A lot of people still are. In my parents' day, it was a given that anger was a sign you were out of control, even that the hells had filled your heart.
The reality is that anger has a use. Feeling it rising gives a heads up that something is amiss. Problems with anger happen when get swallowed in its drama.
It was startling how much better my relationship was with Mom after we reviewed David Richo's breakdown of True Anger v. Drama - together. Helped my relationship with John when we did, too! Reading the comparisons, discussing them & our personal experiences changed our understanding of & relationship with anger, how we related to it & to each other.
Drama is frightening, meant to silence others. It blames others for our own feelings. It's out of control, even when it seems like its not. It represses true feelings - our own & others'. It creates stress, holds onto resentment, vents frustration.
On the other hand, True Anger informs us about something that disturbs us. It can contain sadness or disappointment, but these are acknowledged. True Anger takes responsibility for whatever feelings it brings up. It asks for change without requiring it. Rather than holding on until it brews into resentment, True Anger is brief, released, with a sense of closure. While Drama demands others acknowledge it's justified, True Anger needs no response.
David calls anger a secondary emotion, masking another feeling, such as sadness or fear. Unlike Drama, True Anger never masks those feelings.
You can't hold onto True Anger, because once it is expressed, it is released. Drama keeps replaying whatever brought up the original anger, often morphing it into something totally unrecognizable.
Am remembering long-ago talks with Mom about anger, how it felt caused by an event, but was actually rooted in our belief or interpretation of what happened or said.
It was powerful to realize that both of us had thought everyone responded to a same situation with the same emotions. If something makes me angry, it must make others angry too.
Not necessarily. Yet it felt so right, so good to lay that assumption on others. We talked over hot tea & generously buttered cinnamon bread about how different people experience the same thing in different ways.
That was a radical thought for Mom, who assumed that the way she viewed things would naturally be the way others would too. This new information about True Anger & Drama gave her pause.
So much happened in my mother's life that would make any of us disappointed frustrated. For most of her life, she responded in the only way that made sense - with denial repression suppression. It helped her cope with doing what she deeply believed needed to be done.
Psychologists & counselors might say that of course Mom had the ability, even the responsibility to feel the anger & constructively express it, but I could totally understand why she never had - the person on the receiving end would never have been able to process it. So, she stuffed it down, slapped on a smiley face, and forged ahead.
Am forever happy that in the last few years of her life, Mom was able to feel sadness disappointment frustration, experience them as True Anger, and work with it rather than deny them. Pretty darned WOW if you ask me!
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