ANGER - Is it an emotion?

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ANGER – Is it an emotion?

Is anger an emotion?? This is a question I get a lot!

I do not believe that anger is an emotion. I believe that anger is a reaction to an emotion.

For example. Someone hurts your feelings by saying something mean or hurtful to you and you get angry and start retaliating toward them by either saying mean and hurtful things back or you ignore them and give them the cold shoulder.

The emotion you are feeling is hurt or sadness but you react with anger so that you are not hurt and showing vulnerability.

We tend to do this so that we cannot be vulnerable to these hurt and sad feelings.

Next time this happens to you take a moment to sit in silence and feel the emotions that are going through your body! When I say feel it I mean really feel it. See where in your body you are feeling this pain, is it in your heart? Or maybe in your stomach? Sit with it for a moment and just feel it and acknowledge this feeling and let it pass. Once you do this you will not be so quick to react in anger. Even if you have to walk away from the person that has hurt you that is ok. Much better to walk away then to react in anger and say or do something that you may and probably will regret later.

Anger is not an emotion it is a reaction to an emotion such as pain, sadness, hurt, etc. Once you get this figured out you will be more inclined to stop reacting in anger and begin to feel the true feelings behind this anger reaction.

It is not an easy thing to do at first but the more you do it the easier it gets I promise :)

Love & Light Melissa

Nice article. I agree, it is difficult to do, but when you get it right, you gain much better control of your emotions. This also helps one to not become a victim of others’ hurtful actions or words. Yes, you can still get hurt, but you process, accept and move on much faster.

That is right! If you can realize that anger is just the reaction you can look into the feeling a little closer and then change the reaction :) Fear does funny things to us and anger is just one emotion that it will trigger :)