
The Secret Life of Anger
by Nick Wignall
Anger, similar to happiness and other emotions, isn’t black and white. There are many different flavors of anger: impatience, passive-aggressive communication, irritability, resentment, and frustration are just some examples.
Without a doubt, you can certainly look back on a time where anger led you to make a poor decision, regret an action you took, or hurt someone’s feelings.
“Psychologically speaking, anger is an emotion while aggression is a behavior…nobody gets sent to prison for how they felt—no matter how angry or enraged they were. Instead, we get punished or not based on what we do, including acting aggressively toward other people.” — Nick Wignall
We don’t always have control over anger as an emotion, but we do have control over our aggression, “…which is the decision to act on and express your anger, either mentally or physically.” — Nick Wignall
Part of the control of aggression is acknowledging and accepting your anger first. Remember, anger as an emotion can’t be controlled, but it can be noticed.
Inline with noticing, also “…try to address the source of the anger, not the anger itself.” — Nick Wignall
“We think of anger as a negative emotion because it often precedes negative behavior. But just because a behavior is bad or negative doesn’t mean the emotion that came before it is.” — Nick Wignall

My two cents: Anger is one of those emotions that can go unnoticed. I personally find it sort of weird that this is the first piece of content I’ve consumed regarding anger. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but anger seems like a subject that doesn’t get talked about that much? And everybody gets angry, but oddly enough there’s no class that teaches how to deal with it or how it can affect others.
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