Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Controlling the Ghost of Anger

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Controlling the Ghost of Anger

Anger has the capacity to do much damage to human beings. It does not only effect the person who possesses it but also many others who have interactions with the possessor. Anger is basically a human feeling that has a strong urge to retaliate towards a perceived wrong, humiliation or offense. Anger is one of the human emotions and is thus natural. In most of the cases it proves to be negative as it brings about many broken relations and many problems. However, it is not negative all the times. It can be controlled and through proper anger management it is possible to reduce its negative impacts and may even achieve something positive. Nonetheless, that is not always very easy to control anger and use it wisely; as quoted by Aristotle, “Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

People get angry on different matters and each person has its own way of being angry. However, there is one think common in all the angers and that is the sharp hurting difference in what a person expects and what he basically faces as a reality; and a person feels being wronged or offended. Anger can be observed in daily life almost on daily basis. Sometimes we see it in our friends and classmates and at others in our family members.

Anger basically has different stages. It starts with a situation or happening that triggers it. This trigger changes the normal situation and compels a person influenced by it to react. The anger then enters the second stage which is known as the escalation stage. In this stage the anger escalates and the commitment to react becomes firmer. The person starts getting ready to retaliate and take any action that may be possible, not necessarily reasonable.

After escalation the anger then moves to the crisis stage. At this stage the retaliatory action basically takes place. There is always an action that is intended to bring harm to another person in this stage. It is a crisis in a sense that the interactions are at their worst and the human thinking and logical reasoning are that their lowest degree.

As the crisis stage ends, there is recovery stage. The anger then cools down and a person starts reanalyzing the whole situation logically and reasonably. At this stage there is decline from the crisis and blood pressure seems to get normal. Mostly the people, at this stage, repent as they do not find what they did to be reasonable.

The last stage is the stage of depression. Mostly, but not always, a person feels sorry for all that he has done during the crisis stage, which is followed by depression. This cycle completes itself all the times when a person gets angry. However, the anger is not bound to complete the cycle every time it is triggered. There are possibilities of controlling it before it escalates into a crisis. But whenever, it reaches to crisis, it is bound to complete the cycle.

Tonni Morrison, in great hatred of anger, had said, “Anger ... it’s a paralyzing emotion ... you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling —- I don’t think it’s any of that —- it’s helpless ... it’s absence of control —- and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn’t provide any of that —- I have no use for it whatsoever.” This is bound to happen if anger is not managed appropriately. Fortunately, there are ways of guiding anger towards the better path. Though it is inevitable, it is not unmanageable. As observed by C. JoyBell C, “Anger is like flowing water; there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human.”

There are different ways to manage anger. First it is necessary to try to alter the situation or one’s own self both before the anger happens or even during it. A person can take some of the measures that may decrease the chances of serious anger even to be triggered.  He can change his bad habits – the habits that may cause others to be angry. He can also ask others to do so but only with respect for others. He can change the view he possesses about the things around him or start analyzing a situation or a conflict from different perspectives so as to have a better understanding of the situation or to know what others think in the situation.

However, the most important thing would be to change the way a person reacts to a situation. Responding anger with anger would always result in a clash that may further deteriorate human relations. Therefore, it is necessary to control the way a person reacts to a situation, especially to a situation that is unfavorable.

The other way is to avoid anger is to avoid some of the avoidable things that may cause disruptions in human relations. It would be better to avoid people who make a person upset and who are the cause of anger for him. But this does not mean to run away from a difficult situation or a conflict when it has already been created; it means to avoid before a situation takes place.

Avoiding one’s “hot buttons” would also be helpful in not letting oneself and others get angry. Moreover, extracting oneself away from a stressful situation would also be helpful, provided that there is no room for someone to do something in the situation and doing something would mean further deteriorating the situation.

 

Dilawar Sherzai is the permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at email.urya@gmail.com

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