Understanding Anger

Reprinted from Mary Robinson Reynolds, M.S., Author of Make A Difference with the Power of Connection
Anger is an effect of one or all of these three issues:
1) Emotional State of Fear of Being Hurt. Anger can be triggered from a perception that things are heading to a place where something harmful is going to happen: past tense, present tense or future.
2) Emotional State of Insecurity. Being insecure can trigger anger. Generally insecurity comes from your perceptions about yourself and your ability to be of value to the world.
3) Emotional State of Overwhelm. Not being able to say no for fear of disapproval, abandonment, guilt, worthiness. Overwhelm can also be a result of caring too much about succeeding, being perfect, intensely impassioned about a cause, taking on too much, worrying too much about what others may think, etc.

Think of anger this way: it's like blowing up a balloon with a lot of hot air. You can blow and blow and blow and eventually the balloon will pop. Or you can blow it up, and then release it. Regardless, at some point, the air will come out and the balloon will be flat again.

Here is a visualization to help you understand the physics of anger:
See yourself really angry about someone.
Now see this anger getting bigger and bigger.
See this anger getting as big as the room you are in.
See this anger getting as big as the building you are in.
See this anger getting as big as the town you are in.
See this anger getting as big as the county you are in.
See this anger getting as big as the state you are in.
See this anger getting as big as the country you are in.
See this anger getting as big as the continent you are in.
See this anger getting as big as the world.
See this anger getting as big as the entire universe and beyond into the next galaxy.

Q: What happened to your anger?
A: It dissipated. It cannot not dissipate!

That's the quantum mechanics of it. So ... if you don't push back and resist someone's anger, it actually ends sooner rather than later.

When you have a toddler who is having a temper tantrum and you take away his toy to punish him for the tantrum, how long does the tantrum last? Can be up to 30 minutes or more!
But, if you simply acknowledge compassionately what is upsetting the toddler that is making him mad, mad, mad ... the tantrum dissipates in 30 seconds or less 90% of the time!

R. Buckminster Fuller said it best ...
"In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try to change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete."

I liken the academic and positive behavioral solutions we seek to Ockham's razor; which is the idea that in trying to understand something, getting unnecessary information out of the way is the fastest way to the solution. It is the philosophical or scientific principle that states: the best solution is the simplest.