Anger has been the theme or the thread throughout my entire life. My grandparents were angry. My parents were angry, and eventually, I became amazingly good at being angry. My son now has this ability. My two ex-husbands were also great at what seemed to me to be two emotions: rage and suppressed rage. Maybe I was just projecting.
The entire force behind my career was getting a handle on my own anger. Eventually, it became something called "workplace communications" and "stress management expert", but in truth, it was about learning why I was angry, how to stop being angry and then getting so good at this information that I was asked to teach this to others. We just dressed it up a little and called it "people skills."
During my years as an author and trainer in workplace communication (the workplace being the one place where anger is most prevalent and damaging), I have stumbled on a lot of information about this much-feared emotion. And fear is the key word here. One such piece of research suggested that anger is a learned emotion, not natural to humans, and that it was actually masking two other emotions that are even MORE troubling: fear and sadness
Fear and sadness make us appear weak (or at least vulnerable). And weak translates into being attacked. And attacked means death. So, if you're following the logic, anger is a tool to keep us from being killed. Anger is our weapon against death.
I think that's probably enough for my first entry. The goal here will be to provide you (and me) with regular insights into anger and hopefully to eliminate it from our responses when dealing with the world. I won't be recommending repression or medication, however. I'm going to recommend trial-by-fire---I'm going to lead us through the scary, hateful, damaging reality of anger, and bring us all out the other side.
At least that's the intention.
