Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks and I make
mental health education videos.
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Today I'm talking about what makes you
get angry and how that can look.
No one is without anger.
But not all anger is loud and explosive.
Sometimes it's disguised as other emotions.
And what makes you get angry and how you express it
depends on your temperament and your upbringing.
Temperament refers to your inborn way of behaving.
And there are different psychological models
for how we define temperament.
And I'm not gonna talk about any of those.
Instead I'm gonna talk, give you my own thoughts
about what I think contributes to how high
or low is your anger threshold.
And this is not scientifically validated.
It's just my thoughts based on psychoanalytic theory.
There are some basic characteristics
that play into how slow or quick you
are to be pushed to anger.
And three of these factors are how flexible you are
in your thinking, or formally called cognitive flexibility,
how you react to change, which is related
to that flexibility and more of a behavior
than a way of thinking, and what is your
default view of the world.
Is it a safe place that only becomes
unsafe if something extraordinary happens?
Or is it mostly unsafe requiring a lot of vigilance
on your part to keep it safe?
These basic factors form an overall posture,
or attitude that affect your level of an uneasiness.
So for example let's look at two ends of the spectrum.
And to make this easy for me, I'm going to say he.
I'm not picking on the men.
This affects women as well.
On one side of the spectrum you have the aloof posture.
And aloof means having a certain
level of emotional disengagement.
This person is extremely flexible
with accepting whatever comes his way,
and in fact may not have much of a will of his own.
He adjusts his desires to meet the situation,
and he has very few expectations.
And he's willing to change if something
turns out to be different from the what he wanted.
And lastly he takes for granted
that the world is a safe place,
and people have good intentions
unless something extraordinary comes along
to force that individual to do something of ill will.
Now this posture may look desirable.
Who wouldn't wanna be so laid back
that everything rolls off your chest.
But the dark side of this extreme
is that this person can be so disengaged
that they seem completely uninvested.
They make you wanna say, do you even care?
If we look at the opposite end
of the spectrum we have the rigid posture.
This person is extremely inflexible in his thinking.
He has a strong sense what's right and what's wrong,
and there's very little gray.
Once he makes up his mind about something
he does not wanna change or even be expected to change.
He can become indignant at the thought
that you would even ask such thing.
And he takes a stand on general principle.
And then he operates on the premise
that the world is unsafe,
and people by default will take advantage of you
unless you put active measures in place to protect yourself.
So you always need to be watching your back.
This is the person who seems way to invested in things.
And they make you wanna say,
hey just relax, it's not that important.
But it is important to them because of their rigid thinking.
And it's easy to look at this person
and think no way, I don't wanna be like that.
But the upside of this extreme is this person
is engaged and they're passionate
about what they're engaged in.
So can you see how on the one hand
you have the rigid person with an anger gauge
that easily rises because they get mad about everything
contrasted with the aloof person
who you need to shake and say,
were you even awake while that was happening?
These are what the extremes can look like.
But most people aren't extreme,
and it fits somewhere in between.
Where you fall on this spectrum
affects how quick you are to anger,
and how intensely angry you become.
But another important contributor
to how you express your anger is what
your environment was like when you were growing up.
Were you in a household where people
freely yelled when they were angry?
Was yelling something that frightened you?
Were you allowed to express your anger freely?
Were you told, or was it implied
that you were being difficult when you got upset?
If you were free to express your anger
you may express it more actively.
And we pretty much know what active anger can look like.
Yelling, hitting, throwing things,
insulting, criticizing, making threats.
But if you were raised in a way to feel
that anger was something to avoid
either because you were afraid of it,
or you were taught not to express it,
you can express your anger more passively.
Passive ways to express anger are over eating,
self harm like cutting yourself or pulling out your hair,
making snide comments, being late,
withholding affection, and forgetting things.
It's one thing to address blowups with anger management.
But passive anger can be destructive as well,
not only to yourself, but in relationships.
Just because the person with the rigid posture
can get angry fast and often,
it doesn't mean he expresses it with yelling.
He can seethe with anger and express it by withholding
affection, or giving you the silent treatment.
So passive anger can do more damage
to poison a relationship than dealing
with the person who hits walls.
I'll do a followup video on managing anger.
But I wanted first to introduce you
to how you get angry and what that anger can look like.
And some of the factors that I discussed here
about flexibility in your thinking
are used to address and manage your anger.
So that's why I wanted to introduce to these concepts.
So stay tuned for more.
See you next time.