Dear Anita,

angry people are more likely to demonstrate correspondence bias- the tendency to… rely more on stereotypes, and pay less attention to details and more attention to the superficial… unlike other ‘negative’ emotions such as sadness and fear, which promote analytical thinking”.

How interesting this quote is. Just this week we talked about the concept of perhaps misjudging my sister. And seeing qualities in her, maybe based on stereotypes and maybe less attention was paid to details.

I wasn’t sure how to begin my reply to your post, I read it a few times yesterday and today. It is an excellent post- I would like to book mark it as I know that going back to it over and over will allow me to get more out of it depending on what I am feeling at the time, and the type of situation I am in. We both know learning is also very dependent on our current state of mind, and the current present ability to absorb new information.

Based on your post, I saw that anger has so much to do with sensing another person’s accountability in creating a negative situation.

A point that really stood out to me is “the purpose of anger is to aim at correcting wrong behaviors.” You have spoken about this, about having to go out into the world and undo the wrong that was put onto your mother, making it right for her. Same for me I see, I was going out there to be a warrior and fight these battles for my mother, subconsciously believing that if I would fight these battles she would have some peace or happiness, or that retribution would be gained and lead to some positive benefit.

Of course looking back I can think of a few small scenarios in which I had done this, it never worked out this way. In fact it always backfired and ended up making me or my mother, or both look even worse.  I remember a small example of having some boy trouble in medical school and opening up to my mother about it, and her response was of course to be vengeful and angry. So I carried the sentiment with me back to Philadelphia. When I spoke to this guy, I pretty much reiterated exactly what my mother would say to me, like a parrot. I remember his look was dumbfounded. It was as though I was speaking gibberish.  I remember becoming even more angry at this time, thinking that he was so callous and unemotional. Exactly the mother voice. She always perceive people who didn’t understand her hysteria to be disloyal, dishonest, and not trustworthy people. Because of course she deemed herself as someone who always spoke the truth, and her emotionality led to the fact that she was a truth teller and honest of heart, while others were Stonehearted and not good. I believed this. Of course at the end of the day that boy trouble was small, and it wasn’t like that this boy was important to begin with – but the story is. If I think back to this almost 10 years later, I was speaking  gibberish. Yes I truly was.

I adopted what my mother was telling me: jump at the throat of this person, don’t take the whole context into the picture, don’t look at both sides of the story, and jump out with a weapon because everyone is out to get us. I was taught this, so of course this is difficult to get rid of with intellect. Of course now I am more educated, I do understand the concept of catastrophization and hysteria.  More educated of course in medicine, and life, and more educated about what the mother voice really is.

I was thinking today about how anger is so harmful to us. They always talk about how anger is like drinking poison but expecting the other person to die. We have all heard of this so many times, but it is beginning to make more sense. I am only just starting to see the true detrimental effects of anger. We Talk about win-win so much here, and anger is ——lose lose. No one wins.

Let’s think of a scenario, I am snappy with my husband as soon as he walks in, because I have anger that I am unable to contain, something happened to me at work and it was brewing inside of me all the way home. As soon as he opens the door, roar it leashes out. Of course now he is annoyed, and he closes off and the interaction with us becomes cold and distant. I may feel guilty, and then try to make up for it, but it doesn’t work. Or instead I may not feel bad and guilty, I may feel angry and feel that he is not being supportive. Either way I feel bad. Interesting at 34 years old I am saying this out loud as though it should be common sense. But it’s not. It Doesn’t matter of it sounds simple- more importantly, It it’s true.

Either way I feel bad with anger.  Suffering is increased.

And yes suffering for the opposite party is increased too, but for this conversations sake we are focusing on us.

So someone like me, and perhaps yourself, I feel entitled to this anger. I think to myself, look what annoying thing happened to me at work! How dare this happen to me, I have a right to be angry, of course I am angry! It is not fair that this happens to me and I am mistreated like this! How could I not be angry! Feeling the need to go out there and undo that harm, roar!!! And when husband comes home, I want to relay this to him, perhaps I want him to feel equally as angry! Look what happened to me! Aren’t you angry, aren’t we angry! Let’s roar together!!!!

I remember my mother being so happy when someone would get as upset as her about a topic, it was so validating to her, she found great comfort in making someone as emotional as herself. How disgusting! Perhaps subconsciously I may find comfort in this too. Maybe not at this exact moment, but at the beginning of my relationships in the past when I was more hysterical and emotional without really thinking, perhaps I too wanted the opposite partner to be equally as hysterical. I can definitely see that…

So anyway, back to a lose lose scenario, now I am suffering more because I feel bad. In the compulsive mind I felt that leashing my anger out would help me feel better, but the consequence was perhaps one second of emotional release, followed by an even worse feeling.

So today, after reading your post yesterday, I really kept this in mind. Especially the aspects of judging situations by stereotypes and superficialities, and not necessarily paying attention to emotions and other intricacies. I thought that was interesting, considering that I am someone who is  in tune with many people, and I believe myself to be a good reader of people, so how can I not be so in tune with this? And this is because of the baseline hostility. It is also because of projecting the mother into other people. It is also because of her voice. Perhaps all of these things are sort of separate in small ways, but also all at the same time tied together.

Baseline hostility as you mentioned, assumes the worst. It assumes that someone is out to get us, and it assumes the worst of a person.

okay…

But I took it to a different place today, I thought about the concept of self suffering. As above the lose lose scenario of anger leading to more personal suffering. And I kept that pearl in mind. So, I am at work, and I think a bad thing about person X, I find myself getting angry about something about person X. This increases the neurotransmitters going through my body, norepinephrine and adrenaline increase, my shoulders tense up, my heart might start beating faster, I might start clenching my jaw.  Knowing my own neural pathways and knowing myself now I start going into a tailspin. I start thinking about how person X is annoying, and then I start thinking about how gosh why does everyone act like this, and then it might lead to well why don’t I act like that, and other people get away with it. And then it may lead to thinking how everything is unfair and bad. Just an example. Lose lose – in brain and body, end result: feel wound up tight and uneasy. Feeling bad.

So today I tried a different approach. Something that person X was slightly perturbing.  OK. But whether I get angry or not about it -it’s going to affect my own suffering. This is the new point- how can I increase feeling good? And decrease feeling bad?

So I thought about this person, and I thought about how he is so different than me. I thought about how we are almost two people who speak entirely different languages, and therefore many things that he does are not taken by me as normal or innate. And perhaps many things that I do are probably not taken by him as normal or innate.   I thought about this, and slowly the thought was put to rest. It did not go into a tailspin. It did not grow bigger and bigger and tumble down into a Downward spiral. Nope the thought entered my mind I processed it and then it left! Until this moment that I am writing about it, it didn’t bother me at all! That is the real work right there. Wow!

Of course this is one example, and it is very difficult to continue this in daily life, but practice starts with one example. And I am happy to share this one.  The end goal of all of this was to feel better. I am not going to change him whether I become angry or not. And he is not going to change me.  No, I am definitely not someone who believes that never being angry is the goal, as I do believe that having true emotions and authenticity is the true goal. You know this. But our work here is about having intrinsic anger that leads to suffering, which is entirely unnecessary. Jumping to anger as a first emotion, which is unnecessary and harmful to ourselves.  Anger that leads to Unnecessary suffering.

I also learned today that when I approach this in the second manner, I had a lot of mental space left. If there was a scale, if I approached the situation in the first way with anger:that led to a circuit of different thoughts, my brain capacity would be nine out of 10 saturated. In the second way: I felt like I was only three out of 10 saturated. I had 70% more neurons available for peace or other thoughts. I wasn’t entirely encompassed by these thoughts.

I noticed this it was a palpable feeling of having more freedom in my brain.  I think this is a specially key, because that burn out of the brain by rumination and angry thoughts is extremely toxic and harmful.

Lastly, having space in the brain will allow me to really understand what I am truly feeling. As you know, something that I have been really struggling with is jumping to a compulsive action or thought based on patterns or the mother voice, before assessing what I truly think and feel about it.  Knee jerk.  This means that I never truly processed anything, I just reacted. I never allowed myself to sit with thoughts or feelings first. Always reacting never processing. This is something I truly want to work on as it will lead to the greatest outcome.  When you have 70% mental space available you can process so much more than when you have 10%. Right? And that is the real work.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Cali Chica.