Areas › Anger › What anger actually is
Sometimes the row is not really about the row. Some people reach for conflict because it is the one thing that makes them feel properly awake.
If you notice you feel sharp and alive during an argument and flat afterwards, that is worth sitting with rather than being ashamed of. The need underneath is for stimulation, and there are other ways to meet it: hard exercise, work that actually stretches you, anything that asks for your full attention. Nobody is calling you addicted to drama. The wiring is just looking for something to do.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Man was truly created anxious (Quran 70:19). A certain restlessness is named as part of the design, and anger is one of the things it can settle on.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Reviews of emotion regulation conclude that difficulty handling feelings turns up across a wide range of mental health problems and looks like something that keeps them running, while noting that the evidence is largely correlational. The narrower idea that some anger is sought out for the alertness it brings comes from clinical observation rather than from trials. Take it as a question to ask yourself, not as an established finding.
Berking M, Wupperman P. (2012). Emotion regulation and mental health: recent findings, current challenges, and future directions.. Current opinion in psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
If anger is the only thing switching you on, you will keep finding reasons to be angry.
When not to
Long standing trouble with attention or with feeling flat is worth raising with a doctor rather than solving through conflict.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Anger is a bit like a fire you have built around yourself. It keeps things away from you in the dark, and it also keeps you standing in a small circle.
You can be patient all day at work and lose it inside ten minutes at home. That is not hypocrisy, it is different situations pulling different reactions out of you.
Anger is a bit like fingernails where claws used to be. Still there, still occasionally useful, mostly not what the situation is asking for.