I already touched on this when I talked about not liking to react to everything that provokes anger from me, but I dislike feeling controlled. Of course, I imagine no one likes feeling controlled (unless it's in a kinky way)... but people have different ideas of what it's about, like some associate anger with feeling in control, but I associate it with loss of control. Since I was a child I had an explosive temper, and as I've gotten older I've tried to hold it back more... or at least be more deliberate with how I express it.
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Anger, to me, is a tool that I use when I want to get something and asking for it (nicely or icily, depending on the situation) doesn't work. It is bold, callous, arousing, and invigorating - and not at all overwhelming or unsettling.Comment
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One thing I find a bit confusing is that I've seen humiliation associated with the anger triad, but I would expect it to be tied to shame?Comment
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I guess for anger triad it's more connected to taking up space, boundaries and respect?
Maybe for gut types 'making small' aspect of humiliation is more central and for heart types it would revolve more around essentially losing face (and everything that comes with it), but I think there's always a bit of both.
Really interesting topic, also I feel like 1 is associated with certain kind of dignity and also many other concepts I see as a mix of...gut-y pride and heart-y pride? Do think there's certain brand of gut-y pride and hence gut-y humiliation. -
that's true, I do like to write 1ish characters suffering humiliation (not to be mean LOL, it's just an interesting character archetype to me)
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I wouldn't really say that I'm hard to anger but I think I am... slow to anger. Not in the sense of that it takes a lot to get me angry but just that it takes a long time for my anger to get to a place where I can actually recognize it as anger. I'm absolutely not someone who gets angry quickly and then calms down really quickly - I have to think about something for a long time before I finally realize that the emotion I'm having toward it is anger, and once I have identified it, it takes me a long time to stop being angry (if I ever stop).
I do get like... annoyed on the day to day but I wouldn't characterize annoyance as anger. It can escalate to that for sure and in those cases I usually elect to fall silent so I don't say something I regret and then take a long time to process what just happened.
The processing is mainly what makes my anger "slow." I can usually recognize that something feels wrong but it takes me a long time to understand what's causing the wrongness, and then I take a long time turning the situation over in my mind and assessing my reactions and assessing what was causing those reactions, and then I spend a lot of time trying to figure out if my reaction was proportionate and justified (this is something my therapist comments on a lot, that I distract myself from feeling my feelings by focusing all my energy on making them make sense and judging whether or not they're valid)... and if I decide at the end of this that I was wronged then that's when the anger starts to burn. This works for other people as well - I get angry on behalf of others, but only once I feel like it's no longer possible to give whoever they were dealing with the benefit of the doubt. Usually if I'm angry on someone else's behalf it's because they're blaming themselves for something that I think is someone else's fault - that really pisses me off, that people can put my loved ones in that position. But I try to trust the judgment of the ones I care for and give the people they're putting up with the benefit of the doubt for my friends' sake until I can't anymore.
The thing that makes me most mad is manipulation. I'm pretty good at recognizing it but I'm not necessarily quick at it - I usually get a gut feeling something is wrong and then have to really pick apart what the other person did and to what end to figure it out. I don't care if the manipulation is conscious or not, I can't stand people who lay traps to try to compel others or make them feel guilty. A lot of other things that frustrate me, I can deal with without necessarily getting angry. For example, the thing I have the least patience for in this world is petty interpersonal drama. Throughout my life I can literally only think of one time where I got sucked into stupid, pointless drama, and even though it ultimately only took like a week of my time I still regret it to this day because it pisses me off. Even when other people just complain to me about drama they've dealt with with people I don't know I get frustrated and tired just thinking about it. It doesn't make me angry though, just really annoyed.
As for manipulation though, that pushes a very specific button of mine. Once I've recognized it I have no other desire than to destroy. I get so angry and the more I think about it the angrier I get. I become obsessed with thinking about it and I start planning and calculating my response (if it's a situation where I can respond). I never get involved in my friends' affairs without permission (and I usually don't ask for it because I'm usually angry at someone my friend themselves hasn't realized they can be angry at and I don't want to alienate them), so no matter how badly I may want to give someone a piece of mind, I try to direct that energy into being a really good friend to my loved one so they'll come to see that they have better options. I wouldn't say that I mask my anger but I usually won't reveal it unless I'm sure it won't make things worse for my friend.
I definitely cope with fantasy. I wouldn't say I love my anger - I'm usually also angry at the person for making me angry and for taking up so much space in my brain when they don't deserve it - but I do find it fun. I like the person I am when I'm angry - not the part where I'm so deep in it that I can't think of anything else because the lack of control annoys me - but I like the scary feeling I get, I like my self image in those moments as someone capable of inflicting great harm with flair (always with words, words are my weapon). I love to imagine what exactly I would say to this person to make them feel like the tiniest little bug ever to have crawled out of the earth. I write cutting letters and fill them with as much malicious intent as I possibly can.
And then I don't send them. I enjoy my anger but as fun as my fantasies are I don't think fulfilling them would actually be productive or helpful. If someone has wronged me I take all the time I need to be 100% sure that I'm actually right, and then I cut them off with one single, simple sentence: "I don't want us to talk anymore." When they ask me to explain myself I refuse. Usually by the time I've decided to act I've already had several conversations with them about their behaviour - I'm not passive aggressive, I can tell someone that I have an issue with what they did. I approach conversations like that with an open mind, giving this person the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I didn't make my boundaries clear enough. Maybe they were having a rough day. But if I'm cutting you off then I am past the point of second chances. It's not that I don't think they can't change, it's that I don't care to sit around and wait for them to grow the fuck up. Maybe they can and will be a better person someday but that's not my problem and I'm not going to be around to see it. By the time I'm cutting someone off, if they really don't know why then they weren't paying attention, and I don't care to be friends with people who hear what I say and don't take it seriously. I've found that offering an explanation usually just invites people to try to argue with me about it but there is no arguing. My mind is made up and they won't change it.
Once they're out of my life I don't necessarily let go of my anger. I don't hold grudges in the sense of wanting something bad to happen to the person - in a lot of cases I do genuinely leave them with the hope that they can change, and if I REALLY liked them then I tell myself that maybe this is a wake up call, that maybe what they really need is to lose something to their shittiness and that'll help them change (the point of telling myself this is so I won't feel guilty for "giving up" on someone who maybe has good in them or was struggling or whatever) - but even long after they're gone from my life if I look back on something they did and specifically on how it affected me, especially if it caused trauma, I can still get really angry. If they turned it around on me and I apologized to them in the moment when in retrospect I think it was actually their fault (this happens a lot because I am generally fairly good at taking responsibility for hurting others and I have a lot of guilt issues) then I can still get really angry about it years later.
That's kind of my experience with anger in an interpersonal sense. Injustice on a broad scale also makes me angry but it's quite a different type of anger.Last edited by inkreservoir; 10-10-2021, 07:01 AM.Comment
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Also - my anger is usually "cold" and rarely "explosive." I don't mean cold in that it feels cold, it feels powerful and sexy, but when I'm mad my logic goes haywire and my words get really technical and precise. I'll be burning but it's more like a filament than a fire, it has a path and it's searing, organized, and clear. My frustration or annoyance by contrast is messier (more visceral, less carefully thought out. USUALLY not explosive but it can be if the thing that's frustrating me is frequent and repetitive within a short time frame and overrides my attempts to stay quiet until I've had a chance to think) and that's why I don't characterize it as being the same as "anger."Last edited by inkreservoir; 10-10-2021, 06:57 AM.
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