You might think it’s healthy to vent your anger over a boring work assignment or an offensive comment, but research shows otherwise.
Giving in to anger “is the worst thing you can do,” says Brad Bushman, a communications professor at Ohio State University who has studied the subject. It is, in fact, “adding fuel to the fire”.
For a long time, psychologists believed in the “catharsis theory,” or the idea that it’s better to release negative emotions than to hold them in. But back in 2002, Professor Bushman published a study that questioned that logic.
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He showed that when people express anger, such as punching a punching bag, they only become angrier and more aggressive. This is not good, because research shows that anger is associated with various mental and possibly even physical health problems.
Act the way you want to feel
Dissecting a frustrating conversation or an insult that has been done to you can be stimulating rumination — a psychological term for fixating on negative thoughts and feelings from the past — and magnifies a relatively minor frustration, notes Jesse Kugle, a professor of psychology at Florida State University who studies anger.
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Neither is healthy. Indeed, a study of psychological coping strategies during the 2020 pandemic found that allowing negative emotions to overwhelm us was associated with poorer mental health, while tactics such as acceptance, joking and positive reframing appeared to improve feelings of personal satisfaction.
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“You should act the way you want to feel,” says Professor Kugl. For most people, this means trying to overcome the anger, rather than getting stuck in it.
The more we vent our anger, we only add fuel to the fire
Bushman’s recent research suggests that calming practices such as meditation, yoga, and deep breathing are better at dissipating anger than “blowing it out.” The goal should be to reduce, not increase, arousal, Bushman says.
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Even running, which many people see as a form of therapy, is too arousing to be an effective anger management tool. “You should go for a run because it’s good for your health,” but not because it will make you calm down and vent your anger, notes Bushman.
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The problem is that when we’re angry, it seems to make us feel better to scream and rage, than to breathe deeply. Professor Bushman saw this in his research. Although activities like hitting the sack don’t actually reduce anger, “75 percent of people say it makes them feel better.”
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The same often applies to venting by venting to a friend, adds prof. Ball. It’s a great feeling when someone validates our view of the problem, especially when they agree that we’re right and the jerk who ‘cut’ us off at the roundabout is to blame.
Is it really so wrong to vent your anger?
Bushman says that it is not always bad to take the burden off the heart. Talking about negative emotions with the aim of understanding why something bothers you and how to react better in the future, for example with a therapist, can be useful.
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And you don’t have to be meek to avoid anger, says Prof. Ball. When someone has really wronged you or you’ve found yourself in an unfavorable situation that you can change, it’s okay to talk about it.
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Venting anger becomes unhelpful, Kugle notes, when our motivations are mean—when we’re just trying to hurt someone instead of feeling better—or when we rage again over the same things we’ve done a dozen times before, staying stuck in that past anger without trying to release it. we overcome.
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And the person who listens to our lament is also important. A 2023 study found that people with a large number of social connections often felt worse when they vented their anger, while those with a smaller circle of friends felt better.
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This may be because these people come into contact with a large number of people, many of whom do not like them, while people with fewer social contacts are more selective about their audience and how they talk about their problems, the authors hypothesize.
How to get rid of anger more effectively
When you feel stuck in the quicksand of anger and rage, look for healthier coping strategies. If yoga and meditation aren’t something you’d practice, try a quick change of perspective.
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Bushman’s research supports the fly-on-the-wall technique, which advises angry people to imagine themselves as a third party observing the situation that made them angry. A 2019 study also found that it’s healthier to look for the bigger picture in a negative situation—think, “I can’t always get what I want—than to fixate on the smallest details.
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And contrary to the old-school, “get over it” psychological wisdom, according to research by Michael Anderson, a professor of cognitive neurology at the University of Cambridge in the UK, suppressing negative thoughts can sometimes help make them less painful.
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In a 2023 study, Professor Anderson and his colleagues found that when people try to avoid thinking about things that make them fearful or anxious, their mental health improves. The effects were particularly positive for people with ruminative conditions such as anxiety.
Although his study didn’t specifically look at venting and anger, Anderson says the same principle could apply.
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“By processing, elaborating and discussing something, you risk making that thing so memorable and so connected to a whole bunch of other thoughts that it’s much harder to regulate,” notes the professor. “If things are out of your control, or are boring but not particularly important, forget them. Just turn them off.”
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And finally, don’t underestimate the impact of hunger – that is, we get angrier when we’re hungry. Science says it’s a real phenomenon. So, the next time you feel a tantrum approaching, consider taking a bite and taking a few deep breaths.
Source: www.sitoireseto.com
