The Surprising Benefits of Getting Angry

For a long time, I was afraid of allowing myself to get angry.

Anger felt like a dark, powerful and dangerous force, and I hated the times I let it take over me.

Like that time during my army service… When my soldier disobeyed my order, I saw a white flash in front of my eyes and a moment later found myself getting physically aggressive and almost punching him.

Or that argument …. When I was so aggravated I said something really offensive to a family relative. I didn’t take it back until it was too late and it ruined our relationship for years.

I was deeply regretful of these few times.

It just didn’t feel like me.

I was a positive, normal guy… not the kind of person that gets angry.

Or was I?

Suppressed Anger

Looking back on it, of course I got angry every once in a while.

Everyone gets angry – it’s a basic, normal emotion.

The issue was that I never learned to be angry in a productive, direct way.

Instead, I felt so uncomfortable with it, that I suppressed it.

In my mind, I had a lot of good reasons:

“Nothing good ever comes out of an argument”.

“I’ll just give it time and let it pass”.

“This person didn’t mean to hurt me, so it’s not fair to offload on them”.

And so on…

It was a big bowl of emotional suppression, covered with a syrupy sauce of bullshit rationalizations .

The thing about suppression is that it never really works. It is the crappiest of all defense mechanisms. It’s always obvious to the other person that something is wrong.

I remember my housemate in Melbourne telling me that he noticed what he had said before irked me.

“You’re stomping around the house, throwing dishes in the sink and slamming doors. You’ve got some kind of anger problem.”

“I’M NOT ANGRY!!” I replied.

And the weirdest thing of all was that in my mind, I really believed I wasn’t angry.

That didn’t stop me from feeling angry and acting angry.

Good ol’ suppression.

A Book of Revelations

Like other events in my life, reading an article in a magazine was the first step out of this mess.

In this hilarious article, titled “I think you’re fat”, the reporter chronicled his attempt at being %100 honest for a week.

Interestingly, despite being offensively honest at times, most of his experiences were very positive way. I was intrigued.

The writer’s challenge was inspired by one Dr. Brad Blanton – a psychologist who postulated that most psychological pain came from being fake and dishonest, and that the only way out was by starting to get honest with people.

He had covered those ideas in a book called “Radical honesty”, which I promptly read.

The book was very interesting.

Blanton wrote that honesty with one’s thoughts and emotions is not an easy thing. It was especially taboo in western culture to directly express two emotions – desire and anger.

I completely agreed about desire, having recently realized that I was full of shit with women and learning how to get honest about it.

But when it came to anger, I didn’t feel like I held anything back.

I was just the guy who never gets angry.

Blanton did mention that most people suppressed anger, and that suppressed anger came out in indirect forms like judging the people who pissed you off, complaining behind their backs or thinking about conversations with them over and over.

I told myself I’ll watch out for those things.

Angry

Only a few short months later though, I had a great opportunity to see into my patterns of anger.

It was my first year living in Melbourne, and I was passionate about building my new dating coaching business – Warm Alpha.

The idea was to teach men how more attractive, while being a sincere and friendly individual. No manipulations needed.

One of my best new friends in Melbourne, let’s call him Richard, was a very genuine, upfront guy that did well with the ladies. He embodied the “Warm Alpha” personality, and liked my teaching ideas.

One thing led to another, and we decided to collaborate.

We started having weekly meetings, talking about whatever has been happening and listing tasks we should get done by the following meeting.

And bit-by-bit, I started noticing something.

“The Problem”

Richard wasn’t pulling his weight in the business. There were tasks that never got completed or even started.

When I asked him about it, he had no good reasons either.

But I didn’t want to start a fight. It didn’t seem justified… We were just starting a business. None of his tasks were making him any money yet, and I wasn’t his boss. I couldn’t tell him what to do, right?

But I started having doubts… Was he even serious about this?

I didn’t want to make a fight over a few unfinished tasks. I still wanted him in the business, and besides, we were good friends!

Or were we?

As time went on, I found myself acting more and more fake when we hung out.

Instead of seeing Richard the person, I saw Richard “The Lazy Guy”, or even worse – Richard “The Problem in my Business”.

We stopped joking around and having fun in business meetings. I tried being stricter to somehow get him to be more productive.

This didn’t help.

My mind wasn’t free for inspired business creation, because I was spending a lot of effort trying to deal with Richard “The Problem”.

One day after a meeting though, I realized “Holy shit, I’m suppressing some serious anger! I have been angry for a few weeks already!”

Yep, even after reading “Radical Honesty” it took me a long time to notice my anger manifest itself as this toxic pile of judgment.

It was pretty obvious this was my pattern. I could think back to previous futile attempts to hide and mask my anger.

It was time to get honest about it.

Expressing Anger

We held our next weekly meeting in a cool café in Melbourne central.

As we sat down to chat, I told Richard – “I have some things to tell you about how I feel about this project and your behaviour in the last few weeks”.

Gulp.

Knowing he would get defensive – who wouldn’t – I asked him to just let me speak my mind and listen.

I made it clear I wasn’t telling him I was right and he was wrong. I was just sticking to facts about his actions and how they made me feel.

I unfolded the piece of paper I brought with me, where I had written down all the events that pissed me off in the last few weeks.

The thought of speaking all these resentments out loud felt like going into battle.

I felt the adrenaline rushing through my body.

I could sense my anger just under the surface, and it scared me.

“Here goes”, I thought, and started reading, making eye contact with Richard.

“I resent that you showed up 20 minutes late for last week’s meeting.”

It felt like my eyes were shooting light bolts, channeling all the intensity of the anger I’ve kept down.

“I resent that you said you will write an article for the site for 2 weeks in a row, but never did.”

“I had writer’s block! It’s not so easy to write an article!” he said, defiantly.

“I’m not saying you did it on purpose!”, I replied in a louder. “Just that you said you would write it, and you didn’t. You remember saying you’d write it?”

“Yeah…” he said.

“Well, I resent that you didn’t write it despite saying you would.”

I could feel the intense energy of anger running through my body, but it didn’t feel scary this time.

Anger wasn’t controlling me. I was holding the reigns.

As I continued going down the list and reading it out loud, a weird thing happened.

Appreciation

I felt lighter. I could really feel the anger dissipate.

Suddenly, good things about Richard’s behaviour became obvious.

This was news. For weeks now he had been “The Problem”.

I started telling him those as well, in between resentments:

“I appreciated it when you told me my public talk was good.”

“I resent you for booking a shift at work on the date of our last workshop.”

“But, I really appreciated you eventually finding a replacement at work and making it to the workshop.”

As those words left my mouth for the first, I realized something.

I was so focused on judging him recently that I couldn’t even notice him making an effort to fix up his mistakes.

I finished reading the list, feeling a lot lighter.

“Well, while we’re at it, I’ve got some resentments of my own.” He said.

Yikes, I didn’t even consider that he was pissed off with me.

“I resent that you make more money from the workshops we both do.”

“But it’s my only full time job! I developed the workshops anyway and…” – I replied, suddenly realizing I was being a defensive little bitch and not listening to him.

I shut up and let him continue offloading.

We felt completely deflated by the end of it, but also great.

All the frustrations we’ve been having, stress filled meetings and “nothing is wrong” passive aggressive shit was over.

I had my friend back, and we could go back to having fun and doing business -knowing fully well how we both felt about each other and the venture.

After that event, I started getting a lot more comfortable expressing difficult emotions. I even taught it to some of my “Warm Alpha” students who loved it.

Here’s a handy formula for doing it right, adapted from “Radical Honesty”.

Conclusion

Expressing difficult emotions is a selfish endeavour, in a way. You do it to improve the quality of your life and your relationships.

It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.

The biggest benefit is to feel how negative emotions lose their grip on you.

They stop plaguing your mind and heart.

Instead, you allow yourself to feel them completely when you express them, and notice them melt away.

And when they’re gone, they leave more room for forgiveness, love, connection -and all the other emotions that make life worth living.

That’s a good enough reason to get angry once in a while.