Anger. Fury. Rage.

What is the actual point of anger? Or blinding indignation? There must be some point to them, right? Evolutionarily, they must serve some purpose; otherwise, negative emotions would’ve been bred out over the millennia. I’m asking because my life has been very life-y the past couple of months, and I’ve been in a constant state of rage.  I have been so quick to anger.  I’ve been short and rude.  I’ve had no patience with anything.  I have been finding fault with what wise, very lovely people have to say as soon as they get their first few words out.  I have been an absolute bear.

I must be hiding it because my partner hasn’t asked for a divorce, my family still seems happy to see me, and I still have friends.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there; it just means that all that fury has been crackling around in my brain, taking up residence in my body.  It’s been exhausting.  And you know what it’s easy to be when you’re exhausted?  Angry.  It’s self-perpetuating.

I understand the point of fear. People afraid of saber-toothed tigers ran away from them and thus survived to pass on their fearful genes to the next generation.  I can’t think of anything productive from anger, especially during the past few months.  I need some legal things sorted out, and the lawyers involved will not make the necessary hard decisions.  I feel rage.  I’ve been maneuvering to help my grandmother continue to live as safely as possible in her home.  I’m constantly frustrated.  Hospitals have so many kids in such awful situations.  I’m furious.  I make the schedule for my group, and I’ve just had to limit how many schedule requests people can make.  I’m immediately defensive about them.  Despite those intense emotions, I’m not changing anything that I’m so angry about.  I email the lawyers to check in and then stew when they don’t reply.  Helping my grandma from afar is a game of whack-a-mole that I cannot get on top of.  I’ve been shielding myself from families at work, apparently feeling that they’re asking something of me that I just cannot give them.  I’m still defensive about the changes I’m making to our schedule requests; if colleagues bring up anything remotely schedule-adjacent, I feel my whole body tense up and start to plan the arguments I’ll make in my head.

Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston who holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair and is known for studying shame, once conducted a study asking her graduate students to identify what emotions they routinely feel.  She found that people can usually only identify feeling happy, sad, or angry.  We’ve grown to have a pretty truncated vocabulary when identifying our emotions.  A quick Google search finds at least 27 distinct emotions humans feel, so why can we only identify three?  I think it comes from learning how to shut down negative emotions quickly when growing up.  I distinctly remember when I was little and doing something that ended up with me getting hurt and crying, only to be told (lovingly) to toughen up.  When I was upset that somebody hurt my feelings, I would be told (again, lovingly) not to let people see that I was upset.  There’s also the reality that negative emotions can feel uncomfortable, maybe even frightening.  And that comes from our negativity bias, evolution’s way of making sure we run away from saber-toothed tigers.  Suppose we are raised to have a limited emotional vocabulary and are evolutionarily wired to react to uncomfortable things. In that case, it’s easy to see how somebody could have periods where they just feel constantly angry.  And if I most readily identify being happy, sad, or angry, I have to admit that if I’m not happy, I’m going to skew angry.  Anger has energy behind it. Anger feels like I should be able to use it to change the things I’m so furious about.  Feeling sad is, well, just sad.  Whereas anger feels outward-going, sadness feels inward-facing.  And if I’m uncomfortable, I don’t want to look inward because I might find even more discomfort there and fall deeper into an already deep hole.

But anger isn’t working for me.  I’m tired.  And I’ve figured out that anger begets anger. So maybe the problem isn’t that I’m angry. Perhaps it’s that I’m misidentifying some other emotions as anger. The lawyers I think I’m angry about?  If I’m honest, I’m sad because they’re trying to figure out something about my dad’s death.  I’m not really angry at the lawyers; I’m sorry that my dad died.  Trying to help my grandma?  I’m not frustrated about her needing help; I’m terrified at what she’s going through because one day, I may be in her position, questionably able to keep myself safe in my own house.  Patients in awful situations?  I’m not furious at them or their parents; I’m ashamed that I can’t provide them with a clear path forward that will assuredly get them back to the lives they had before they became so very ill.  The way we’re changing our schedule requests for my group?  I am entirely defensive about them (and I don’t know that it will get better), but it’s not coming from a place of anger. It’s from a place of embarrassment that I’m not smart enough to figure out how to get everybody everything they want.  When I put all of those emotions together, sad, terrified, ashamed, and embarrassed, they don’t feel great, but they feel oddly much better than being so damn angry.  I’m sad my dad died.  Well, that’s very reasonable.  I’m terrified that I’ll lose my independence despite my best efforts.  That makes sense because I’ve built a fantastic life by being a control freak.  I’m ashamed I can’t quickly fix critically ill children.  I’m pretty sure that just makes me a good person.  I’m embarrassed that I’m letting down my colleagues.  Well, of course.  They’re my colleagues and terrific friends; I want them to be happy.   

When I consider that I’m feeling sad, terrified, ashamed, and embarrassed, I’m able to slow down enough to acknowledge that maybe this is simply a tough time. When I stop thinking about everybody else doing everything wrong (which they are objectively not), I can see that I’m the common denominator in all these situations. That stings a bit, but even that feels better than just being angry all the time.  When I can see myself as somebody who’s hurting, I can have self-compassion, which feels better than all the emotions I’ve been considering here.  

If you’re experiencing anger, consider whether you’re taking the easy way out by feeling something familiar but not entirely on point.  Whether it’s sadness, fear, frustration, surprise, or actual anger, they’re all part of being human.  Suppressing negative emotions doesn’t make them disappear; it just makes them feel unrecognizable and something to rail against.  And it risks alienating us from others just when we need them the most.