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Comment by sumitkumar | Hacker News Reader

Expressed anger/emotion is okay, bottled up anger/emotion is not good. And all restraint must hit the emotion sink without delay. So don't keep emotional debt. Settle it right away or forget it forever.

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I think this metaphor is imperfect. My anger is not necessarily something that has to be stewed on. ie, my mind is not a pressure cooker where anger will never dissipate unless it's released. For instance, I spend zero time thinking about the wrongs done to me in middle school, even though those conflicts were never really resolved in any sort of satisfying or adult way. Crucially, the triggers for those issues are lost to the distant past.

So, when must I address my anger? Crucially, it's when the situation which led to it goes unresolved; eg: I work with someone who is bullying me, and I must resolve it because I'll see them every day. Or, I'm angry about something my spouse does, but I've never talked to her about it. In that case, "keeping it bottled up" is relevant because the conflict will be refreshed daily. ie, it's the externality of the stimulus which makes the "bottled up" metaphor relevant.

Expressed well, yes. Letting it rip, no. There's supporting research that shows that unconstrained expression of anger is not a good plan. If you want to trawl medical papers for details, this one's a good starting point: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824648/

(Note - you want the referenced papers, not the actual paper itself, which I consider weak-ish)

This is, theoretically, part of becoming an adult: Becoming aware of your emotions, and learning to express them in a healthy way. (Not just anger). Our society spectacularly fails us on that subject. We do extremely little to even explain what emotions are and how they influence it. (There's a reason "Inside Out" was a huge hit - it's one of the few pop culture pieces trying to do that job)

Agree. Expressed well and measured. And it is learned by expressing badly first and then one gets better. When kids have a tantrum it is a good opportunity to make them aware of it and allow them modulate it. But if one doesn't let them express or gives no attention to their expression it can foster other emotions and delays the learning of modulation.

Unconstrained expression of anger is usually a result of long term suppression and then falling into the trap that suppression doesn't work so modulation will also not.

Yup. That's where we fail people. As children. With "suck it up", and "you can't have a tantrum, you're grounded" etc, etc. Most people with anger issues honestly just don't know what to do - that's why courts send people to anger management classes. (Long argument to be had if those work reliably, and the quality of people teaching them, but better than not doing anything)

Of course, people who aren't ordered to go there instead get to fall into the "admitting you're working on your emotions is weakness" trap. Shit's hard, for everybody. Men get larded with "tough it out", women get "you're too emotional" instead. Minorities get "you must be respectable". Majority folk get "you have it good, clearly it is impossible for you to suffer, and you have no right to complain".

I wish we were more supportive as a society, and more focused on helping people develop emotional skills.

This really applies to all emotion. Bottles up emotion isn’t great for our mental or physical health.

It's common to talk about one incidence of anger being expressed versus years of anger being suppressed, while most people do a mixture of expression and suppression, and there are ways to reduce anger without suppression.

Of course, sometimes how a preference is expressed for suppression or expression comes from an underlying personality type and philosophy— is a heuristic or justification for personal preference.

Many athletes and actors practice a brief expression of frustration followed by conscious breathing as a way to reduce and channel anger, rather than suppressing it or giving into a feeling of being out of control. Behaving from a place of being out of control tends to be where a lot of damage in life is caused.

Another popular point of view is someone who expresses anger saying it is truth, as Harry Truman responded to someone who said "Give 'em hell. Harry!", He replied "I just tell them the truth and they think it's hell."

A family member who has this issue has many stories such as this one: "I parked in front of the restaurant and before I could get out this guy I don't know was at my window screaming at me. I don't know why this always happens to me." When you spend some time with this person, you find that they have poor impulse control and lack of awareness of how their choices affect others. The reason these things "always happen to them" is because they cause it to happen through their behavior.

A recent video by Einzelgänger explained that the Freudian idea of expressing your anger isn't really holding up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqhW2-z14xY

Thanks for this, very insightful. I'd love to hear from sumitkumar as to why they think it's good to express anger, as well as any sources that they have.

It is difficult to model the anger and resolution patterns easily but I will try. Say there is a discomfort/cause/trauma for anger. In a way it is a stress response to prepare one to fight or make a change. If one adds a little anger to a fight their response improves. And if one doesn't use the anger as a signal, the signal gets louder next time. During an acute stress response it is better to use the anger energy and express yourself and win/lose/stall the fight rather than mute/lose the fight and in later revisits to the incident give in to the anger because later there is no outlet or easy resolution except letting go. The helplessness of not acting gives rise to the emotions of regret/revenge and impact self-worth/identity when the action is delayed. And these emotions are more damaging than anger as they can influence our positive actions in other areas.

Now in our current world not every incidence of anger is because of a conflict but follows the same pattern. To talk about the bad weather is better than grumbling about it. Grumbling about it is better than grinding your teeth. And expression does not mean give in to the anger without awareness, so it is not okay to direct the rage one felt in the workplace to their family members or to kick the tyre of a car.

Maybe I misunderstand it, but I don't like this metaphor.

Anger is not a constantly accumulating waste product that must be regularly emptied out.

It goes away by itself if you wait a while.

> Expressed anger/emotion is okay

No it's not

> bottled up anger/emotion is not good

Yes it is

It is tautologically obvious why expressing anger does not result in reduced anger in the long term, and why practicing subduing your anger is beneficial. Cathartic expression of anger is a long-debunked approach to coping with it.

> It is tautologically obvious why expressing anger does not result in reduced anger in the long term, and why practicing subduing your anger is beneficial.

It isn't obvious at all to me and doesn't match my experience.

Maybe you have some kind of healthy expression of anger, but multiple studies have shown that venting anger physically or verbally just exacerbates it, because it causes you to ruminate on the causes of the anger, which just feeds back into it [1]. Focusing on something else, like a logic puzzle, can diffuse it.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027273582...

I thought we were talking about long term, not short term.

I agree, in the short term anger can have negative consequences. But longer term, as you ruminate on the causes of anger, you can be more objective and see that the reaction may have been an overreaction and unproductive. You might even have regret (I've certainly felt regret).

If I always subdued my anger, I'd probably end up like the dog in the this is fine meme (and I'm not an angry person!).

On reflection, it depends on what was meant by 'express' in the previous post; if an expression is a constructive discussion then that may be good. If an expression is smashing things or shouting, that isn't good.

Aggressive expressions don't work long term because they reinforce the behaviour of outwardly and rapidly being angry.

I'd like to know the neurochemistry behind this.

I have embraced my emotions and I have never been more miserable. Verses when I was a practicing Stoic and ignored them.

When you embrace your emotions, your brain focuses on different things. If I ignored an emotion, I can go back to work. If I embrace an emotion, I might dig deep into a PTSD-style event, and be bummed all day.

I'm not sure where this idea to 'get your emotions out when they come', I'm not sure its scientific.

> I'm not sure where this idea to 'get your emotions out when they come', I'm not sure its scientific.

IME it's from people who have no idea how to do it any other way, unfortunately. They never experienced being capable of suppressing emotions and lack the imagination that it can be learned. (Or maybe it can't, but some of them end up getting medication and realize what they were missing.)

> Verses when I was a practicing Stoic and ignored them.

That's not what stoicism is about, at all

Ah fellow HN contrarian!

I didn't say it was. I was talking about how a philosophy was able to help me mentally.

I can explain Stoicism, I just didn't feel the need to. Other people can go google it.

> I didn't say it was.

You heavily implied it, and it's a very common criticism of stoicism, I don't want people to have such a negative view of it from the get go

> when I was a practicing Stoic and ignored them

Ignored, or acknowledged and prioritized?

Farnsworth in "The Practicing Stoic" Ch9:

So a first Stoic remedy for anger, as for other such problems, is a return to Chapter 1: recognize it as an option and let it go.

Try meditation. So notice the emotion/thought, be curious about it and then let it go and return to the meditation.

You might also try EMDR to reprogram the amygdala.

That really depends on how you expect people to express their anger. Yell, punch a hole in the wall, kick a puppy or assault a co-worker is not really acceptable.

If people could stick to "I'm rather angry with you right now, so I'm leaving" then sure, by all means express your anger.

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