Constructive Emotions: Why Anger and Fear Are Your Friends
by Joshua Freedman
Listening to the news for an hour is enough to stir fear in anyone. Like a clammy fog, the fear seems to constrict your heart and drain your energy.
It feels bad -- so it must be bad, right?
While fear and other unpleasant emotions certainly can be debilitating, these emotions are not bad for you, they are not destructive, and they are not negative. Rather, they are a source of vital information and protection.
Anger Kills?
Anger also has a bad rap. I know that I've done stupid things when angry, so it is easy to see anger as destructive and negative. Again, an hour of watching the news is enough to convince even the most emotion-friendly person that anger is at the root of all kinds of troubles.
Or is it?
Like fear, anger serves a useful purpose. Fear asks, "Are you sure?" Anger asks, "Will you take action?" Think of all the people who were angry about civil rights. About taxation without representation. About the tyranny of monarchies. Or, in more mundane angers, how about feeling so frustrated with those too-tight pants that you finally start exercising? Or anger about tar-stained teeth you finally quit smoking? Even anger about being told "you can't" that leads you to prove you can?
Anger means "there is something I don't like about the situation," or, "my way was blocked." As with fear, the challenge is to identify that "something." Once we listen to the message, the feeling diminishes, and we have a clear course of action.
Unfortunately, like fear, anger feeds on itself when you are not clear. The generalized sense of frustration leads us to see more and more that frustrates us, and anger builds because the essential discomfort remains. Like a tiny thorn that leads to a terrible wound, the minor irritation escalates from neglect.
Everything In Moderation
These positive emotions become dangerous when they escalate. Anger escalates to rage, fear escalates to terror. Both trigger the same kind of "fight, freeze, or flight" reaction -- a core survival mechanism. In that crisis reaction, we don't care about the long-term. We forget about consequences and do anything to survive. We'll "hit back first" to destroy the risk, we'll become immobilized to hide from the risk, or we'll run to avoid it.
Yet even these extreme reactions are examples of the intelligence of our emotions. They are interpreting a situation and creating a conclusion working to keep us alive. The problem is that for most of us, this intelligence is not trained well, and in such challenging moments our strong emotions lead us to unproductive, dangerous, and even destructive actions.
So how does something so positive turn dangerous? Imagine these emotions are like an ignored child: Yesterday I watched my daughter, Emma, struggle with anger. She did not like what we'd told her, and so she began to protest. We did not listen to the protests, so she got louder. Finally, she picked up an expensive toy and threw it -- suddenly, she got attention (perhaps even more than she wanted).
In the same way, we all experience anger or fear, and conditioned to see them as negative, we ignore the feelings. In the case of fear, we ignore the message that we're not certain. The fear escalates to get our attention, and pretty soon we've got a generalized sense of dread, or even terror -- but we don't know where it came from! We don't know the question -- we are standing on the ski slope debating about why we got here in the first place and ignoring the clear decision before us.
Take, for example, the "Orange Alerts" recently so common in the US. It is a system designed to arouse concern (fear) so people become more vigilant. On one level it works -- anxiety increases vigilance and critical thinking. Then, over time, the fear begins to feed on itself because we can't identify the action to take. We can't "ski the fall line" of anti-terrorism, so we take action that is not constructive such as hoarding duct tape or beating up people with turbans -- anything to assuage that sense of dread. Of course, these actions do not help because they do not answer the real question fear is asking: "Are you certain?" We don't even know what we're uncertain about!
In other words, we've gone from a specific, clear feeling to a generalized, overwhelming one. The emotion has begun to feed on itself and color all of our perceptions. It is even more difficult to really listen to the emotion because it feels even more overwhelming, and this generalized sense of threat is confusing and paralyzing. Our bodies prepare for the worst, and get ready for survival mode. Then something comes along to inspire anger, and it is like a spark to a powder keg.
Who's Driving?
While some people talk about "emotional intelligence" as a way of being "smart in the way we control our emotions," this view misses the real point. Emotional intelligence is about how our emotions are smart all by themselves. Emotions are a system of processing information and drawing conclusions. They guide us and help us.
If a person tries to follow a map and gets lost, we don't assume that the map is bad, nor do we assume the person is broken. Instead, it is most likely that he just has not developed enough skill at map reading. With some training, his "map intelligence" can help him get where he's going. Likewise, many people have not developed or trained the intelligence of their emotions, and they'd gain great benefit from developing those abilities.
The terrible irony is that the more we seek to diminish and ignore our emotions, the more desperate they become to deliver their messages. We go to war within ourselves, our energy is consumed, and our decision-making is impaired. Like any system, this dysfunctional relationship with emotions may "work ok" in day-to-day life. But what happens when the threats and fears pile up? When the world becomes less predictable, feels more dangerous? Suddenly, the dysfunction becomes dangerous, and the war expands to consume us.
The alternative: make peace, each of us starting within ourselves, one emotion at a time. As we form a constructive partnership with our emotions, we'll still feel emotions that are uncomfortable, but we'll work together to make a change for the better.
Begin by changing your opinion of "negative emotions" and keep telling yourself they are your allies. Appreciate them. Ask your emotions for advice, give yourself time to listen to them. And like any advisors, don't accept their first reaction -- inquire, explore, and question, get multiple viewpoints, and collaborate for the deepest possible understanding.
