5 ms·

I was taught that anger isn't an emotion. It's a reaction -a defensive surge of adrenaline, binary thinking, and motivation to fight. It can feel empowering and

I was taught that anger isn't an emotion. It's a reaction -a defensive surge of adrenaline, binary thinking, and motivation to fight. It can feel empowering and energizing. We aren't just sitting here. We're gonna do something. The emotion is fear. Anger is just a reaction to fear. Basically, if we are angry, we are also scared; whether or not we want to admit it. It's a long topic, and one I know well (I agree with the above summary), but I really don't think that discussing it, would be particularly welcome, here. I know that it isn't often welcome, even with folks that ask to hear it. I've spent the majority of my adult life, learning to curb and sideline anger. In my experience, my anger has always caused problems. It has never solved a problem. Ever. Not even one single problem. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's just drained my energy, stunted my reasoning, and poisoned relationships. It has caused others to strike back at me, when they didn't need to (which, of course, caused me damage), it has caused problems, where none existed before, and magnified existing ones. We can't help getting angry, but we sure can help staying angry. That "staying" part is the corrosive agent. Anger is meant to be a temporary burst of energy, to deal with a threat. After the threat has (or has not) been dealt with, anger is supposed to dissipate. It's not supposed to be an "at rest" state (unless you're Bruce Banner).

BeetleB 2mo ago
> I was taught that anger isn't an emotion. Yes, this is a school of thought I've seen in a few communication circles. It's not entirely accurate, but it's a useful exercise. They teach that anger is really a derived emotion, and is a result of a fundamental emotion, coupled with a narrative in your mind. The fundamental emotion is the real one, and the narrative in your mind maybe inaccurate. As a result, when you're angry, examine that narrative and ask: "Is this the only narrative that fits the data points?" There have been occasions where I felt instant anger as a result of a stimulus, and there really wasn't a narrative behind it. But those are the exceptions. In well over 95% of the cases, it is a derived emotion. Related: A lot of people really seem hardwired to blame. When something goes wrong (at work, in their life, wherever), they seem to be incomplete if they can't find someone to blame. They often refuse to accept that "Accidents can happen." Separating the act of "solving a problem" from the act of "blaming someone" was something I learned early in my career. It's useful to know which people you work with are those who can't distinguish. Pro tip: Never work for a manager whose first question when something goes wrong is "Who owns this?" It's OK to get there eventually, but not the first impulse.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
  > Never work for a manager whose first question when something goes wrong is "Who owns this?" It's OK to get there eventually, but not the first impulse. I worked for a company that this was never asked, because we already knew. Every task/bug/feature had an "owner," before any work was done on it. We had this insane JIRA ticket workflow that was designed to force someone to be in charge of every item. You couldn't just put something down, and walk away. It was a pain, but when problems happened, there was never a "blame game." We would just figure out if there was a root cause. If it was someone's mistake, they might be made responsible for fixing it, but if we felt they were in over their head, we'd pitch in, and help. Everyone was always responsible for rolling up their sleeves. People who pointed fingers, did not do well. People who broke stuff, seldom suffered, unless it was a habit, but people who fixed stuff (including stepping up, and taking the rap) would get kudos.
  - BeetleB 2mo ago
    I'm fascinated to hear that this worked. I worked at one place where that was the goal: Everything had an owner. It was terrible (and from what I hear, still is). I'd have a job which required some expertise. John nearby had his job with his expertise (different from mine). John is overloaded[1], and can't own everything related to his expertise. So they take things off his plate and distribute it to other people - including people like me who have almost no understanding of what he does. Then when something goes wrong, people come to me, but I don't understand any of it. So I go to John and, generally, he fixes the problem. This is inefficient. People should have just gone to John. But that's not the worst of it. John can refuse to help or fix. He makes it clear he is not the owner. I am. Or he's on vacation. Or whatever. No one cares about the reason. I'm the owner, so I need to fix it. I got a demerit on the job because I didn't go to his cubicle multiple times a day, every day to demand he fix it (he was the one who broke it, BTW). Management has a lot of excuses to support this dysfunction: I should have harassed him. I should have harassed his manager. I should have decided to become a domain expert when it was assigned to me. I'm supposed to hustle with a "Can do" mentality. On and on. The other dynamic it led to was trying to pass it on to other people. When something broke, the reason wasn't always clear. The person assigned to own it didn't want it to be his problem, so he'd find some trivial detail that was off, and simply forward it to that other person to fix. That person would then write a lengthy (and often obvious) explanation why that trivial detail couldn't possibly have led to this breaking and pass it back. Only then would the original person dig deeper (well, unless he found some other trivial detail to bug someone with). It was exhausting, and the impression I got was that by making everything owned by someone, it led to a culture of no one wanting to own anything. If it's possible to really give every task appropriate ownership, I can understand. They definitely couldn't do it at that job. Ownership was just a word management used to sleep at night. Getting back to my original point, the first question should always be: "How can this problem be fixed?" When exploring that, you may end up with "John owns it and he's the only one with the expertise" - and that's fine. Diving straight into "Who owns this?" is often his way of saying two things: 1. I don't want to fix it. 2. I want someone to be punished for this. > We would just figure out if there was a root cause. If it was someone's mistake, they might be made responsible for fixing it, but if we felt they were in over their head, we'd pitch in, and help. Everyone was always responsible for rolling up their sleeves. This is good. As long as there was a mechanism to assign appropriate ownership. [1] There was always a lot more work than people available to do it.
the_great_talke 2mo ago
Serenity Now! (Seinfeld reference where the guru of George's father who specializes in anger suppression goes insane.)
cindyllm 2mo ago
[dead]
Undulating-Appa 2mo ago
-> I was taught that anger isn't an emotion. It's a reaction After spending the last year in and out or rehab, and intensive outpatient dealing primarily with alcohol addiction, I've been told by many different people that anger is the emotion, its unhealthy to just ignore it. That's one of many things (anxiety for me) that keeps people in active addiction. Your statement is close to my belief and experience, except that Anger IS an emotion and all emotions are neutral, neither good or bad. Its how you respond to the emotion that can become the problem, weather its violence, drugs or any other harmful activity. Processing any emotion in a healthy way and being able to understand the reasons you feeling the emotion is the gamechanger. Speaking only from my own experience.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
  Eh. I've been in Recovery for 45 years (46, next month). I was always told that fear is the emotion most prevalent in my defects, and that anger was only one of many destructive reactions to it, so most of my work, was addressing the fear. I was told that anger is the dubious luxury of the normal man. I spent the first ten years, in an almost constant state of anger. Giving it up, was almost as difficult as giving up other stuff, but it was definitely a watershed in my life. However, I think that's all I'll say on the topic. These types of discussions are always best done in small groups, not in public, on a tech forum. I sincerely wish you good luck!
asdfman123 2mo ago
Actually, I find it's helpful to privately admit that you do negative things because they DO have some positive side effects. Everything is a tradeoff. Maybe anger helps draw attention to you. Maybe it garners some form of sympathy. Maybe people get out of your way when you're angry, giving you a certain kind of power. The reason why you want to stop being angry is because you want to accomplish things without all the negative side effects too. Being very honest about what you're getting out of something can give you the bigger picture on why you rely on it, so you can more effectively find solutions.
- BeetleB 2mo ago
  > Maybe anger helps draw attention to you. Maybe it garners some form of sympathy. Maybe people get out of your way when you're angry, giving you a certain kind of power. I know it's much maligned here on HN, but you've articulated one of the key principle of NVC (Nonviolent Communication): Being able to articulate your needs, and map your emotions with your needs. The steps it recommends (not necessarily in this order): 1. Understand the facts 2. Label the emotions you're feeling (anxious, concerned, jubilant, etc) 3. Figure out the needs that are related to those emotions (e.g. purpose in life, shelter (usually income), hunger (usually income). Even if you don't follow NVC, pretty much all communications books emphasize all 3 above. Another book had it this way: 1. Label your emotions. 2. Gather the facts. 3. Examine the narrative you're telling yourself based on the facts. 4. Explore that narrative (Is it the only possible narrative given the facts? What is missing in your life that is part of that narrative?)
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
    I was unaware that NVC (North Viet Cong? -Just kidding) was maligned, here. It’s not a structure that I was taught, but that list makes sense, to me.
    - BeetleB 2mo ago
      It used to come up often several years ago. See some examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22759368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22759368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19090712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19090712 In my experience, people who are heavily critical of it have not read the book, and are arguing either against articles espousing it, or have encountered what I call "The cult of NVC" at work. The NVC book is incredibly simple. But there is a sort of cult around it. People greatly expand what's in the book to things the author never claimed. I've even attended an NVC chapter in my city and it was somewhat off putting. If you're at all interested, read the book and avoid the cult. It's not a perfect book/framework, but I've yet to read a better framework. The downside of the book is it's relatively prescriptive, and doesn't cite research, or do a good job of explaining why the method often works. Other books do that, though. Had I read NVC by itself, I too would be a bit of a skeptic. It's only by reading other books that go deeper did I understand why NVC (usually) works.
sinuhe69 2mo ago
[dead]
bitexploder 2mo ago
Fear and anger are generally distinct emotions. You can have one without the other. Many of the same pathways are active with fear that are active with an anger in your mind, mechanically speaking. You can have anger without fear though. I see a lot of people can conflict the two, but they are distinct as label labels and mechanical processes in the mind. Anger surfaces when there is someone to blame. Or something to blame. Something you can pin the emotional and surge on. For your hypothesis above to be true, you generally need some sort of risk involved for fear to be the actual emotion. Anger can appear with zero fear and simply something blocking your way. So I’m just not sure that I really agree on anger needing fear. There are plenty of situations where it doesn’t hold.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
  I was taught that fear is not just fear of personal harm. The most destructive fear, is fear of not getting what I want. That is the fear that is most ubiquitous, and manifests in all sorts of destructive behavior. It's still fear, though.

BeetleB 2mo ago

> I was taught that anger isn't an emotion. Yes, this is a school of thought I've seen in a few communication circles. It's not entirely accurate, but it's a useful exercise. They teach that anger is really a derived emotion, and is a result of a fundamental emotion, coupled with a narrative in your mind. The fundamental emotion is the real one, and the narrative in your mind maybe inaccurate. As a result, when you're angry, examine that narrative and ask: "Is this the only narrative that fits the data points?" There have been occasions where I felt instant anger as a result of a stimulus, and there really wasn't a narrative behind it. But those are the exceptions. In well over 95% of the cases, it is a derived emotion. Related: A lot of people really seem hardwired to blame. When something goes wrong (at work, in their life, wherever), they seem to be incomplete if they can't find someone to blame. They often refuse to accept that "Accidents can happen." Separating the act of "solving a problem" from the act of "blaming someone" was something I learned early in my career. It's useful to know which people you work with are those who can't distinguish. Pro tip: Never work for a manager whose first question when something goes wrong is "Who owns this?" It's OK to get there eventually, but not the first impulse.

ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
> Never work for a manager whose first question when something goes wrong is "Who owns this?" It's OK to get there eventually, but not the first impulse. I worked for a company that this was never asked, because we already knew. Every task/bug/feature had an "owner," before any work was done on it. We had this insane JIRA ticket workflow that was designed to force someone to be in charge of every item. You couldn't just put something down, and walk away. It was a pain, but when problems happened, there was never a "blame game." We would just figure out if there was a root cause. If it was someone's mistake, they might be made responsible for fixing it, but if we felt they were in over their head, we'd pitch in, and help. Everyone was always responsible for rolling up their sleeves. People who pointed fingers, did not do well. People who broke stuff, seldom suffered, unless it was a habit, but people who fixed stuff (including stepping up, and taking the rap) would get kudos.
- BeetleB 2mo ago
  I'm fascinated to hear that this worked. I worked at one place where that was the goal: Everything had an owner. It was terrible (and from what I hear, still is). I'd have a job which required some expertise. John nearby had his job with his expertise (different from mine). John is overloaded[1], and can't own everything related to his expertise. So they take things off his plate and distribute it to other people - including people like me who have almost no understanding of what he does. Then when something goes wrong, people come to me, but I don't understand any of it. So I go to John and, generally, he fixes the problem. This is inefficient. People should have just gone to John. But that's not the worst of it. John can refuse to help or fix. He makes it clear he is not the owner. I am. Or he's on vacation. Or whatever. No one cares about the reason. I'm the owner, so I need to fix it. I got a demerit on the job because I didn't go to his cubicle multiple times a day, every day to demand he fix it (he was the one who broke it, BTW). Management has a lot of excuses to support this dysfunction: I should have harassed him. I should have harassed his manager. I should have decided to become a domain expert when it was assigned to me. I'm supposed to hustle with a "Can do" mentality. On and on. The other dynamic it led to was trying to pass it on to other people. When something broke, the reason wasn't always clear. The person assigned to own it didn't want it to be his problem, so he'd find some trivial detail that was off, and simply forward it to that other person to fix. That person would then write a lengthy (and often obvious) explanation why that trivial detail couldn't possibly have led to this breaking and pass it back. Only then would the original person dig deeper (well, unless he found some other trivial detail to bug someone with). It was exhausting, and the impression I got was that by making everything owned by someone, it led to a culture of no one wanting to own anything. If it's possible to really give every task appropriate ownership, I can understand. They definitely couldn't do it at that job. Ownership was just a word management used to sleep at night. Getting back to my original point, the first question should always be: "How can this problem be fixed?" When exploring that, you may end up with "John owns it and he's the only one with the expertise" - and that's fine. Diving straight into "Who owns this?" is often his way of saying two things: 1. I don't want to fix it. 2. I want someone to be punished for this. > We would just figure out if there was a root cause. If it was someone's mistake, they might be made responsible for fixing it, but if we felt they were in over their head, we'd pitch in, and help. Everyone was always responsible for rolling up their sleeves. This is good. As long as there was a mechanism to assign appropriate ownership. [1] There was always a lot more work than people available to do it.

the_great_talke 2mo ago

Serenity Now! (Seinfeld reference where the guru of George's father who specializes in anger suppression goes insane.)

cindyllm 2mo ago

[dead]

Undulating-Appa 2mo ago

-> I was taught that anger isn't an emotion. It's a reaction After spending the last year in and out or rehab, and intensive outpatient dealing primarily with alcohol addiction, I've been told by many different people that anger is the emotion, its unhealthy to just ignore it. That's one of many things (anxiety for me) that keeps people in active addiction. Your statement is close to my belief and experience, except that Anger IS an emotion and all emotions are neutral, neither good or bad. Its how you respond to the emotion that can become the problem, weather its violence, drugs or any other harmful activity. Processing any emotion in a healthy way and being able to understand the reasons you feeling the emotion is the gamechanger. Speaking only from my own experience.

ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
Eh. I've been in Recovery for 45 years (46, next month). I was always told that fear is the emotion most prevalent in my defects, and that anger was only one of many destructive reactions to it, so most of my work, was addressing the fear. I was told that anger is the dubious luxury of the normal man. I spent the first ten years, in an almost constant state of anger. Giving it up, was almost as difficult as giving up other stuff, but it was definitely a watershed in my life. However, I think that's all I'll say on the topic. These types of discussions are always best done in small groups, not in public, on a tech forum. I sincerely wish you good luck!

asdfman123 2mo ago

Actually, I find it's helpful to privately admit that you do negative things because they DO have some positive side effects. Everything is a tradeoff. Maybe anger helps draw attention to you. Maybe it garners some form of sympathy. Maybe people get out of your way when you're angry, giving you a certain kind of power. The reason why you want to stop being angry is because you want to accomplish things without all the negative side effects too. Being very honest about what you're getting out of something can give you the bigger picture on why you rely on it, so you can more effectively find solutions.

BeetleB 2mo ago
> Maybe anger helps draw attention to you. Maybe it garners some form of sympathy. Maybe people get out of your way when you're angry, giving you a certain kind of power. I know it's much maligned here on HN, but you've articulated one of the key principle of NVC (Nonviolent Communication): Being able to articulate your needs, and map your emotions with your needs. The steps it recommends (not necessarily in this order): 1. Understand the facts 2. Label the emotions you're feeling (anxious, concerned, jubilant, etc) 3. Figure out the needs that are related to those emotions (e.g. purpose in life, shelter (usually income), hunger (usually income). Even if you don't follow NVC, pretty much all communications books emphasize all 3 above. Another book had it this way: 1. Label your emotions. 2. Gather the facts. 3. Examine the narrative you're telling yourself based on the facts. 4. Explore that narrative (Is it the only possible narrative given the facts? What is missing in your life that is part of that narrative?)
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
  I was unaware that NVC (North Viet Cong? -Just kidding) was maligned, here. It’s not a structure that I was taught, but that list makes sense, to me.
  - BeetleB 2mo ago
    It used to come up often several years ago. See some examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22759368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22759368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19090712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19090712 In my experience, people who are heavily critical of it have not read the book, and are arguing either against articles espousing it, or have encountered what I call "The cult of NVC" at work. The NVC book is incredibly simple. But there is a sort of cult around it. People greatly expand what's in the book to things the author never claimed. I've even attended an NVC chapter in my city and it was somewhat off putting. If you're at all interested, read the book and avoid the cult. It's not a perfect book/framework, but I've yet to read a better framework. The downside of the book is it's relatively prescriptive, and doesn't cite research, or do a good job of explaining why the method often works. Other books do that, though. Had I read NVC by itself, I too would be a bit of a skeptic. It's only by reading other books that go deeper did I understand why NVC (usually) works.

sinuhe69 2mo ago

[dead]

bitexploder 2mo ago

Fear and anger are generally distinct emotions. You can have one without the other. Many of the same pathways are active with fear that are active with an anger in your mind, mechanically speaking. You can have anger without fear though. I see a lot of people can conflict the two, but they are distinct as label labels and mechanical processes in the mind. Anger surfaces when there is someone to blame. Or something to blame. Something you can pin the emotional and surge on. For your hypothesis above to be true, you generally need some sort of risk involved for fear to be the actual emotion. Anger can appear with zero fear and simply something blocking your way. So I’m just not sure that I really agree on anger needing fear. There are plenty of situations where it doesn’t hold.

ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
I was taught that fear is not just fear of personal harm. The most destructive fear, is fear of not getting what I want. That is the fear that is most ubiquitous, and manifests in all sorts of destructive behavior. It's still fear, though.