Anger, resentment and forgiveness: How to get your anger under reasonable control

The E-CENT theory of anger says that anger is one of our basic emotions. It’s innate. It was selected by nature for its survival value. We would not survive for long without an innate sense of angering in response to abuse or neglect. We also would not survive for long if we did not quickly learn how to moderate our anger as young children. My anger is a two-edged sword. It can help to protect me, and it can attract hostile reactions from others. My basic emotion of anger is elaborated into a higher cognitive emotion through modelling by my mother and father and significant others in the first few years of my life. And also through my successful and my unsuccessful experiences of engaging in conflict with others. I may become an exploder, who erupts in the faces of others. I may become an imploder, who keeps his anger inside. Or I may hide my anger from myself (repress it) and then project it into my environment where it may frighten me. So anger is a socialized emotion, and if you grew up with angry people, you are likely to be prone to angering yourself when provoked; or you might feel fearful of your own anger, or the anger of others. ~~~ Healthy anger is present-time defence of your legitimate rights in the face of inappropriate behaviour by another person. Healthy or reasonable anger is the fuel that drives our assertive behaviours. It pushes us to engage in constructive conflict, when that is necessary! To ask for what you want, which is legitimately yours to request, requires a certain level of ‘fire in your belly’. If you lack that fire (that reasonable level of anger), then you will tend to ‘wimp-out’; to act passively and let other people control you, or intimidate you, or deny you your reasonable share of the social stage. Unhealthy or unreasonable anger is an over-reaction to a frustrating or insulting stimulus from another person or external force. Unhealthy or unreasonable anger leads to aggressive actions and destructive conflict. We teach the following eight insights to our anger management clients: 1. You were born with an innate capacity to develop angry, anxious and depressed responses to your social environment - in response to frustrations, threats and losses. 2. You then encountered your mother, who already had a ‘style of relating', based on her attachment experience of her own mother and father. She would inevitably have shaped your emotional expression by: ... ...End of extract. ~~~ Read more