November 8, 2007

• Anger Thresholds

  Here’s a theory. Everyone has a
  different sort of anger threshold. For some that threshold is really
  low. It doesn’t take much to make them angry and they show it pretty
  quickly in whatever manner they usually demonstrate their anger, be it
  through ranting or raging or going cold and silent or being cruel and
  nasty or smashing things or slamming doors or whatever.  For others the
  threshold is really high. It takes a lot to get them angry and
  circumstances that seem like they would piss them off just don’t seem
  to phase them. They don’t show anger very often if at all because they
  are rarely pushed to it.

  That much isn’t particularly
  interesting, but let’s think about how people with various anger
  thresholds are likely to interact with the world when they realize
  where they stand on the continuum of anger thresholds. This is an
  interesting question because I think most people are well aware of
  whether they are quick to anger or of the less excitable type.

  In
  my observations, the low anger threshold types tend to dislike the
  frequency of their tendency to express anger. As a consequence they
  tend to try and suppress their outward expressions of their anger. When
  something ticks them off, inside they immediately blaze up in anger,
  but they clamp it down with an iron will and try not to show it.  This
  is in large part because society tends to not treat people kindly who
  are too quick to get angry. Often, in order to be successful, you need
  to not appear as a person who quickly grows angry at things that others
  perceive as not being too big a deal. On top of that, most people tend
  to easily become hurt or upset when someone becomes angry at them
  thinking that the person is judging them. So the low anger threshold
  person who probably doesn’t intend to or feel good about hurting others
  with their anger and probably wants to be successful will do what he or
  she can to appear less angry than they actually are.

  Of course,
  what happens when someone who is easily made angry spends so much
  energy trying not to appear angry? Why it makes them angrier of
  course!  It must be extremely annoying to try and suppress your nature,
  to conform to the opinions and perceptions of others just to make them
  happy. Maybe at first it doesn’t bother you, but after living that
  double life for a while it will build up and make you extremely
  annoyed.

  Fairly frequently, quick-to-anger folks intuitively
  come up with an ingenious solution to this problem. They tend to find
  and become close to people with whom they feel comfortable expressing
  their anger and whom they feel won’t judge them harshly because of it. 
  Then they take out their anger on those people in private whilst
  maintaining an outward facade of never or at least less frequently
  getting angry. This isn’t done out of a desire to cause harm or to use
  the person at whom they are expressing their anger. Rather, it is the
  natural consequence of the very human need to find a balance in one’s
  life in a world that rejects fiery tempers out of hand. The more one is
  forced to behave in a manner that is unnatural to them the more likely
  the are to seek some sort of outlet wherein they can be themselves
  again. That’s human nature.

  Those who are slow to anger on the
  other hands develop a different attitude toward their anger tendencies
  and act in a different manner to compensate.  A high-threshold person
  will fairly frequently develop a fear of the very thought of his or her
  own anger threshold ever being breached. Having so little experience
  being angry, one tends to not trust themselves and to fear what one
  might do, what harm they might cause, if they were ever to get angry.

  As a result a person with a high-threshold will probably act in the
  exact opposite manner to the actions of the low-threshold person. The
  people with whom they are close will be the last ones they would allow
  to see their angry side. Most often these persons will never allow
  themselves to show their anger except when they are completely alone
  and isolated, or if they cannot engineer such a situation they will
  release their anger amongst strangers before they allow themselves to
  express it with friends and family. When something breaches their anger
  threshold or even if they start to see that something has become close
  to breaching it while they are around someone they care about, their
  instinctive reaction is to withdraw, to run away, to escape, to be by
  themselves or become surrounded by others whom they care about a lot
  less. They will become quiet and withdrawn if they cannot find a
  recourse to escape and will focus all of their mental energies onto
  keeping a hold of their temper until an opportunity arises where they
  can release it without fear of letting someone they care about become
  acquainted with this person that they become when their anger is upon
  them.

  The low-threshold person will generally require a few close connections
  to keep them entirely sane, but they will probably have very high
  standards for who becomes such a connection. The person with whom they
  entrust with the angrier part of their personality will have to be
  someone that they consider trustworthy, it can’t just be anyone. But
  whomever they do become close to, they will likely choose to become as
  close as possible with that person, not holding anything back once the
  person has demonstrated that they can be trusted and that they will not
  reject them for their anger. But always there will be a little bit of
  fear that those close persons might reject them anyway one day. That
  the next time they get angry, the person might just decide that they
  don’t want to deal with them anymore. That’s the fear that keeps them
  from formulating new close connections and it is the fear that haunts
  them when they interact with the ones they are already close to.

  In contrast the high-threshold  person is likely to find it less risky
  to formulate close connections or connections of any kind for that
  matter. So they are likely to form a lot of them and not hold them to
  any prerequisite tests before they allow the persons to become close to
  them. Connections are trusted implicitly and don’t have to prove it
  before they become close. However, a high-threshold person will likely
  try not to become too close to any of the people with whom they become
  connected. There is a need there to be able to quickly terminate or
  temporarily withdraw from a connection should the high-threshold person
  start to feel that they will be unable to keep their angry side in
  check around that person.  And should the high threshold person
  formulate close connections that will be difficult or impossible to
  terminate, one can expect the person to be forever a little bit afraid
  that they might not be able to keep back that part of themselves that
  only comes out in those rare instances where their anger threshold is
  breached from the persons with whom they are close. The fear then is
  that those close connections will see that other side of them, become
  shocked and appalled and reject them out of hand. That fear would haunt
  their efforts to develop deep connections.

  So one type of person doesn’t ever fully trust anyone else.  The other
  type of person doesn’t ever fully trust themselves. It’s a little sad. 

  What does all this mean for all of us regular people? Well it means
  that you might as well get used to dealing with anger, because there’s
  a good chance you will encounter a lot of people getting angry at you
  for no explicable reason in your lifetime. Strangers will explode at
  you for no reason when they are avoiding demonstrating that anger to
  others they care about. Close ones will rage at you as a means of
  release because you are the person that they trust enough to get angry
  at. You can’t escape it. You just accept it.

  Can you change your anger threshold? I’m sure it is possible. But it
  wouldn’t be an easy or quick process by any means. Likely it would take
  a lot of effort to try and give yourself a more balanced aspect. Also,
  a lot of the things we do when we think we are trying to change our
  anger threshold, like holding back our anger from strangers or close
  ones probably isn’t really changing our threshold at all. We are
  moderating the behaviors associated with the angers but not controlling
  the underlying causes that make us either too quick or too slow to come
  to our anger. Identifying what those causes are is the trick. That’s
  the key.

  Anyway, in case you are wondering which I am… well I’ve always
  thought of myself as a high-threshold anger person. I do frequently try
  and escape when things really deeply upset and find outlets where I can
  rant without anyone I know being around to see it. Others have also
  remarked to me in the past that nothing seems to really upset me very
  much and that I don’t ever get angry.   But that’s not the whole story
  really. When I think about it, its totally true that events and people
  rarely make me angry. Even terrible travesties of justice I have
  observed don’t really make me rage, nor cruelty, nor incompetence, nor
  uncontrolled natural disasters, nor random bad luck.  I sometimes
  ‘rant’ about these things in writing, but I’m not angry. There’s no
  heat or coldness inside me in my reaction to these things. It’s more of
  an inquisitiveness. I just wonder why they came to pass, I don’t become
  disgusted or appalled.

  However, I do have a low anger-threshold with respect to one thing.
  Myself. I get angry at myself very very easily. Any little thing that I
  do wrong can make me want to scream or rage or beak something. A red
  haze covers my eyes. I burn with the self disgust and repulsion. And it
  takes a long time for me to get over that anger if I ever do. I still
  have memories of stupid little mistakes from my childhood that haunt
  me. I constantly remember them. I can’t seem to put them out of my
  head. Whenever I do something I dislike, I become angry about the whole
  sum total of errors I’ve made throughout my life. They all come back to
  me and I want to hurt something or somebody.  It’s a very strange
  feeling.

  So I guess I exist on both ends of the spectrum a the same time. I
  guess that gives me a little bit of a unique perspective.  Anyway, that
  just means I’ve got a lot of work to do in changing myself. I’d better
  get cracking.

  • 7:33 pm
  • 3 Comments