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Chronic Anger: Obsession with Justice?
Solutions for Aggression and Suspicion © Martyn Carruthers

Online Coaching for Anger, Hostility & Rage

Many health professionals offer drugs as substitutes for changing emotions. Drugs are easier than applying intelligence, focus and analytical skills to complex relationships. Drugs are cheaper for patients (in the short term) and more profitable for medical professionals.

If you suffer from chronic anger you may be compulsively aggressive towards people who you suspect may be victimizers! If you compulsively hide chronic anger - you may suffer from passive-aggression and risk hypertension and ulcers. We help people assimilate and resolve angry emotions.
(See also resentment and attachment disorders.)

Anger, Aggression, Hostility & Justice

Anger is a normal reaction to perceived injustice. Sometimes anger may empower you to challenge injustice or to change your behavior, beliefs or values. Other times you may express anger as aggression - perhaps responding to perceived threats or unfairness. Expressing anger at yourself may result in inappropriate assertiveness, hurtful self-criticism, stress or self-harm.

Anger is a feeling, hostility is an attitude and aggression refers to behavior. Although anger is often described as the emotion evoked when a person cannot attain a goal or fulfill a need, most anger is a healthy response to perceived injustice. How that anger is managed and expressed may be a problem.

Do you feel anger, hostility or aggression when you perceive:

•  unfairness to yourself or injustice to others
•  disrespect of your or others' thoughts, beliefs, feelings or needs
•  provocation or suspicion of hostile intent: "He or she did that just to annoy me".
•  threats to something you identify with, e.g. your family, beliefs, profession, culture or religion

Is your Anger a Problem?

If you feel anger and rationalize it, you can understand your emotional reaction. Then you can calm down and decide how best to respond. Anger becomes problematic if it is chronic, if it causes you to act impulsively, or if it detracts from your concentration, relationships or occupation.

Love includes expressing your anger!

Some people always seem to be angry. If your anger and its consequences are problematic, you may try to suppress your anger. If you express anger covertly - you may be called passive-aggressive or covert-hostile, and your inner stress may trigger depression, obsessions or addictions.

Suppressed or Hidden Anger

People who are afraid of their own anger may be called passive-aggressive. These people may not allow themselves to feel anger ... and hide, deny or distort their angry feelings. They may be afraid that if they allow themselves to feel anger - that they will damage important relationships.

Anger is associated with cardiovascular arousal, which can cause hypertension (high blood pressure) and heart disease. Suppressed anger may be also be experienced as depression or as psychosomatic symptoms. Warning signs include:

• Grinds teeth at night
• Avoids completing important tasks
• Sleep problems and possibly nightmares
• Muscular trembling or tics; fist clenching is common
• Chronic pain in neck, heart, solar plexus or stomach areas
• Excessively cheerful with a "Who cares?" attitude towards all problems

Sociopaths - Antisocial Personality Disorder

People who feel detached, both from other human beings and from themselves, may not feel emotions such as love, guilt, empathy or conscience. Yet these people often crave respect. Sociopaths perceive people as things, and may manipulate or hurt people without guilt or remorse, to gain respect. (Many criminals, politicians and salespeople seem to fit this picture rather too well.)

Sociopaths are often the con-artists behind scams and frauds. They may pretend emotions to better victimize people and they can be charming. They impulsively focus on their own needs with little regard about the consequences for other people. Many are compulsive liars who disregard societal rules.

Sociopaths often lack quality relationships and may feel little sense of connection to their families. Sociopaths who experience chronic anger can become dangerous criminals.

Chronic Anger / Aggression

Some angry people cannot fulfill their roles or responsibilities. They may be physically ill, mentally disturbed, immature or they just want to be somewhere else. If these people do not express their anger ... often someone else will. Many children feel and express their parents' anger.

If a child decides who is a victim and who is a victimizer, that child may attempt to rectify the perceived imbalance of justice by expressing the anger of the perceived victim - to the perceived victimizer. This expression of anger can lead to a child who identifies with the perceived victim. (This does not mean that a child's assessment of family dynamics is accurate, although many victims will express gratitude and relief if someone, even a child, seems to feel and express their hidden anger.)

Angry or aggressive outbursts are often triggered by relationship events that seem unjust. (Some people who do not respond with anger immediately may express their anger later, perhaps to people who cannot express their anger at this injustice). Triggers for such angry behavior include:

Identification with a Victim

Probably, you can identify with certain people. If you watch a film or movie, and you find yourself feeling anger towards one of the actors, you may have identified with someone in the movie who was being treated unfairly or unjustly. You may even still feel that anger after the movie, at least for a short time.

A drama triangle is a model of human interaction, described by Stephen Karpman, in his article: Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis (1968). This drama triangle describes three habitual roles of people in human relationship systems - as described by an outsider:

If a rescuer identifies with a victim, the rescuer may express intense or explosive anger to the victimizer - rage that the perceived victim did not or would not express. (This seems common in families - many families have a chronic victim and a chronic angry person).

We find that such people (we call them victim-identified) are often suspicious, evaluating each person they meet. (Habitual victims often behave in passive-aggressive ways.)

Some common signs of people who have identified with victims include ...

Identification with a victim, combined with childhood abuse or abandonment, can form a basis for symptoms that may be called paranoia or schizophrenia. Note that a person who identifies with a victim who has mental or physical health problems - may also identify with and duplicate the victim's problems. (Consider the phenomena called stigmata!)

Chronic Anxiety . Chronic Conflict . Chronic Fatigue

Solutions for Chronic Anger, Frustration, Rage & Suspicion

Understanding your anger is often essential, but insight alone rarely solves anger. If you keep anger or rage bottled up, you may feel that you have avoided some problems, but sooner or later the consequences may seem to build up in inside you, resulting in disillusionment and depression.

Fire Breathing is useful first aid for explosive anger. It can help you better manage your angry emotions. (This is from element-ary Hawaiian mysticism).

1. Blow your nose first!
2. Sit down or hold something stable.
3. Inhale deeply through your nose and exhale quickly through your mouth.
4. Repeat 16 times (or until you feel calm). Then stretch your body muscles.

We help people find lasting solutions for anger, rage and hostility. We coach people to manage their emotions and resolve injustices that may go back to childhood or adolescence. We help people find appropriate solutions for chronic anger.

No-one is immune to anger until they are dead.
Do you want to manage your anger, hostility or rage?

Online Coaching for Anger, Hostility & Rage

Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1998-2012 All rights reserved.

Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2012 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers
to help people dissolve emotional blocks, improve relationships and achieve goals. These concepts and strategies are for general knowledge only. Consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing medical treatment. Don't steal intellectual property ... ask for permission to post, publish or teach this work.