Does Dealing With Anger Help Our Depression?
Jun 16th, 2008 by zania
This post on Fraying Edges is not so much a statement on what could help with depression, it is more of a series of questions which I ponder from time to time and answers which are based on my observations, rather than any ‘expert’ opinion. They are about Anger.
My questions about Anger are this:
- Is Anger a good thing?
- Can Anger make us anxious and depressed?
- How should we deal with that Anger in our efforts to cope with anxiety and depression?
- Is Forgiveness the real antedote to Anger?
Anger can can make us stressed and unable to cope with a situation (I cry when I get angry - I feel this immediately invalidates any statement I am trying to make because it makes me appear weaker than my opponent, and that frustrates me no end!).
Anger can make us say and do things we later regret. Often we can ‘make up’ for this by apologising, but sometimes remembering the hurt our words have caused can stay with us and be remembered at times when we are depressed.
But in some situations anger can make us strong. Remember that many laws have been changed in reponse to human rights protestors whose campaigns have been fueled by anger at injustice.
So let’s look at some examples of things which can cause anger:
- A sense of injustice: We feel we are being wrongly accused of something or that someone has taken advantage of our good nature.
- A sense of emotional hurt: Perhaps a lover has ditched us for someone else, or someone we thought of as a friend has been talking about us disparigingly behind our backs.
- Physical and emotional hurt: Perhaps we were abused as a child or the victim of a wife beater.
- Loss/Bereavment: When a loved one dies we may be angry with them for leaving us. It’s often inexplicable to us that we can feel this way, but we sometimes do.
- A sense of wrong we cannot define a cause for: “What have I done to deserve this?”
- A sense that we have been wronged by our parents: Perhaps they expected too much or too little of us and we are now suffering the consequences.
- A sense that we have been wronged by our cultural surroundings: Perhaps the society we were born into offers us poor expectations and frustrates our efforts to succeed.
- A sense of envy or jealousy: “Why should he/she have that when I am so much more deserving?”
- Anger with oneself: We feel we are responsible for what is happening to us.
There are many more ‘reasons’ for anger I could post here. These are just a few I thought of off the top of my head.
But taking those original questions, let’s have a look at how we could deal with the anger that these situations bring:
Anger as a result of being abused: Isn’t it only right that we should feel anger at a person who has abused us? Isn’t it much better that we are angry with this person than we take that anger upon ourselves and feel that we were somehow in the wrong for letting them abuse us?
Would forgiving our abuser make us feel better in ourselves?
Only the indivudual can really answer that question. To my mind, forgiving in this situation is trying to understand why the abuser did what they did. But I think we have to be very careful here, as taking our ‘understanding’ too far could topple us over into blaming ourselves. In this case I doubt I could forgive (or forget), but I could accept and move on, which I guess would mitigate some of the anger felt.
In the case of asking ourselves “what have I done to deserve this?” In my view, we have often done nothing to deserve what has befallen us. It is just an unfortunate part of living on this earth. You may already have read that the idea that ‘we are ultimately reponsible for our lives’ is not a belief I hold in many circumstances. I see no benefit in blaming ones self either. Learn from your mistakes, of course, but then move on. If the anger helps to motivate you, all to the good, but if not, discard it. It’s just a waste of energy.
As to blaming our parents, well I guess a lot of us do that from time to time… until we have kids of our own and realise that we are beginning to sound like our parents at times! Unless our parents have caused us physical or emotional harm by abusing us, then I guess our anger here could well be wasted energy, unless of course it spurs us on to be better individuals ourselves.
I can understand anger with cultural surroundings and how this can also turn into anger caused by jealousy of others. It is all very well to tell someone that ‘anyone can make it’ and that their accent/skin colour/class/gender/sexuality will make no difference to the opportunities they find or the restirctions they face, but this simply is not true. We all start on different rungs of the ladder and some will find it harder than others to ‘make it’. In this case anger can motivate those on the lower rungs to fight those restrictions and be a success, but the going will get tough, along with the stress.
But the most confusing anger that many people will face, and the one which is probably one of the most likely to lead to depression, is the anger they feel towards a loved one who has passed on. Bereavement counsellors see this anger most days, but their clients will often not recognise it themselves or refuse to acknowledge its existence.
How can they be angry with someone they love and miss? It just doesn’t make sense to many bereaved partners and leads to more distress. Until they can accept that anger (and maybe even tell their departed loved one that they are angry with them for leaving them alone to cope with everything), many people who have lost someone they love find it hard to move on and cope with the depression that the bereavement has produced. Anger can be a healthy and essential part of the grieving process.
There is one point I have touched upon only briefly so far, and that is unexplained anger.
If we feel angry ‘for no reason’ and there really isn’t a cause we, or others who know our situation, can pin point, then we are most probably suffering from some kind of mental distress which would benefit from a visit to a health practitioner or a counsellor. It could well be, that after talking some more, we can pin point where the anger is coming from, but checking this anger out would not hurt and in many cases could help us feel better.
My conclusions?
Overall, I do not think that anger is bad for us. It’s how we deal with it which is the important factor. I do believe however that unexplained anger can lead to depression if not come to terms with.
As to forgiveness? Personally, I do not think forgiveness always works (or is even wise in some cases), but I’ll let you as individuals be the judge of that 
[...] touched upon this in my post about anger and depression, but today I was going through some old notes on my pc (collected from where I really do not know) [...]