What You Must Know About Uncontrolled Anger, According to Robert Greene.

In a world full of chaos, a little calm can go a long way

Anger is a normal human emotion. It is in actual fact necessary to get angry in some instances. According to Psychology Today, the energy we obtain from anger can motivate us to take action against an injustice we otherwise wouldn’t have taken in the same way that hunger motivates us to eat, thirst motivates us to drink, and fear motivates us to avoid things that are dangerous.

While this is true, the manner in which we express our anger can honestly affect us more than we think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to express your anger. There are tons of research articles that prove why you shouldn’t repress your anger — one of them being the fact that it pushes you into strange behaviour and drains your energy.

The problem, however, lies in being unable to control your anger and allowing yourself to have an outburst whenever and wherever.

A Case Study — When Someone Annoys You

Human beings are social creatures and this increases the chances of someone annoying you. Robert Greene in his book, The 48 Laws of Power, recounts an incident that occurred in January of 1809 between Napoleon and his foreign minister, Talleyrand. Napoleon had received intel that Talleyrand was conspiring against him.

A shocked Napoleon, upon arriving in the capital of Paris, summoned his foreign minister and began letting out his agitation. He was thrown off guard by the calm demeanour and response his foreign minister reflected back to him. He had expected Talleyrand to be edgy when he heard all the threats Napoleon was throwing at him.

Napoleon’s agitation spilt into a rage and the result was an endless rattling of threats in out-of-breath tones, a red face and eyes that looked like they were about to yank out of their sockets. This behaviour of his perplexed the other ministers of the court who stood mouth open at his behaviour. Robert Greene recounts their reaction in this way, “Never before had they seen the great Napolean, conqueror of most of Europe so unhinged”.

After a few more insults, Napoleon walked away and though Talleyrand seemed to have suffered ‘immediate humiliation’, word spread quickly throughout Paris of how Napoleon’ had lost his control and also of how Talleyrand had humiliated him by maintaining his calm and composure. This turned a page in history, one that began the end of Napoleon’s reign because, in the minds of the people, their leader was beginning to lose his power.

Napoleon had every right to be angry but by demonstrating his anger so outrageously and publicly so, he only demonstrated his frustration. Robert Greene said,

To show your frustration is to show that you have lost your power to shape events; it is the helpless action of a child who resorts to hysterical fits to get his way.

He also makes sure to emphasize that angry people end up looking ridiculous because their anger seems out of proportion to the hurt that may have been done to them.

“They are sensitive to the slightest fault that it becomes comical how much they take personally. More comical still is their belief that their outburst signifies power.” And the truth is people may be temporarily cowed by your tantrums but in the end, they end up losing respect for you altogether.

How to handle such a situation

If screaming your lungs out is as bad as holding your anger in, what’s the best way, then, to deal with uncontrolled anger?

You need to understand that you hold so much power and flying off the handle means granting your power to someone else and doing it in public is like holding a handing over ceremony in which others also get to witness you hand over your power to your offender.

The best thing to do in such circumstances is to repeatedly tell yourself, “I will not hand over my power to someone else because it’s mine and no one else can take it without my permission.”

Besides, there are far better and effective ways to communicate your anger.

Reversed Scenario

Everybody is a walking slingshot ready to fire away at any moment. Why?

According to Greene, we are all caught up in an endless chain of events that long predate the present moment. Our anger is as a result of problems from our childhood or that of our parents. It can also be rooted in our interactions with others and the accumulated disappointments and heartaches that we have suffered.

It means that someone may at the point of climax appear as the instigator of your problems but it goes far beyond what that individual has done to you. For example, imagine you hit your foot hard against a stone and broke your bone. You visit the doctor and he tells you that the only way to heal your foot is to have a 7-hour surgery.

You find out during the surgery that the doctor won’t administer any anaesthesia to you so you’re wide awake throughout the excruciating pain and your fear of blood isn’t helping you in any way. Oh, how you wish your screams would somehow make the surgeon stop passing the needle in and out of your skin in order to stitch it.

You manage to survive and are discharged three weeks later. Your friends haven’t seen you in a long while so they come to pay you a visit. They come along with your clumsy best friend who accidentally steps on your leg. You can’t contain the pain so you explode with rage shutting his skull with your screams in the process.

You know in the depths of your heart that your friend didn’t mean to hurt you and on a normal day, you would have shrugged it aside. Besides, if you’re honest, you weren’t even hurt. So why were you so mad?

You’re mad because you hurt your leg. You’re mad because you had to sit through hours and hours of surgery just to get your foot fixed. You’re mad because the doctor couldn't administer anaesthesia to you under your condition so you had to watch as blood oozed out of your skin.

You’re mad because they ignored your cry for help and stuck giant needles in your foot just to get them stitched. You’re mad because your life came to an abrupt halt all because of a stupid foot injury.

You had accumulated various levels of pain under your skin and by stepping on your foot, he became the catalyst you needed to behave like the world was out to get you. The same usually applies to someone who uncharacteristically explodes with anger at you.

The problem is, you won’t always be aware of the prior hurts that someone has gone through and that is why the only way to deal with such an occurrence is to change your mindset.

You need to understand that the person’s grudge may not necessarily be directed at you so don’t ever take it personally. If you feel the need to let something off your chest, do so but never lose control of your emotions.

Always remain calm because you understand that the person’s problem is much larger and goes way back in time. It involves a complex web of prior hurts and isn’t worth the bother to understand.

In conclusion

Life comes with myriad problems that come to test our patience. If you understand how to manage your anger and those of others around you, you’ll spend less time worrying about petty issues and have more time to allocate to things that are worth your time and energy.