Negative, but Healthy Anger and Aggression

[DISCLAIMER]

In 2024, progressive house supergroup Swedish House Mafia released the song “Lioness” that featured Swedish indietronica duo Niki & the Dove. It’s a subjectively phenomenal track! For the sake of familiarity, the refrain states:

You can’t keep me down, I am done, I am furious

Fear the lioness, paint her face black and golden

[x2]

The term “furious” is defined as exhibiting or goaded by anger, indicative of or proceeding from anger. Herein, I’ll make a case for fury of this sort by examining anger and aggression. To illustrate my point, I’ll use two examples: (1) a collective case and (2) an individual case.

Now, I invite you to take a moment to imagine that you’re living in a country that’s frequently targeted by economic sanctions and even military actions constituting a war of aggression. You may feel anger, which the American Psychological Association (APA) thusly defines:

[A]n emotion characterized by tension and hostility arising from frustration, real or imagined injury by another, or perceived injustice. It can manifest itself in behaviors designed to remove the object of the anger (e.g., determined action) or behaviors designed merely to express the emotion (e.g., swearing).

Anger is distinct from, but a significant activator of, aggression, which is behavior intended to harm someone or something. Despite their mutually influential relationship, anger is neither necessary nor sufficient for aggression to occur.

As it regards a collective case, anger may be viewed from different perspectives. For now, I’ll put the collective case aside, because it may prove more useful to first address an individual case for fury that stems from anger. (Worry not, as I’ll return to the collective case in a bit.)

When providing a psychoeducational lesson on Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), client X once suggested that “it’s never healthy to feel anger.” This individual specifically sought mental, emotional, and behavioral health (collectively “mental health”) services for anger.

“I don’t know which religious, spiritual, or esoteric mumbo-jumbo you’ve consumed,” I replied to client X, “though REBT recognizes that anger can function as both a healthy and unhealthy negative emotion.” For context, consider that the APA thusly defines frustration:

1. the thwarting of impulses or actions that prevents individuals from obtaining something they have been led to expect based on past experience, as when a hungry animal is prevented from obtaining food that it can see or smell or when a child is prevented from playing with a visible toy. Internal forces can include motivational conflicts and inhibitions; external forces can include the actions of other individuals, admonitions of parents or others, and the rules of society.

2. the emotional state an individual experiences when such thwarting occurs.

3. in classical psychoanalytic theory, the damming up of psychic energy, which then seeks an outlet in wish-fulfilling fantasies and dreams or in various neurotic symptoms.

I told client X that frustration is a healthy negative emotion that can lead to the healthy or unhealthy negative emotion of anger. Client X was invited to understand that this isn’t the same thing as potentially unhealthy negative emotion of aggression, which the APA thusly defines:

[B]ehavior aimed at harming others physically or psychologically. It can be distinguished from anger in that anger is oriented at overcoming the target but not necessarily through harm or destruction. When such behavior is purposively performed with the primary goal of intentional injury or destruction, it is termed hostile aggression […]

One of the most influential classification schemes has been that proposed in 1968 by U.S. physiological psychologist Kenneth Evan Moyer (1919–2006). It describes predatory aggression to obtain food and the converse antipredatory aggression, territorial aggression to repel intruders from an area, intermale aggression against a competitor, fear-induced aggression, irritable aggression in response to pain or deprivation of an item required for survival, sexual aggression to secure mates, maternal aggression to protect young offspring, and instrumental aggression.

Given the array of different types of aggression, I informed my client that a “potentially unhealthy negative emotion of aggression” inferred that some forms of aggression are considered the product of a healthy negative emotion in the form of anger. “Like what,” client X asked.

“If someone who was unhealthily angered then hostilely aggressed upon you, placing you in both logical and reasonable [i.e., rational] fear for your life,” I stated, “there may be a plausible case for self-defense if you experienced healthy fear and anger while using aggression to stay alive.”

To this day, I’m unaware as to what nonsensical instruction client X received prior to seeking mental health services with me. Unfavorably, this individual withdrew from receiving any further REBT psychoeducational lessons from me at that point.

Apparently, when I made a case for negative, but healthy anger and aggression on an individual case, client X became disinterested in anything I further had to say. Oh well, such is life. Perhaps you won’t follow down the path of irrationality for which client X apparently opted.

Fascinatingly, client X initially contacted me for so-called anger management. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence, as I market this sort of service. However, I’ve yet to have someone contact me so that I may assist a person with managing one’s joy. Why might this be?

To answer this silly question, I invite you to consider that one source says, “Emotional psychologist Paul Ekman identified six basic emotions that could be interpreted through facial expressions. They included happiness [i.e., joy], sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust.”

While surprise can serve as an emotion that is either healthy (e.g., an unanticipated refund) or unhealthy (e.g., unexpected news about the death of a loved one), joy is often characterized as positive while fear, anger, sadness, and disgust are categorized as negative.

Ergo, it may be that no one has contacted me for supposed ‘joy management,’ because people often welcome this emotional experience. Now that I think of it, I’ve never had any of my clients report that they’ve experienced too much joy, pleasure, or happiness.

In any case, not to oversimply matters, I conceptualize negative and unhealthy anger mixed with nonadaptive behavior as equating to rage, hostility, and aggression. This is the sort of experience I argue against, as the current blogpost doesn’t endorse such unhealthy emotions or behavior.

Regarding an individual case for fury associated with anger and aggression, I do advocate rational and legal use of self-defense. Knowing this, I now return to the collective case for fury concerning anger and any actions which are perceived as aggressive self-defense thereunto.

REBT uses the ABC model to illustrate that when an undesirable Action occurs and you Believe an unhelpful narrative about the event, it’s your unfavorable assumption, not the occurrence itself, that causes an unpleasant Consequence. This is known as distress or disturbance.

Noteworthy, with virtually any undesirable Action that occurs, it’s your unfavorable Beliefs which cause unpleasant distress or disturbance (Consequence). Given this framing of self-distress and self-disturbance, it’s worth noting that one REBT source states (page 71):

REBT conceptualizes [distress] as healthy even though it is intense. Other approaches to therapy have as their goal the reduction of the intensity of negative emotions. They take this position because they do not keenly differentiate between healthy negative emotions (distress) and unhealthy negative emotions (disturbance).

Now, REBT keenly distinguishes between healthy distress and unhealthy disturbance. Healthy distress stems from your rational beliefs about a negative activating event [Action], whilst disturbance stems from your irrational beliefs about the same event.

Complete elimination of distress is highly unlikely in an impermanent and uncertain world wherein people conceptually suffer, struggle, and battle with, or merely experience hardship. Still, individuals often make matters worse for themselves by disturbing about such instances.

In particular, there are four predominate irrational beliefs which people often use to distress or disturb themselves: global evaluations, low frustration tolerance, awfulizing, and demandingness. When contemplating these unproductive scripts, think of the acronym GLAD.

Additionally, from a psychological standpoint, people distress or disturb themselves using a Belief-Consequence (B-C) connection. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that in the context of the naturalistic or physical world there is no Action-Consequence (A-C) connection.

If you’ve imagined that you’re living in a country that’s frequently targeted by economic sanctions and even military actions constituting a war of aggression, I now invite you to envision yourself living in Iran which is currently at war with the United States (U.S.) and Israel.

Collectively, the Iranian people are likely experiencing anger and aggression. From an A-C view, U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran (Action) have resulted in massive destruction (Consequence). However, from a B-C outlook, this isn’t what causes a nation to become furious, à la “Lioness”.

Rather, massive destruction was initiated by the U.S. and Israel (Action) and the people of Iran then (hypothetically) collectively Believed, “Great Satan won’t leave us alone [G], and we can’t stand for this [L], because it’s tragic to be attacked [A], so we must retaliate [D]!”

This collective script could spawn negative and unhealthy anger and aggression (Consequence). Even if you were to make a case for this type of collective narrative, I’d instead advocate rational versus irrational narratives which produce negative, but healthy anger and aggression.

Addressing how people upset themselves with unhelpful attitudes, the ABC model incorporates Disputation of unproductive philosophies of life in order to explore Effective new beliefs. Whereas rigid beliefs cause self-disturbance, flexible beliefs result in an un-disturbed condition.

When providing psychoeducational lessons on REBT, I admit that I see little (if any) evidence for objective rationality. For instance, the collective GLAD narrative that I’ve imagines the Syrian (Iranian) people using may be considered rational by many people – even if I disagree.

Thus, I’d focus on the Consequence more so than the Belief to determine whether or not distress (e.g., healthy anger and aggression leading to retaliatory strikes of proportionate measure) or disturbance (e.g., unhealthy anger and aggression with a disproportionate response) is used.

Personally, there’s no need for global evaluations, low frustration tolerance, or awfulizing in this regard. As well, instead of using absolute or conditional demands, the collective case of Iranians using empirical demands could result in proportional strikes against U.S. and Israeli targets.

As an example, “If the U.S. and Israel attack us [Iran], then we empirically should respond in kind.” At this juncture, allow my words to be exceedingly clear. I’m not advocating violence! In fact, I’m not declaring what any party in this war should, must, or ought to do.

If I had my way, war wouldn’t exist. Still, it’s pointless to favor ideal-world versus real-word scenarios, because everlasting peace isn’t how fallible human beings function. I instead consider negative, but healthy anger and aggression about which one REBT source states (pages 18-19):

Now when you hold a belief about an adversity [Action], you don’t just experience an emotion, you also experience a tendency to act in a certain way (known as an action tendency) which you may or may not convert into overt behaviour.

Thus, another way to tell if what you feel in a specific situation is an emotional problem or a healthy negative emotion is to examine how you acted or, if you did not take action, to examine your action tendency.  Let me illustrate this when a person is trying to figure out whether the anger that they felt was negative and unhealthy, or negative but healthy.

Geraldine was angry with her boss when he did not recommend her for promotion, an advancement which she considered that she thoroughly deserved. Geraldine considered that her boss had acted in a very unfair manner towards her. Geraldine was unsure whether her anger was negative and unhealthy, or negative but healthy, so she considered how she acted in the situation.

This did not help her because she did not take any action when she discovered the news, nor subsequently. Finally, she considered what she felt like doing, but did not do. Geraldine’s action tendency was to scream abuse at her boss and to get revenge against him by getting him into trouble with his own boss. Such action tendencies were clearly hostile in nature and showed Geraldine that her anger was an emotional problem.

When you hold an irrational belief about an adversity, your behaviour (or action tendencies) will tend to be dysfunctional and will prevent you from dealing with the adversity in a constructive manner. Whereas, when you hold a rational belief about an adversity, your behaviour (or action tendencies) will tend to be functional and will help you to deal with the adversity in a constructive manner.

In the individual case of Geraldine, her internalized inaction was still fueled by unhealthy anger and aggression, because she used irrational beliefs. Alternatively, the same REBT source further states (pages 19-20):

The final way of determining whether you are experiencing an emotional problem or a healthy negative emotion about an adversity is to inspect the thinking that is associated with the emotion. This is different from the inference that you made about the situation that constituted your adversity. [Thoughts = descriptive, beliefs = prescriptive]

Such thinking has not yet been processed by your beliefs. The thinking that I am referring to here is the thinking that is associated with your emotion. This is the thinking that has been produced when your adversity has been processed by your beliefs.

When your adversity has been processed by irrational beliefs, the thinking that results is very likely to be highly distorted and skewed to the negative in content and ruminative in nature. However, when this adversity has been processed by rational beliefs, the thinking that results is very likely to be realistic and balanced in content and nonruminative in nature.

David Burns, a leading cognitive therapist, first outlined in his book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (Burns 1980) a list of thinking errors – which are by nature highly distorted and skewed to the negative – that people make when they have processed adversities with irrational beliefs. […] Let me illustrate all this with reference to another person who is trying to figure out whether the anger that she felt was negative and unhealthy or negative, but healthy.

Francine (a co-worker of Geraldine) was also angry with her boss when he did not recommend her for promotion, an advancement which she considered that she thoroughly deserved. Francine considered that her boss had acted in a very unfair manner towards her. Francine was unsure whether her anger was negative and unhealthy, or negative but healthy, so she considered how she thought in the situation.

She thought about asserting herself with her boss after planning what to say. After she had done this she made an appointment to see her boss and in the days that followed until the meeting, she thought about the issue in passing, but did not ruminate on the issue. Given that Francine’s thinking that went along with her anger was realistic and balanced and non-ruminative in nature, she considered that her anger was a healthy negative emotion and not an emotional problem.

In the individual case of Francine, she still experienced negative, but healthy anger while opting for assertiveness rather than rumination to address the matter. In neither Geraldine nor Francine’s case was outward aggression a factor. This brings me back to the collective case of Iran.

Assertiveness regarding negative, but healthy anger about being attacked by the U.S. and Israel has been demonstrated with Iran continually seeking to resolve matters through negotiations. One may further argue that negative, but healthy aggression against Iran’s adversaries was used.

Without condoning wartime acts, I can comprehend negative, but healthy anger and aggression as a rational response to adversarial nations to Iran’s collective case. Thus, considering the electronic dance music (EDM) song “Lioness”, I understand the response of being furious.

Perhaps Iran collectively determined, “You can’t keep me down, I am done, I am furious!” As outlined within the current blogpost, this reaction may relate to negative, but healthy anger and aggression against the U.S. and Israel’s continued war of unhealthy anger and aggression.

If you’re looking for a provider who tries to work to help understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life—helping you to sharpen your critical thinking skills, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.

As the world’s foremost EDM-influenced REBT psychotherapist—promoting content related to EDM, I’m pleased to try to help people with an assortment of issues from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.

At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply trying to help you to feel better, I want to try to help you get better!

Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW

Photo credit, fair use

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