we are appropriately grieving over a loss. I am referring to a state of mind which makes a person feel, for a very extended period, as though they are ‘enveloped in a black cloud’ or are in a ‘deep black hole’ – and convinced that they (or anyone else) are totally powerless to do anything about it.
In this state, the depressed person is likely to talk in very hopeless terms about themselves and the world. After a while, they may even give up talking about their despair and just act as though they didn’t care about themselves or their lives. They may not bother to eat properly, dress smartly or work efficiently. You can spot them indulging, more and more frequently, in self-destructive behaviour such as excessively drinking or smoking or taking more and more ‘silly’ risks such as driving carelessly or not bothering to watch their finances.
When this state of mind sets in and becomes a ‘chronic’ condition, the chemistry of the person also becomes ‘depressed’. They have less energy, a reduced appetite, a need for an above average amount of sleep, etc. Their work performance will drop, their relationships will deteriorate (they are, after all, boring and frustrating to be with!) and so they become even more convinced of their uselessness and the futility of life.
Although research has shown that some people who become depressed have a genetic history which predisposes them to develop bouts of this kind of ‘illness’, the way in which we habitually manage our emotions is, in my view, just as important a pre-determining factor. When I was struggling to understand the influences on my own depressive tendencies, I came across a book by Anthony Storr called Human Aggression, which certainly helped me to understand and change my own self-sabotaging anger habits. Similarly, it has also made sense to many hundreds of depressed people I have worked with in the last 25 years. Although it may never be able to be scientifically verified, I know that it is also one which is widely accepted by many other therapists and counsellors as well.
They hate those whom they love since they cannot get from them what they really need, and since they dare not show this hate for fear of losing even that which they have, they turn it inwards against themselves.
ANTHONY STORR
Anthony Storr explained how and why depressives (i.e. people who habitually respond to stress and problems by becoming depressed) first start turning their anger inwards. The very first feelings of anger and frustration which they felt were usually in response to physical or emotional abuse or neglect from parents or parent figures. In these original, pattern-setting relationships, they were actually powerless and very unsafe.
Unfortunately, the depressive’s originally useful way of coping with anger can become a habit which they then use inappropriately and indiscriminately whenever they perceive a loss or frustration – even when they have no real cause to feel powerless or frightened. So that by the time they reach adulthood you can hear them blaming themselves for all sorts of unjust hurts. For example:
– when you bump into them on the street they will say ‘I’m sorry’
– if you snap at them unfairly after a hard day, they will respond with. ‘What did I say wrong?’
– if you make them redundant for purely commercial reasons, they will take the news ‘philosophically’ because inwardly they feel they must have deserved the sack
– if you indulge in a bit of flirtation with someone else they will blame themselves for not being attractive enough.
Alternatively, if they can’t actually blame themselves (perhaps because the injury was so obviously not their fault), they will automatically go for the other ‘safe’ option and refuse to blame anyone, or anything. (The word ‘fate’ must have been coined by a depressive!) They become experts at ‘excusing’ and ‘forgetting’, even when they have been badly abused or hurt. Some of their favourite phrases (often used with a deceptively ‘nice’ brave smile), are:
– ‘That’s life.’
– ‘Some are born lucky, others are not.’
– ‘In this world there are winners and losers.’
– ‘Who am I to reason why?’
– ‘There’s no point in crying over spilt milk.’
– ‘Let bygones be bygones.’
– ‘Everyone has a cross to bear.’
– ‘They probably didn’t mean to hurt me, so there’s no point confronting them.’
– ‘They were probably doing their best or what they thought was right.’
So the depressive grows up ‘thinking’ that if they are hurt or abused, there are merely two available options:
1 self-blame
2 denial of blame
It often simply does not occur to them that there could be a third option, i.e. to lay the blame at the door of the people who may be responsible for perpetrating the hurt or abuse. It is this third option which gives us the right to feel justifiable anger and the right to find a reasonable way of expressing this feeling.
And, as I said earlier, one of the knock-on effects of the depressive’s denial of anger is that their personal relationships are often unhappy and they do not get the ‘breaks’ which other people seem to get. In addition, they may not get the promotion they deserve, the social invitations to events they could enjoy, or the love they crave, because the reality is that most people do not want depressed people around for long, either at home or at work – even the kindest and cleverest amongst them end up being boring and exhausting companions and colleagues.
Eventually, depressives experience so many let-downs that they protectively ‘imprison’ themselves in a state of non-feeling. Once they have built walls around themselves it is very difficult to entice them out. They actually do not want to escape because their ‘prison’ feels preferable to the awful world which they perceive is around
