Quotes and Wisdom
from the Top of the Mind™

Anger and Justification

 

"Physiologically, it simply doesn't matter whether your anger is justified or not. The body doesn't make moral judgments about feelings... it just responds."

~ Doc Childre

I love this quote from "The HeartMath Solution" by Doc Childre because it describes so succinctly how emotions affect our experience of life, regardless of whether these reactions are "justified." You see, it's been my experience that when most of us find ourselves feeling one way or another, we tend to look for data to justify the emotion. "I'm angry because: that rude person cut me off, my child was disrespectful, my spouse was inconsiderate, my employer/employee/coworker said or did something I didn't like, etc." In other words, the body responds, and then the brain makes a moral judgment about the feeling (for example, "They're wrong, and I have a right to be angry!"). We then begin to replay the image of being "wronged" by someone or something in our mind. This, of course, only reenergizes the emotional response, which triggers another judgment which further sustains and justifies the emotion, and the cycle goes on and on.

Now, I do want to be clear about the nature of my comments on this cycle. I'm not saying that one shouldn't feel this way, or that we have no right to our anger, frustration, resentment, etc. I just want you to ask yourself one question: How's it working for you? In other words, if your anger/resentment is serving a purpose (meaning that the situation you are dealing with calls for a fight-or-flight response), then the emotional experience you are having is probably very healthy. Psychologist Harriet Lerner speaks to this effective use of negative emotion in her book, "The Dance of Anger," where she describes how one might use one's anger to change the status quo. This is especially important for people who have been told that they "should never be angry," and thus they have difficulty using this powerful emotion to protect themselves.

However, if you are someone that has no problem getting angry, and/or if your goal is instead to deal with the situation with a clear head and in such a way that you have access to your best problem-solving and interpersonal skills, then I'm going to suggest that you literally "rethink" the way you find yourself reacting to life, and choose a more purposeful response.

Or put another way, rather than believing that the best response to anger is "justification" (which of course only intensifies and prolongs the emotion), maybe we should examine whether the emotions of anger/resentment/etc. are really serving us and put ourselves in a less reactive, more proactive position so that we might address the problem (or create a solution) using the best of our thinking and skills. The necessary ingredient for this more purposeful response is awareness. If we can raise our awareness of the true nature of emotion (simply a biological response to a real or imagined stimuli), then we can begin to discern whether this reaction is serving us or whether it is getting in our way.

You see, this is a different question than whether the anger is justified. In other words, when we focus on our goal (how we want to respond or what we want to accomplish) rather than "who is to blame," we will then be in a much better position to choose the emotion or state of mind that best supports this goal. We will have also moved out of the reactive position of retaliation or retreat (fight-or-flight) and we will then be able to create images of what is needed to accomplish this goal (versus who's responsible for our anger), and these images will begin to trigger responses that will likely be very different from the anger and resentment we felt just a moment ago.

Bottom line, if we want to be in charge of our ability to respond to life in a purposeful way, we must move beyond just reacting to our emotions with justification and or blame. Put another way, if we want to have influence and control over how we respond to people and life, then we must take 100% responsibility for the nature and quality of these responses and begin to choose our perspective "on purpose." Or, as Richard Bach said in his book, "Illusions,"... "Perspective, choose it or lose it! " Here's to all of us becoming more skilled at our ability to choose.

Take care and God bless, Dr. Bill

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