What Is the Purpose of Anger?

Emotions, like anger, are an automatic biological response to a stimulus, partially based on your interpretation of that stimulus. This response helps with making decisions and motivating us to action. The strength of the motivating impulse depends on the level of emotion. Sometimes it can feel like we cannot control the impulse. People get different impulses based on the emotion they feel.

Anger gives us the impulse to attack verbally, physically, or relationally. The purpose of anger is to motivate us to remove whatever is impeding our goal or desire. Emotions are not morally or ethically good or bad. I educate patients to view emotions as comfortable or uncomfortable. For example, when a parent sees someone hurting their child, they feel angry and defend their child. Most people would not call a parent bad for getting angry and defending their child. On the other hand, society views a road rager as bad for getting angry at someone, following them, and fighting them.

The Threat System

Anger comes from the limbic system, which activates our sympathetic nervous system to address the threat. The sympathetic nervous system addresses threats with the fight, flight, or freeze response. When this system activates, we experience an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen consumption, and breathing. The sympathetic nervous system also boosts metabolism, releases stress hormones, and redirects blood flow to our muscles. These changes in our bodies help us act to remove the threat.

All living species’ threat systems deal with external threats. Humans’ threat systems have evolved to include internal threats. There are two types of internal threats: threats to our idealized self and threats to our personal scripts. The idealized self refers to the standards we hold ourselves to. These standards might include I should be perfect, I should always be right, or I should always make people happy. Personal scripts refer to our expectations for a sequence of events, such as if I do X then Y will happen. These might include If I give you a gift, you should say thank you or When I do something (I deem) helpful, you should show me appreciation or affection.

When events go against these scripts or standards, our body views it as a threat and reacts with the fight, flight, or freeze response. The fight response could mean starting a verbal or physical fight or doing something to hurt another person. If we don’t meet our own expectations, this fight response could mean criticizing ourselves, self-harm, or, in extreme circumstances, suicide. The flight response takes the form of avoiding or running away from the situation, which could lead to isolation. A freeze response takes the form of inaction, shock, disassociation, or giving up.

 

Coping Strategies for Anger

When we are highly emotional, we lose executive functioning. This refers to our focus, attention, concentration, planning, and impulse control. This impaired executive functioning makes it difficult to retrieve knowledge or create a memory. I believe most people have the ability and knowledge to solve most of their problems but struggle due to emotions. This is why I recommend bringing down your emotions before you address the situation that caused the emotions. For example, think about a movie or show in which they bring in a police negotiator for an intense situation. The negotiator deescalates the situation before they work toward a solution.

Using coping strategies can slow you down to give you more time to think. Just an extra few seconds can sometimes make or break an outcome. There are some strategies I recommend to help with intense emotions, like anger.

Breathing

The first interventions I like to recommend are breathing exercises. My favorite breathing exercise is belly breathing (diaphragmatic breathing). I have been using it for a long time. When I learned diaphragmatic breathing as an undergraduate student, I quickly found it helped me better manage my own anxiety and anger. Take in a breath for about 5-10 seconds. Breathe in through your nose while extending your belly to hold your air. Hold for a second. Then slowly release the air out of your mouth.  

Deep breathing is effective because it helps activate our cool-down system. Breathing slowly and deeply helps lower body temperature and decreases heart rate. Deep breathing also tells our brain we are no longer under threat.

Grounding

Grounding exercises help turn off our threat system by using one or all of our sensory organs to distract ourselves from the emotion. Petting a fuzzy dog helps release neurotransmitters that help turn off the threat system. For a couple years, I used a therapy dog, a corgi named Thor. When I used Thor in therapy with children, they would almost instantly relax, open up with their thoughts, and process their emotions with their defenses down.

Another popular sensory organ besides touch is smell. I have used scents to great success with a lot of patients. A common technique that uses hearing and is very popular with young people is listening to music. Schools commonly provide the accommodation of listening to music to help students cope with stress.

Distraction

Distract yourself by having fun. This is important for releasing feel-good neurotransmitters, rewarding ourselves, and giving our lives meaning. Remember, there can be such a thing as too much fun. Using distraction as a coping technique can be a double edged sword. Healthy uses include using distraction to let time pass when there is nothing you can do about a situation, such as waiting for the results of a job interview. Unhealthy distraction includes avoiding studying for a test because you should study to improve the outcome of the test, even if you feel negative emotions about it.

Decision making

There are two skills I teach from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to help with decision making. Opposite action means asking whether following the emotional impulse will help or hurt us. If it helps, we can go along with the impulse. If it hurts us, doing the opposite of the impulse could help lead us to our goal.  

The STOP method can also help. Stop what you are doing. Take a step back and take a breath. Observe the situation and try to take in as many facts as possible. Proceed mindfully by making a thought-out choice.  

Timeouts

When you notice your anger (or any strong emotion) increasing in a way that affects how you think and function, take a timeout. Say to the other person, I am feeling too upset to continue. Let me cool down for a few minutes, and then we can continue the conversation. I use this technique personally to avoid making emotional decisions. Once I feel emotions rising, I tell the other person (usually my wife, sometimes my daughter), I need a break to cool down. I always give a time when I will come back to finish the conversation.

As a word of caution, I do not recommend giving another adult a timeout. By giving yourself a timeout, you also give the other person the opportunity to calm down. You might need to tell your child to take a cool-down break, but I caution against using this with kids high school age. Once again, taking a timeout yourself can model good decision-making and give them a chance to cool down too.

Conclusion: When to Seek Help for Anger

Anger is a tricky emotion because it is often not the primary emotion we are experiencing. We call this the iceberg theory of anger. On the surface we see anger, but below the water we could feel sadness, shame, fear, or other emotions. Therapy can help if you don’t understand your anger. If anger has hurt aspects of your life, if you feel unable to control your anger, or if you want to learn how to manage anger in a healthy way, contact us!  

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Post written by Dr. Michael Gotowka, Licensed Psychologist

Please note posts are educational in nature and are not intended to replace psychological services when needed.