Anger, an emotion that seduces our inner monologue

Anger is an emotion that seduces our inner monologue, which kidnaps us in thought, word and action. A defensive weapon that, misused, can turn against us and do real damage if we let it grow.

We don’t like it but, nevertheless, we have been able to verify that On many occasions we cannot avoid it. This is, no doubt, because this is a natural tool of our evolution to address the injustices we perceive.

The fact that a child powerfully and insistently claims that his brother has taken a toy from him is, in essence, a way of asserting his interests and preventing his integrity from being undermined. The problem with this emotion will arise if the child does not come out of his protest and cannot manage a breakthrough.

In other words, if we stay anchored in what “they have taken away our toy”our physiological and cognitive system will quickly become trapped in a spiral of negative feelings and thoughts that do not allow progress.

The idea of ​​vulnerability hidden behind anger

We don’t like to show anger in public, since we understand that it implies a condemnation of our personal and emotional qualities. We are afraid to express it, so we tend to show it only in our home, accompanied by those people who know us and who, therefore, we can hope will not judge us for it.

This emotion, unfairly treated, is frowned upon by our society. However, as we have highlighted here on many occasions, manifesting it offers us information about what makes us uncomfortablegiving us the option to examine ourselves and seek balance.

There is a main reason why we punish the expression of anger, this is that we confuse anger or the excessive and uncontrolled expression of our annoyance. That is, that We equate exploding and screaming with frowning when something makes us uncomfortable.

But really, We can say that anger is not equivalent to anger, but rather the latter responds to the mismanagement of what makes us angry and torments us. We make a beach out of a grain of sand by not getting rid of it in time. That’s when the mess starts.

Because? Because we turn isolated events into the continuous focus of our attentionpreventing ourselves from undoing an emotional snowball that rolls and rolls, managing to get bigger and bigger.

Understanding and expression, the first steps of cooling

When we become aware of our feelings and emotions we take one more step to manage them. and transform them into useful and not harmful. Let’s say that we step on the brake when we express, since we release a large part of the emotional charge that promotes the arrival of negative moods that are potentially threatening to our balance.

Going back to the example of the child’s anger over the theft of the toy helps us assess how It is normal and adaptive to promote equality through protest and the request that the violated freedom be restored.

But as we have said, once anger arises in the face of a physical or psychological threat, It is important that we operationalize those feelings and emotions that have been born in us. Otherwise, we will find ourselves dominated by thoughts and actions that only promote discomfort without worrying about resolving it.

Anatomy of our angry emotional brain

When we perceive through our senses that an injustice or wrong has been committed regarding our person or something that is of personal interest, our limbic system (amygdala and adjacent structures) receives a spark that starts the machinery.

In other words, our nervous system is activated and, with it, our body and mind “turn on” to give way to action. For its part, the neocortex is responsible for calculating and giving way to a reaction that is more or less adjusted to the situation.

Thus, limbic discharge involves the release of catecholamines, which helps us react decisively and quickly. At this time, and if the activation is high, we can look like fire. Our cheeks can get hot, our knuckles pale, and our minds go a thousand miles an hour.

On the other hand, the activation of the adrenocortical branch promotes prolonged activation that predisposes us to action for a longer time. This hypersensitivity manages to dominate our mind, which tends to feed itself with the menu of spiraling negative thoughts.

In other words, any small touch will make us jump.building anger after anger and cognitively incapacitating us more and more, since we will not be able to reason adequately, which will lead us to underestimate thoughts that would stop the escalation.

The emotional distance, necessary to cool anger

As we see The key to managing anger correctly is to calm the excitement. This is achieved in two ways:

Taking physical and emotional distance from the situation to prevent the adrenaline rush from dominating us and feeding through the prevailing irritability.Stopping our internal monologue. That is, distracting ourselves and not giving validity to the thoughts that dominate our mind.

This is what makes us affirm that Anger is an emotion that seduces our internal dialoguepromoting arguments “more than convincing” that what has angered us is the origin of all evil.

One hostile thought after another ends up building the chain of anger until they manage to thicken it and turn it into anger. Therefore, by questioning some of those links that take the form of categorical reasoning, we will be able to calm the mental scene that promotes excessive discomfort.

So, little by little, The fire may disappear when we stop adding firewood that feeds it., helping us to contemplate the situation away from the chains that previously dominated us. This is the first step to emotional well-being.

Reading of interest:

Goleman, D. (2001). Emotional intelligence. Kairos Editorial. Barcelona.

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