When I look at the kinds of articles people post on social media and the comments under them, it feels like there’s an overwhelming amount of hate and anger in the world - or at least among the people posting and commenting. (Maybe it’s just that non-angry people don’t spend much time in this kind of spaces.)
In contrast, when I think about my own life, I realize that I’m almost never angry. I feel many other negative emotions, sure, but anger isn’t one of them, and even when it arises it’s usually quite short-lived. I can’t even name a single person I hate - neither in my personal life nor in the media. I simply don’t spend time dwelling on people I’m not interested in or being angry at the world for not meeting my expectations.
This makes me wonder: is my experience rare or unusual? Or is hate and anger simply overrepresented in the media because those emotions motivate people to engage, making them seem far more widespread than they actually are?
I’m trying to understand rather than criticize. I can’t take credit for not being angry because whatever tha skill is doesn’t translate into other things like anxiety. I’m anxious about equally trivial things and I can’t help myself. I guess I’m just glad I don’t need to deal with this constant anger too.
Ah I remember, anger is considered a secondary emotion. So it does usually stems from underlying feelings like frustration, fear, hurt, or even sadness. It’s like a defense mechanism.
Here’s an article on it.
I’m not certain I buy that in every single case, but do buy into it for many, many cases.
It’s actually something I tried to pass on to other folks when I worked a phone customer service job - there’s cases where it’s obvious the anger is coming from somewhere else if you’re paying attention (example I had and shared was clearly fear), so told people to pay attention to exactly what folks are saying to try and elicit that, and speak/address the actual problem/emotion.
Fuck I miss that job some days…feels like the only thing I’ve done that I was really, really good at. Was also a small team with very little corpo oversight at the time, so don’t know if these approaches would fly as well today v. scripted responses.
I feel like anger is a more raw emotion than frustration. just feels wierd to me. anger feels like the opposite of lust or something.
Definitely feel free to read up on it and see if any of the science of the model resonates better than my explanation. I barely remember the topic 😅
fair enough. thanks for the convo.