The Toxic Behavior Normalized by Society
How could we ever have accepted this as normal?
Somewhere along the line, society came to normalize anger as a chief expression of all kinds of feelings. Please don’t ask me why; it makes no sense to me. Especially with this awareness:
Most of the time anger is a cover-up for some other emotion.
Anger has two forms of expression: raging and outrage.
A few examples of anger expressed as rage:
- The businessman is afraid he’ll be late for his meeting. He either can’t access his fear or doesn’t want to seem weak and vulnerable by expressing it. So he rages at the person behind the ticket counter.
- The woman walking her dog in Central Park has buried her fear of black people deep in her psyche. So she rages at the black jogger and tells the cops he’s trying to rape her. When her job is at risk as a consequence, she swears she’s not as racist. She probably believes this because she can’t access her true motivator — fear.
- The wife is sad her husband isn’t as intimate as he once was. So she rages at him when he works late and misses dinner. Then the husband, who feels sad that she doesn’t appreciate his efforts to support his family by working late — or feels inadequate as a husband and father — rages back at her.
Anger expressed as outrage:
- A man is sad that he lost his job due to automation. He’s afraid his skills aren’t adequate to find a new job. But he learned to suppress his emotions at an early age, so he makes up a story in his own mind it’s because of the goddam liberals and expresses his outrage in ALL CAPS at every left-leaning social media post.
- A woman is sad when she’s been passed over for a promotion, but she can’t access her sadness, so she tells herself it’s because she’s a woman. She files a sexual discrimination complaint with Human Resources. She is scared that the complaint might cost her her job and sorely needed income, but her fear is buried too.
Society normalizes expressions of anger.
We expect it from men and women alike.
And why not? Because society also informs us that our emotions aren’t safe.
From a young age, we are told:
“Get over it!”.
“Big boys don’t cry.”
“Man up!”.
“Don’t be afraid, it’s OK”.
“You shouldn’t feel like that!”.
“Don’t cry. She’s in a better place now”.
And on and on. You’ve heard them all. Did they seem harmless at the time?
In each of these common expressions, the message is that it’s not OK to feel our emotions. Better to hide, deny, repress, or suppress them. We become emotionally illiterate.
But we can’t eliminate our feelings.
They’re a protective mechanism built into our ancient brain — also referred to as the limbic or lizard brain. That function kept our ancestors safe from wild animals and starvation. Emotions are the brain’s way of saying, “Pay attention! Something needs your focus right now!”
Emotionally illiterate people have internalized the big lie that it’s not OK to feel emotions. They miss that limbic message that something needs their attention. There’s some sort of unease in their body. Yet, they can’t understand the emotions beneath it. Their go-to way of expressing it is anger — either raging or outrage.
The consequences.
We fight wars because we’re angry.
We divorce because we’re angry.
We hate our fellow human beings because we’re angry.
We make choices against our best interest (and suffer the consequences) because we’re angry.
The solution.
Gaining the emotional intelligence that allows you to acknowledge and accept all your feelings.
Hey, I know — negative emotions aren’t comfortable. That’s a feature. Not a bug.
How to gain emotional intelligence?
That’s a worthwhile life journey that clearly leads toward a more fulfilling, meaningful, and satisfying life. Here’s a good Medium article to get you started:
Thank you for reading. May you be enriched by what you read here.
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