Is an intense emotional state involving a strong uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat. It’s fantastic if you’re at risk of physical harm, however, can be quite frightening for yourself and others you care for.
Gabor Mate Quote – Healthy anger is in the present and it has the job of boundary defense, which you need. We have a system in our brain that’s specifically for rage, and healthy rage is simply a boundary defense. All animals have it. But unhealthy rage has not to do with the present or self-protection; it has to do with recruiting negative memories from the past and projecting them into the present and the future. So there’s no end to it. So there’s no resolution of it, there’s no regulation of it.
Robert Scaer a world renowned Neurologist has noted in his book The Trauma Spectrum due to a lack of body touch and body movement, sensory stimulation in the developing infant may result in Somatosensory Affectional Deprivational Syndrome. Clinical features of this include depression, impulsivity, sexual dysfunction, and violence. In humans, excessive alcohol consumption and drug use are also frequent when there has been a lack of somatosensory deprivation.
Tribes that are characterised by aggressive and warlike behaviour tend to be associated with more punitive and less nurturing practices of early infant rearing. On the other end of the spectrum Tribes that raised their infants with high physical affection experienced low child anxiety, low theft, low suicide rate and virtually absent torture, mutilation and killing of tribal captives.
To delve even deeper as to what healthy & unhealthy anger is, Gabor Mate notes
“When people suppress themselves emotionally, and they do that as a coping mechanism—let’s say that you’re two years old and you have a tantrum. Well, there’s nothing wrong with being two years old and throwing a tantrum because as a two year old, you can’t help it. You don’t get the cookie before dinner, you might throw a tantrum. But you shouldn’t have the cookie—if your parents are doing their job, they’re not gonna give you a cookie before dinner. So you’re gonna have a tantrum. But what if your parents grew up in a home where there was a lot of rage? Your parents are terrified of rage? So they give you the message that good little girls don’t get angry. The message that you get is angry little girls don’t get loved. So to maintain your relationship with your parents, then, you—or your brain actually, automatically, not you consciously but your brain—automatically now will repress anger in order to maintain a relationship with parents who can’t handle your anger. Because the maintaining of that relationship is the only way to ensure your survival.
So you repress that anger. It’s been shown in study after study that repression of anger also represses the immune system. For the very simple reason that a) the two systems are part and parcel of the same super system, number one. And number two, healthy anger and the immune system both have the same function, which is to protect you. When you’re suppressing your self-protection in one way, you’re suppressing it in another way as well and that same system will then turn against you. Now you got an autoimmune disease. And when I interviewed people with scleroderma, or colitis, or Crohn’s, or multiple sclerosis, or rheumatoid arthritis, or any number of autoimmune conditions, it’s all the same pattern. In childhood, they learned not consciously, but automatically to repress themselves, and that the emotional repression then disorganizes the immune system.
There’s unhealthy anger which can also kill you. So in the aftermath of a rage episode, your risks of heart attack or stroke double for the next two hours because now you have too much adrenaline, your blood vessels are narrowed, there’s more clotting factors, your blood pressure goes up. So unhealthy anger also raises your risk of illness.
Well, I think in one of his books Eckhart gives a beautiful example of what if human beings were like ducks? I don’t know if you remember that passage where he talks about, on the pond two ducks—one swims across, the other one swims too close to the other one. So the first duck will then quack and rustle his feathers and ruffle his feathers and chase the other duck off. But when he does that, it’s over, it’s finished. That’s healthy anger—it’s a boundary defense. But then Eckhart says, “What if the duck was like a human being? Then when the incident was over, the anger would continue, and he would say to himself, ‘Boy, that guy, he’s always coming near me. He did it last week, what’s wrong with him anyway? I bet next week he’ll do it again. I hate that guy.’” That’s the unhealthy anger.
So there’s healthy and unhealthy anger. The first is present-based, it’s a boundary defense. The second is past-based and it’s self-magnifying.”
Anger is absolutely Awesome if you’re about to be physically harmed. However if not being Assertive is the way to go, it’s all about delivering your message without the emotion. Being assertive shows that you respect yourself because you’re willing to stand up for your interests and express your thoughts and feelings. It also demonstrates that you’re aware of others’ rights and willing to work on resolving conflicts.