Understanding anger and resentment
How we create anger, and how to challenge resentful thoughts before they are converted into full-on rage
Anger. It’s something we all experience, it’s something we can all feel like we struggle to control, and yet it’s also something we actually understand comparatively little about. So in this slightly longer blog I want to give some insight into anger (and anger’s partner-in-crime, resentment) and how to take steps to limit it just by tweaking some of your thinking.
To do this, I want to paint a scenario for you all. Imagine you meet up with a friend for a coffee, and he’s had a really tough few months. He tells you that he and his girlfriend have recently split up, and at the weekend she packed her bags and left to stay with her mum for a while. In addition, the client contract that he was expecting this month has gone cold on him, and with his girlfriend now moved out, that means he’s now short for the rent this month. He used his savings up last month on a new car, not knowing that his girlfriend was planning to leave and he might need that money. On top of that, his flat is coming up for renewal next month and, without his girlfriend’s income to combine with his, he can’t afford the rent, so he knows he is going to have to move out. And last but certainly not least, his Dad has just had a stroke.
So, let’s call this poor guy Steve. If we’re being honest, Steve is having a pretty rough time at the moment (maybe you should offer to shout his coffee on this particular morning…), and because of this he tells you he’s feeling really angry. Throwing and breaking things around the house, snapping and shouting at people he doesn’t even know in the street who bump into him or get in his way, losing his temper when the slightest thing goes wrong with his work. Steve believes that all of these events and setbacks that have happened to him recently are the reason why he is angry, and the more he thinks about that and starts to think of all the people involved in these situations (his now-ex-girlfriend, his lost client, himself for buying the car), the more resentment he builds up. Resentment and anger, you see, are both by-products of us going over and over and over the same thoughts and events in our heads in a really powerless way. What happens when we feel powerless over events in our lives and over our emotions? We build a sense of injustice and of helplessness to change it all.
“If he really feels like the external things and people in his life make him feel certain emotions, then he really is screwed because try as he might, he can’t change other people and he can’t change the past either…”
As Steve does this, he therefore starts to reduce the action he takes to change his life. After all, in his mind, what difference would it make anyway? Life is already knocking him flat, why bother getting up again… He finds himself spiralling into a cycle of anger and depression, believing he and his life are just one massive failure, and every new thing that ‘happens to him’ just adds to the fast-growing belief he is building that he really is doomed, and just reignites all that old anger and injustice all over again. Like I said, Steve thinks these events are causing all of this. And if he does truly believe that all, if he really feels like the external things and people in his life make him feel certain emotions, then he really is screwed because try as he might, he can’t change other people and he can’t change the past either…
So, I want you to now imagine instead that just before all of this hit the fan, Steve got a call. [If you believe in any kind of God, let’s say that the phone-call was from God. If you don’t, just imagine that’s it was from something that resembles a sort of call-centre for life itself. Which would be awesome]. So, the phone rings and the call-centre-for-life operator asks to speak with Steve about the next year or so. She says to him, Steve, it’s life here, I just wanted to give you a heads up, I know that you like her right now but here at head office we think that relationship with your girlfriend has got to end. It’ll probably be in the next month or so, but essentially there’s somebody much more suited to you who loves all the same movies and loves football too who is going to move into the local area! If you stay with the current girlfriend, let’s be honest there are already a few cracks appearing, so it’s for the best… I know it’s going to be a hard few months and the decision seems wrong at the moment, but given this new information are you ok with us going ahead with this breakup, in the long term? And Steve would go, oh thank goodness, thanks for the heads up, go for it - I’m so glad you gave me some warning, might take the edge off the heartbreak a bit! Is there anything else you want to discuss with me?
The operator then says to Steve, look I think I’m going to have to level with you here, I’m not sure you’re going to like the next 6 months to be honest, but I promise you, there’s method to our madness. You see, you’re going to lose that work contract that you were hoping for which was going to last for the next few months, financially it’ll be tough but you’ll scrape by (maybe stock in lots of baked beans around April, that one’s going to be a tight month) but in 3 months’ time an even bigger full-time contract is going to come in which will be for a whole year, and it’s something you’re really going to enjoy! When we looked at your options we thought that if we let you have the first contract you’d be too busy to take on this bigger and more long-term contract and in the long-term that would make you worse off. So just chill out when you don’t get this contract because although it seems awful we’re actually just making room for a better one. (And remember what we said about baked beans in April.)
“Anger is not actually something caused by bad things happening, it’s caused by the way we think about those things in our own head, and the thoughts and reactions we create ourselves”
The operator isn’t quite done yet. She says to Steve - by the way, the house? Yeah things with the breakup will get messy and you’re going to have to move out, but it is going to work out brilliantly eventually, so don’t waste any time getting resentful about it. You see, your best mate Dave is actually just about to come back from his two-year placement in Australia because his application for a work visa renewal gets unexpectedly denied - so you’re going to rent a 2 bed place together and have a few years of real fun! Ah yes and about that car - your old one was due to breakdown in the middle of nowhere in 5 or 6 months’ time right when you were going to be paying for the new flat deposit, so don’t feel too bad about spending your savings on it, you would have had to anyway so it’s better you paid for it now whilst you had the money. And Steve goes, wow thanks so much for the info, I’m really grateful that you’ve kept me in the loop! All these changes make more sense long-term, so I’ll prepare for a rough 6 months or so knowing that at least it will all come good by next year.
Exactly the same things have happened/changed in Steve’s life whether he had this (admittedly very bizarre) phone call or not. Yet in one scenario he was angry, bitter and resentful, and probably very stressed, and in the other one he was not. Think about similar scenarios in your own life, where things have happened that you’ve been incredibly angry about, but eventually weeks, months and even years later, you started to see that situation differently (perhaps even as a blessing in disguise) because something better came along instead, or you learned something valuable from it that unexpectedly helped you in the future. Chances are, the more you think about this, the more examples you will start to come up with.
The reason for these different reactions in the same situation for Steve (and for the rest of us too) is because anger is not actually something caused by bad things happening (known in Thrive language as being ‘external’), it’s caused by the way we think about those things in our own head, and the thoughts and reactions we create ourselves (known as being ‘internal’). It’s why some people can take a cancer diagnosis in their stride and make the most of the time they have/be grateful that they have access to life-saving treatment, and others can use it as a reason to feel miserable and ‘unlucky’ for months or even years. In Steve’s example right at the beginning, I mentioned his Dad having a stroke. If his Dad had survived it and used that stroke as a warning sign that he needed to slow down and start living a healthier and less work-centred life, and therefore eventually lived longer, that stroke wouldn’t have been a bad thing at all, it would have been something that he used as a catalyst to change his future for the better. But the key would have been his reaction. If he’d not changed anything, gotten angry or stressed about it instead, or used his misery as an excuse for a fast-food pity party, he would even have risked giving himself another stroke…
Seeing as hindsight and (to my knowledge) call-centres-for-life are not yet in existence, we don’t have the benefit of KNOWING that these bad times may prove useful for us, or that they’ll come good eventually. That’s not a certainty anyway. That is life, and that’s why it can feel so hard sometimes - it is unpredictable, and inevitably it has its ups and downs. But I’ve used this example because it demonstrates that if we start to understand and accept that our reactions to those peaks and troughs are a choice, and that those choices will affect how happy, positive, calm, and resilient we are in the face of these challenges, then we are much better equipped to handle those events if and when they do happen. In fact, the more we understand the importance of our own reactions to events and our own role in creating emotions like anger, the more resilient we become because we know that 1)) we can handle these kind of testing times in life, 2) we can change and learn from them, and 3) we can choose what to do with them to move forwards and learn from them rather than wallowing in them and letting potential new opportunities pass us by.
We can all have difficult days, weeks, months, even years. (Poor Steve in this example is having his fair share already). And in these times we can find our emotions more challenging than usual. But the minute we realise how much of our emotional reaction is a choice, and how differently we would feel coming out the other side of it if we use the experience positively rather than wallowing in anger, resentment and despair, the more we are able to rationalise and put into perspective our reactions to make them as helpful and proportionate as possible.
If you’re looking for help to deal better with your own emotions including anger, and to see things from a new perspective, get in touch with me today and in just 6 weeks you could be feeling like a new person!