today we're going to be talking about anger what it is and why it happens
hi everyone anger is often thought of as a negative emotion and people often perceive it
as something that's bad or something that needs to be suppressed however anger is a very important
emotion and serves some key purposes so in today's video we're going to be talking about the role
of anger and why it happens but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over
i'm a registered psychologist in the province of british columbia canada and this video is for
informational purposes only it is not intended as a substitute or replacement for advice from
your doctor or mental health professional now with those things out of the way let's start
talking about anger now at its core anger is an emotion that's designed to alert you to the fact
that something's wrong anger may show you that something or someone has interfered with your
goals or is trying to harm you or someone that you care about the purpose of anger is to activate you
in a way to take steps to address that person or the situation that's potentially causing you harm
it can motivate you to solve problems it can motivate you to stand up for yourself
or to make positive changes that you need to make in your life now when viewed this way
anger doesn't really have the same negative connotation that we often think about
that's because the way we think about anger has been largely influenced by external factors
things like religion gender culture perceiving anger is sinful a form of toxic masculinity that
anger means that a person is out of control but the key point is that anger in and of itself
is not bad and that there's nothing wrong with expressing anger the problem comes
in the way anger gets expressed often in the form of violence or aggression both verbal or physical
now there are a number of ways in which anger can become problematic
anger can become problematic if it occurs too frequently if you're constantly dealing with
high levels of anger on a daily basis that's likely to reduce the quality of your life
even if the anger is justified or warranted you just get worn down by constantly feeling angry
it can also become problematic if it lasts too long remember the purpose of anger is
to activate you to take steps to try and address a situation it's not meant to be
an ongoing emotional state as it can be draining both psychologically and physically for a person
um occasionally anger can be experienced as overly intense disproportionate to what's
actually happening in the situation and when this happens a person's much more likely to
act impulsively or say something that they may regret later these forms of extreme anger can also
cause all sorts of physiological reactions as part of that the fight component of the
fight-or-flight reaction so a person's constantly feeling this sense of physical tension as well
anger can become problematic when it interferes in relationships obviously
having difficult to control anger can lead to problems in
family relationships problems between spouses or between parents and children
it can also lead to difficulties at work and in interpersonal problems with co-workers so
this can interfere or cause problems for people with things like being promotion being promoted or
even getting fired because of their problematic anger or anger outbursts at work
so that's a little bit of background about what anger is and how it becomes problematic
but what are some of the things what are some of the sorts of things that cause anger
now you can think you can think of the causes of anger as falling into sort of two broad categories
the first is anger provoking situations and the second is due to internal causes within
the individual getting angry so let's start with the anger provoking situation what are
common situations that tend to provoke anger well one of the most common is a perception or sense of
unfairness or that you're being treated in an unfair manner so for example if a co-worker
blames you for messing up on a project when it was actually their fault that sense of unfairness and
injustice can naturally trigger feeling angry uh abuse or violence directed towards you can also be
a significant source of anger this can take the form of strangers verbally harassing you
sometimes you see this at sporting events where opposing teams fans will start with verbally
jostling with each other and then this sometimes escalates into anger and violence and you know
fights in the stands and that sort of thing this can often be alcohol-fueled uh and the
thing with alcohol is it tends to take down some of our defenses and our ability to regulate anger
other anger provoking situations can include times when you're
feeling frustrated situations when you're trying to accomplish something important or meaningful
and someone or something gets in the way of you accomplishing that goal so for example uh i'm
really close to getting this project done for work but i just need that one piece of
information from my co-worker and the co-worker just is not getting me the information i need
this can also take the form of day-to-day irritations and hassles so for example
have you ever noticed how easy it is to get irritated or angry
when you're trying to get something done and people keep interrupting you right so um if you're
working on your taxes you're trying to focus on it and your kids keep coming into the room and
asking you for something or asking for a snack and it's just like okay enough already
so those are all examples of anger provoking situations so let's turn our attention
more now to internal causes of anger and the idea behind this is that different people tend
to experience and think about situations differently and this different way of
viewing situations can explain why some people experience anger more frequently
or more intensely than others now one of the key factors that can explain why some people
are angrier than others relates to how they evaluate or think about certain situations
so for example if i'm meeting a friend for a lunch date and they're late if i perceive that they're
late because they don't value my time or they don't think that they should respect me enough
to show up on time i'm likely to feel a lot more angry and upset in that situation than
if i were to think about it as you know maybe they just late because they got stuck in traffic
our self-talk can also contribute to dialing up or tuning up the intensity of the anger
so angry self-talk things like he's ruining my life or i hate them
i'm gonna make them pay for this these types of thoughts can often just lead
to a person feeling more riled up and angrier the more they think this way
our expectations can play an important role in how we experience anger uh we often have
beliefs about how things should be or how they ought to be and when things
don't go the way we want them to this can often lead to anger and frustration
now this is particularly important if a person's expectations are unrealistic
because if a person's under expectations are unrealistic they're going to often
find themselves being let down and disappointed contributing to more frequent feelings of anger
another common cause of anger can be the presence of underlying psychological conditions
anger's a common symptom when a person is experiencing things like
depression or anxiety a ptsd or excessive worry in fact anger and irritability can
be some of the core features of these conditions so in these situations anger
itself isn't a standalone issue but part of a greater set of psychological difficulties
and finally internal states such as being stressed can often lead to feeling angry
and now you've probably noticed that it's much more difficult to cope and manage anger
when you're having stressful times at work or when you're having difficulties in your relationships
it's almost like we have a certain amount of energy reserve
that we have available to cope with anger and what happens with stress is that it
tends to drain some of these reserves and just leave us more vulnerable to anger
related to this another important internal state that can often trigger anger is feeling hungry
now this is a phenomenon that's sometimes referred to as being hangry so even that temporary stress
of feeling hungry can be enough to make someone more vulnerable to being more irritable or angry
so i hope that gives you a better sense of what anger is some of the purposes of anger some of
the useful purposes of anger and some of the situations both external and internal that can
contribute to problematic anger now i'll be doing a future video in which i'll be talking about some
of the ways to better identify and manage anger so if you're wanting to learn more about this
i hope you'll keep an eye out for that video so that's all for today's video i'd love to hear your
questions or thoughts about this so please leave me some comments in the comment section down below
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one