anger 7 - Distortions

‘When angry count to four; when very angry, swear.”
(Mark Twain)

What’s Behind The Mask? We’ll look today at how anger, when not faced and processed appropriately, often becomes distorted.

Buried Anger
“I never get angry,” he said. Robert, a meticulously dressed middle-aged man sat in my office, facing not only a possible divorce but the criminal charge of attempted murder.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “everyone gets angry at times.”
“Not me,” replied Robert with a taint of pride in his voice.
Robert’s wife, Shirley, had been driving because Robert had become too intoxicated again. Shirley had criticized him for drinking and the tank exploded - Robert’s that is. He pulled a revolver out of the glove compartment and shot at her. Fortunately, in his drunken stupor his aim was poor - he missed. Robert is an example of an anger distortion called repression, or buried anger, which is an unconscious denial or non admittance of anger; the stuffing of anger into the subconscious mind.

The repressed person, who buries his anger, may say that he never gets angry. Either this person is a liar, has a poor memory, is deceiving himself, lives a very dull life, or is first in line for the first vacancy in the Trinity. Anger is a natural emotion which everyone experiences. Robert was not first in line for the first vacancy in the Trinity!

In the cases of rape with which I’m familiar, it was not sexual lust that was the prompter of the crime, but a buried resentment toward significant female figures - usually beginning with the mother. Rape was a way of gaining control of and expressing buried rage, though in such a destructive way.

Canned Anger
Similar to buried anger is canned anger - a suppressing of the anger feelings. So often I hear Christians say: “Yes sir, since I’ve become a Christian, I’d like to report to you that I’ve completely controlled my temper. I still get angry, but no one else knows about it. I keep it inside,” such a person claims, often with a look of piety and a hint of self-righteousness.
A person who is canning anger shoves it within, sits on it, covers it over, masks it, and soon may not even be aware of it.

Canned anger is often characterized by “I just put it out of my mind. I try to forget it. I take a pill or a shot of whiskey. I just laugh it off. No one is going to control me.”
But the reservoir of anger builds and the accumulated poison becomes more and more potent. Canned hostility is not necessarily hostility conquered. Hostility can be a very silent, sleeping terrorist, but the slightest provocation will bring it forth in all its ugliness. Like the lava trapped in the Mt. St. Helen's volcano, it had to flow AND OFTEN PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS of stress manifest themselves.

Maggie’s thoughts taken from a web site are:
“Anger is a funny thing. I suppose you could say that its my favorite weapon
that I use on myself. I don't have uncontrollable outbursts of anger,
I have uncontrollable ‘inbursts’ of anger. I get angry at myself and beat myself
up before it ever reaches the surface and hurts anyone else. I'm afraid of what will happen if I ‘let it fly.’ I'm afraid that I won't be a ‘good girl’ anymore.
“I don't want anyone else to get hurt because of me. Even when I do get
angry at other people, I hold on to it. There's a whole lot of anger churning
around inside me, but I don't know how to get it out without hurting anyone.
I know that I'm really angry about a lot of things, I just don't know what to do
with all that anger. It just sits there like a time-bomb waiting to destroy me.”

The person who buries anger says, “I am not aware of anger,” while one (like Maggie) with canned anger says, “I’m aware of anger, but I’ll keep it under wraps. It’ll stay within me.”
In tomorrow's post we'll engage other distortions.