How Anger Fuels Depression

[karen1]

This is an interesting article on the interplay of depression and anger. See what you think.

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Anger, Pain and Depression

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Keep anger from feeding your depression.

By PsychologyToday.com

Anger, pain and depression are three negative experiences so closely bound together it can sometimes be hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Pain is a complex phenomenon that has emotional and physical components. The emotions play a huge role in the experience of pain, and pain is intimately associated with depression. It's long been known that the psychic pain of depression feeds anger. But just as often, anger fuels depression.

A powerful emotion physiologically and emotionally, anger often feels good—but only for the moment. It can be a motivating force that moves you to action. But there are good actions and bad ones; it's vital to distinguish between the two.

Many people confuse anger and hostility. Anger is a response to a situation that presents some threat. Hostility is a more enduring characteristic, a predisposition, a personality trait reflecting a readiness to express anger.

Anger is usually anything but subtle. It has potent physiological effects. You feel it in your chest. You feel it in your head. You feel it coursing through your body.

Nevertheless, anger can be insidious. Anger confers an immediate sense of purpose; it's a shortcut to motivation. And if there's something depressed people need, it's motivation. But anger creates a cycle of rage and defeatism.

When you feel anger, it provides the impulse to pass the pain along to others. The boss chews you out, you then snap at everyone in your path. Anger, however, can eventually lead you into self-pity, because you can't slough off the self-hurt.


Anger is classically a way of passing psychic pain on to others. The two-step: You feel hurt, "poor me," "I hate you." It's a way of making others pay for your emotional deficits. It is wise to change that tendency. Whether or not anger fuels depression, it isn't good for the enjoyment of life.

Here are ways to keep anger from feeding your depression.

First, of course, is to identify anger and to acknowledge it. Anger is one of those emotions whose expression is sometimes subject to taboos so that people can grow up unable to recognize it; they feel its physical discomfort but can't label it.
Build a lexicon for your internal states. If you have a word for your emotional state, then you can begin to deal with it. Feelings are fluid; you need to stop and capture them in a word, or else you lose them and don't know you have them. A label improves your ability to understand your feelings.
View your anger as a signal. It is not something to be escaped. It is not something to be suppressed. It is something to be accepted as a sign that some deeper threat has occurred that needs your attention.
Make yourself aware of the purpose your anger serves. Be sure to distinguish purpose from passion. Things that have a positive purpose seek betterment, growth, love, enhancement, fulfillment. Things that have a negative purpose are motivated by a sense of deficiency. Your boss yells at you, you feel diminished; the anger you express at others is driven by the blow you've just received. Are you enraged about an inequity or unfairness?In order to identify your motivation, you need to look within. It's a matter of becoming psychological-minded and engaging in introspection. Tune into the inner dialogue that you customarily have with yourself.
If your anger is deficiency-motivated, driven by a wish to rectify a wrong you believe done to you, work on acceptance. Give up your obsession about the wrong. See that the opposite of anger is not passivity but more functional assertiveness.
Uproot mistaken beliefs that underlie your response. Very often anger is the result of beliefs that lead you to place unreasonable demands on circumstances, such as, that life must be fair. Unfairness exists. The belief that you are entitled to fairness results from the mistaken idea that you are special. If you feel that you are special, you will certainly find lots to be angry about, because the universe is indifferent to us.Insisting that life must be fair is not only irrational, it will cause you to collect injustices done to your noble self. Even if you are experiencing nothing more than your fair share of unfairness, such a belief can still fuel rage and lead to depression.Those who hold the deep belief that life should always be fair cannot abide when it is unfair. That leads directly to rage that is totally inert, because they believe there is nothing that they can do about the unfairness. They feel helpless and hopeless—in other words, depressed. Self-pity is another description of the same phenomenon.
Notice your own complaining. Listen for both overt and covert complaining. Overt complaining hassles others. It's really a manipulative strategy. Know when it's becoming a downer and a barrier to a strategy of effectiveness—like complaining about a fly in your soup. Covert complaining hassles you; it drags you down into passivity and inertia. Once you notice it, determine to give it up.
Once you can accept that life sometimes is unfair, then you can pursue positive purpose. You can work constructively against injustices you find, transforming your anger into passion. Or you can pursue fulfillment in spite of the unfairness that exists.
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Karen

[MJontheMend]

See that the opposite of anger is not passivity but more functional assertiveness.

Good article. The quote above is what struck me as most relevant to my situation. Also the part about "covert complaining" is relevant since we all have the tendency to do a lot of that on this BB. The question is how do you transcend those feelings of "unfairness" in order to drop your anger? Several weeks ago my H and I had a semi-drunken fight during which we found ourselves saying back and forth "You are just unlucky to have ended up married to me.", "No, you are the unlucky one to be married to me." etc. etc.. I had a rather hard*ss teacher in H.S. who used to say "Life isn't always fair but it is equitable.". The not very "fair" marital situations we find ourselves in are the result of many choices big and small we have made over the years including many made well before we even contemplated marriage. For instance, why did I make choices that allowed me to gain 10 lbs. this winter when I know that I am married to a man who will use my weight as an excuse or reason for LD? I have good excuses on my side too but not many good reasons.

I know I'm rambling a bit off-topic here but it is clear to me that many of you who were previously divorced are finding yourselves "stuck" in your current marriages in part due to your inability to forgive yourselves for making bad choices previously. I think this is due to the fact that you are still angry at your exes. I mean from my perspective you are all lovely, intelligent, lovable people and therefore I can not believe that your previous partners were quite the dysfunctional villains or villainesses you make them out to be. For example, I get the feeling that Haidog's ex-wife and I could have a lot of fun hanging out together. It totally cracked me up that he once made a rather prissy comment that she went through a "slutty" phase after they divorced. My point is that his continuing anger at his "slutty" ex-wife is in part keeping him "stuck" in his current relationship with his "frigidly-polar-opposite-of-slutty" current wife. I suspect a similar dynamic is at play in your relationship along the lines of HD-non-family-man vs. LD-super-family-man.

Please feel free to ignore me and tell me to mind my own beeswax- LOL.- Preacher Mojo

[karen1]

MJ,

My ex-H did not start out the type of guy he became. I have checked this out with innumerable people. I am not the only person who has seen fit to discontinue relationship with him - me, his best friend, his sisters and his parents are all the same in this regard. He isn't a villan, he is merely in the spot he is in due to his choices and he continues making those kinds of choices. I haven't been angry at him in FOREVER - he is who he is and he really did do the very best he was capable of in our M, unfortunately he also began struggling with mental illness and substance abuse issues along the way. We dated for 3 1/2 years before we married - there were signs of what was to be but I was very young and hopeful. Yes - choosing him did lead to choosing "the opposite" in current H but it didn't have anything to do with anger.

I do have trouble with anger toward myself for my choices. You are right there. I don't confuse that with anger toward ex-H.

I did think that the article had some take home points for all of us.

Karen

[haphazard]

Anger towards self is what leads to depression. That is what is glaringly missing from this article. It speaks of the boss chewing you out and feeling the unfairness of that. Sometimes the boss chews you out totally fairly and you feel angry at yourself. Of course you blame shift and pretend that's not what you're feeling which is what leads it to get all twisted up.

Step 1: f*ck up
Step 2: get chewed out (or other form of negative feedback)
Step 3: seek someone/something else to blame
Step 4: feel martyred
Step 5: feel underlying sense of low self-esteem
Step 6: feel hopeless and depressed

If at step 3 one was mature enough to say "yes, I was dumb, lazy, forgetful, mean" or whatever. "the other person has a perfect right to call me on it - I will try to do better". Then there would be very little loss of self-esteem, the pain would subside quickly, and the real problem could be addressed.

Radical honesty in the workplace

Why was this work a piece of crap?

Because I'm thicker than I look
Because I was suffering a bad case of don't-give-a-sh!t-itis
Because I'm lazy and I come to work to gossip and surf the web
Because I have the memory of a flea and I put it together at the last minute when it suddenly dawned on me it was due.

"Always admit to a fault, it confuses those in authority and gives you time to make yet more mistakes" - Mark Twain



Fran

[No_hill_for_a_Swimmer]

Agree with the responsibility lesson above however be mindful

A. Self Pity. It's intoxicating at first and leads to depression and complete loss of motivation.
B. Taking on blame from others who are just trying to project their own shortcomings on you. Common among lazy employees and domestic disputes.
(I've seen in an office of 10 where 2 people just kill themsselves getting things done and 8 others try to delegate their jobs to the 2. When plans go South the 2 who work for a living get the blame. Usually a direct result of weak leadership)

[blackfoot]

Usually a direct result of weak leadership)

Bingo.

(and I am not talking about the workplace.)