The Primitive Emotions – Anger
Anger
Ever seen in real an angry hissing snake? Or seen a video or picture? We have inherited Anger and similar primitive emotions from our evolutionary parentage. No wonder these are really powerful.
An emotion is an instinctive response to a stimulus. This means that is not something that we do with deliberate thought and thinking of the consequence.
For lower order intelligence the response is fit for the stimulus. A snake hissing and about to charge when provoked. The anger driving its hormones – adrenalin may be, to prepare for the fight.
However for humans, though there are valid reasons to be angry about and to show our anger externally, for most stimulus, for most people our anger response is not correctly calibrated.
Reducing OverReaction
A word once left the mouth becomes indelible in the pages of history; so too an action is done. It is then essential that unlike the poor snake, that strikes on instinct, we need to learn to control our impulse.
Calibrate your response to a level that is appropriate for the stimulus. We usually overreact because either we have under reacted before and kept silent for a long time, or we are somewhere else in our mind, aggravated by some other context or stimuli. However, it is not right to take out your anger at something or someone on some other. That is not what a person of character will do. And it is essential to have a code to live by and a code to die for.
Control
It takes a lot of strength to rein in your instincts. Practise developing that inner strength.
Damages
It is easy to make heaven a hell if you cannot control your anger response. I am not advocating to hold back emotions, that will be wrong. Usually most of the time you have perceived and processed the stimulus incorrectly. Human communication is ambiguous and it is easy to misinterpret. Leave some leeway to yourself in your judgment before you respond.