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When Does Anger Become a Negative Emotion?
When Does Anger Become a Negative Emotion?
Anger is considered a negative emotion when we become angry every single time someone or something bothers us. Fortunately, we have laws, social norms and our own good common sense to restrict our expressions of anger. But there are times when someone needs to physically step in and stop us before we wind up hurting ourselves or someone else. A good example of this is the epidemic of murders in schools by gun-wielding teenagers who have anger issues - perhaps they were picked on too much by their schoolmates, perhaps they felt lonely and wanted someone to pay attention to them, or perhaps they just liked the power that anger gives. Whatever may have caused them to shoot their teachers and classmates, it may have been possible that someone could have foreseen what was going to happen by identifying which teenagers were angry. Anger also becomes a negative emotion when we use it to manipulate others into doing what we want. When an angry teenager picks up a gun and threatens his schoolmates with it, it is usually because he wants something to be done or happen his way. In reality, such a person probably feels unloved or unwanted but wants to belong to the group at large. For example, some of the teenage shooters in the US were heckled by their schoolmates, thus making them feel left out and ostracized. They were right to feel hurt but chose the wrong way to resolve their situation. Some people are known to use anger to their own advantage so, in a sense, they "need" anger for their own purposes. Have you ever seen a toddler throwing a tantrum? Well, tantrums are not confined to just children - even adults have been known to throw tantrums just to get what they want. Road rage may be perceived as a temper tantrum because the person displaying road rage wants to get his own way at the expense of other people. Just as children need to be taught that tantrums will get them nowhere (if the parent has the willpower to do so,) so must a person using road rage to get ahead be taught that he cannot take advantage of other people that way. Another reason anger can be considered a negative influence on us is that, since we only have a limited amount of life energy, people who spend most of their time being angry are actually pouring their life energy into the effort of staying angry rather than funneling it into more positive endeavors. This is the reason there are people who are able to accomplish more in their lives, who have acquired peace of mind, and there are people who fail to do so. It just means the former were wiser at using their life energy. So if you are angry at another person because they seem to be doing much better than you, that anger is probably envy. If you learned how to manage your life energy better, there would be no need to be envious. Furthermore, anger literally becomes toxic to our bodies when we suppress it, and cannot or will not express it. There is a case of this one person who breaks out in boils because he is chronically angry with his relatives. Anger seems to produce processes in our body that make us ill in the long term when it is repressed. It is uncomfortable to feel angry for a long time.
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