
I need to start recognizing anger as a helpful cue for action, rather than an unpleasant experience.
What about you? Are there situations that make you angry that you need to change?
I've been reading
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, a book which argues that emotions are the result of our behaviors and our thoughts, and that if we want to change undesirable emotions like depression, anger, fear, or unreasonable guilt, we can do so by recognizing and changing the thoughts and behaviors that contribute to those emotions. The way I just summarized it makes it sound simplistic, but the book itself is actually quite effective; I've already seen some benefits from it.
But one of the most interesting sections is on anger. The book talks about maladaptive anger vs. adaptive anger. In other words, when something "bad" happens, a person can feel anger that compels her to take constructive action as opposed to anger that makes her take non-productive or even destructive actions.
As I read, I recognized some examples from my own life.
Scenario: After college, the restaurant at which Hubs worked was bought by a new owner. The owner promised Hubs an official management promotion in a few months, if he could just "keep things going," for a while. Hubs worked his guts out managing the store, only to learn that the owner's actual plan had been to keep Hubs on as a stop-gap until he could get his own son trained. He then made his son the manager.
Maladaptive Anger: Because Hubs couldn't take it out on his manager, he took it out on himself, brooding, eating unhealthy food, hating himself, and staying up until four in the morning playing video games.
Adaptive Anger: After a few weeks he realized that he simply didn't have to do this any more, so he quit and found another job within a week.
Scenario: Three or four times a week, hubs would spend grocery money on convenience store Diet Cokes (which I think are a colossal waste of money) because he insists that he must have cold Cokes.
Maladaptive Anger: Each time I saw the Cokes, I would sigh loudly, turning my head away to let him know that I was severely disappointed in him, and was exercising great, Saint-like restraint in not saying anything. If he didn't look appropriately guilty, I'd then move on to mentioning that each carbonated, kidney-shredding drink he bought was--literally--flushing away enough money to buy two pounds of chicken or four kiwis or a pound of baby carrots for our children.
Adaptive Anger: I finally realized that he wasn't going to stop drinking Coke, and that since it's his greatest vice, I could live with it. Then I started keeping cans of Coke in the fridge so that I never had to hear him say, "I need a cold Coke" ever again.
Scenario: There was a tear in my toddler's story book, and every time he opened the book, he would try to lift up the tear to see what was underneath it. Of course, every time he did this, the tear got worse, and the sound drove me crazy. For some reason, it made me so angry that he couldn't just learn not to lift up that stupid tear! Could he not see that he was making it worse?! And I was really sick of having to stop my chore time in order to stop him from doing something that he should know not to do.
Maladaptive Anger: "What in the world are you thinking? Can't you see that you're tearing your book? Do you care about your things at all? No, stop. You can't have this any more." And I would put the book on the bookshelf, where it would sit until the next day, when the whole thing would start over.
Adaptive Anger: I finally got so sick of hearing that stupid book rip further every single morning that I stopped my morning housecleaning routine, which was inevitably when the tearing happened, and taped the bejeezus out of that book right then and there. Worked like a charm. Happy kids, no more torn books. No more interrupted chore times.
Those examples are very illustrative, but as I thought I wondered why humans have to go through so much maladaptive anger in order to reach adaptive anger. Why did Hubs spend four weeks in self-hatred before he quit? Why did I let the book get torn so many times before I taped it? Why did I let so many dollars leave my wallet before I started taking the simple action of putting sodas in the freezer? The answer is: inertia. It's hard to change direction, to quit your job, to stop your chore-routine, to develop a new habit. It's even harder to recognize that you
need to change direction. Wouldn't it be great if there were some kind of

signal, some kind of cue we could use to recognize that something needed to change?
And then I realized: that's what anger is, or at least what it could be, what it should be.
Anger is a sign that I have an opportunity to change something. That's wonderful! It's exciting! It's like a new secret weapon!
I've already used it several times this morning. While I was working on a project, my son, who had been eating barbecue potato chips, came and stuck his greasy, salt covered fingers in my face. I felt a flare of irritation. Now, ordinarily, I would have said tersely, "Mommy's working right now," and moved his hands away. He would then have climbed all over me, smearing his greasy fingers on my shirt, or on the couch. I would eventually have said, "Oh for the love of Pete. Are you crazy?" and wiped his hands off. But only after I'd been shoving his hands out of my face for several minutes, and the couch and my shirt had been stained. But this time, as soon as I felt that flare or irritation, I stopped and said, "What is my opportunity for change here?" I stopped what I was doing, took him downstairs, and wiped off his fingers. Then I took the chips away. Voila. No mess. No fuss. And the minute I took action, I no longer felt anger. And all because I recognized that anger is a cue to take action for change.
I'm very excited about this.
So what about you? Are there situations in your life, either temporary, like a tearing book, or long-term, like chronic injustice in a job, that make you angry? Is that anger a cue that you need to change something?
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