Guaraci de Lima Silveira

Anger – what feeling is this?

Is it a dragon running inside or a snake visiting our mind impelling us to an unexpected reaction, full of hatred, anger and rage against what or who, at a given time and that can mark our lives forever?

It would be better if we could avoid this feeling that can cause huge damage. Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists come together in order to study this topic in view of its recurrence in our society through the individuals who are part of it. After all, what is the meaning of anger? Which are the standards in which it established itself without seeing the calmness and peace so necessary to the good morals?

Man comes from very far filing deeds and manipulations, keeping stories, raising columns of bins in his memory. These facts, though immersed in the unconscious, once in a while come to the surface and, depending on its intensity, build or destroy.

Modern Science, which still does not work with reincarnation, tries to seek for valid contents to justify how a peaceful and quiet and old aged being, all of a sudden turns into an evil giant and commits terrible crimes, as the case of Mr. Joao Vicente, a good and honest man, 75 years old, who, all of a sudden, murdered his wife and two grandchildren in a quiet little village in the interior of Brazil, with no specific cause.

There is the neurobiology of the anger, studied by neuroscientists. Amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and heart are the paths through which the anger runs. The amygdala is a primitive structure of the brain that associates stimuli to emotions. It makes the connection between the hippocampus and the prefrontal area. It connects negative events to unpleasant emotions and it is of great importance in the mechanism of fighting or running away. If we removed it, according to research accomplished in animals, we would surely become docile and indifferent to any danger, because we would feel no anger whatsoever.

But the hippocampus is characterized by an important region for memory and learning. It allows you to file both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. The prefrontal cortex is the “master” of higher cognitive functions. It allows us to stop behaviors that could harm us, as well as others.

What emotion is this that deprives us of reason? 

Interconnected with the thalamus, the amygdala and other subcortical structures indicate their role in regulating the expression of affection. Finally is the heart. The amygdala sends signals to the adrenal glands, responsible for releasing hormones in stressful situations. Therefore, lots of adrenaline, which speeds up the heart rate, falls into the bloodstream. Thus the blood irrigates skin and organs, preparing the muscles for possible action. From this point onwards, there can be violent impulses originated from the feeling of anger.

In this study, we can understand that the angry individual will most likely lose his self-control releasing adrenaline and preparing for action necessarily beyond the limits of normality. Well this is the way, but we must find the roots, the causes that lead us to feel such an intense rage that we lose control of ourselves.

The journalist, psychologist and psychoanalyst, Glaucia Leal, recently commented in a Science magazine: "What is this emotion, a kind of momentary madness which deprives us of reason? In different degrees, it drives us into tantrums, and makes us do things, which when in our normal state, even scare us”. And this is what we commonly see. After a fit of rage, the person usually says she does not understand how it happened. And the traffic? Ah, the traffic!

The other day I saw a Spiritist brother, loudly rampaging with a driver in another car because he had tried to undertake him, forcing his way through. Yes, to do this to someone in the traffic is wrong and can cause accidents, but the attitude of that brother was not at all consistent with what we learn from our spiritual mentors and I was quite scared with what I saw. And he cursed, shouted, and was red like a hot chili. I thought he was going to have a heart attack, according to what we previously mentioned about the neurobiology of anger. Some days later, I tried to talk to him about what I had witnessed. When I mentioned the fact, he went red and his veins swell. It was again the attack of anger, all over again by the simple fact of remembering it. In other words, our angers are filed and kept and come to surface just by remembering the fact that caused it.

This is serious and dangerous.

The other day someone passed away in an attack like that. His already disembodied father came to meet him. The moment was tense and the disembodied was still in a rage, cursing, using bad words that would scare Paulo de Tarso when he wrote in his Second Letter to Timothy: "(...) avoid profane and vain babblings, for they will produce greater profanity". It is in Chapter 2 - Vv. 16.
 
The signs of anger, according to Paul Ekman

Emmanuel says in the book Vineyard of Light, Chapter 73: "Yap is a waste and when it is not, it is only a dark current of psychic poisons, threatening valiant Spirits and entire communities". The poor disembodied lamented for a long time and still begs the chance to return, but rather will have to work his emotional outbursts.

"Stay away if you think you can do something you might regret in the future, stay away from the object of your anger. Keep in mind that the fury passes, but the damage done can remain for a long time”, suggests Glaucia Leal.

In the 70s, the American psychologist Paul Ekman showed that the recognition of an expression of anger or aggression does not depend on the age of the individual or his culture. It acts as a survival strategy by determining whether it is time to protect oneself or run away. And he listed interesting signs of evident anger shown in our face, such as frowning, eyes staring fixedly, lips tight trying to contain the anger, or mouth opened showing the teeth, as if to bite the other. Often the face reddens, the nostrils dilate, and breathing is panting. Often one lifts his head and tries to look down at the other, his opponent, and fills his chest with air too, and stands on the tip of his toes, as if by increasing his stature he intimidates his enemy.

Well, at this moment the scene is complete and the actors are ready. The fight takes place. And what are the results? "After the peak of anger, it is common for us to look for strategies to blame the other, but the truth is that we are responsible for our choices and attitudes. No matter what the other did - he did not force you to do whatever it was”, says Glaucia Leal.

An article published in the journal Human Nature says that strong men and more attractive women are more likely to show anger, according to the evolutionary psychologist Aaron Sell, of Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. According to him, these features work as social permission for people to go beyond their irritation. In their concept, to be strong in the case of men, and attractive for women, provide them the right to become angry and therefore become winners due to their physical gifts.

Is swallowing anger dangerous?

The English psychologist Mike Fischer believes that uncontrolled angry reactions are more linked to lowered self-esteem and dissatisfaction with oneself. This is because the internal state of dissatisfaction with oneself causes a level of increasing stress that ends up by bothering. Reaction over reaction form tortuous paths when these habits induce to violent and destroying attitudes. We will hereby mention opinions, which show that to a certain extent they agree with anger, as in the case of Emuly Butter, of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

According to her, "One must not swallow this anger because people who repress their emotions are less capable of solving intellectual challenges. They have more difficulty memorizing details of emotionally significant experiences. In interpersonal relationships they also do not deal with them very well”. We agree in part. Indeed, to swallow anger can be dangerous, but to jump on the one, who caused it, can also be dangerous. Therefore, self-control together with a more detailed analysis of the facts is still the best.

Do you remember the amygdala and prefrontal cortex mentioned earlier in this article? Well, according to neuroscientists, the amygdala tries to hijack our strong emotions and throw them into the hippocampus, which will promote the consistent reactions with the intensity of emotion. But the researchers are advising us to do the opposite, namely, hijack from the amygdala its action and cast it to the left side of the prefrontal cortex so that a cognitive analysis is made, calming down and directing it to a peaceful solution. Try to do this. Incidentally, Chico Xavier told us about the water of peace. Do you remember?

Joanna de Angelis, through Divaldo Franco, sent us an important work entitled: Existential Conflicts. In the third chapter there is a study about anger. We will use here her valuable notes: "Anger is a feeling that expresses itself every time the ego feels hurt, and it releases this enemy that destroys man’s peace. It installs itself unexpectedly, in the light of any express or hidden conflict, unleashing violent blows of injury and aggression”. "In other words and following the reasoning of that Mentor, we can say that anger is a dangerous object to deal with. Sometimes it helps and in many cases it makes things more difficult. 

All that is repressed tends to loosen up 

Some say that anger can promote social changes by the non-acceptance of existing impositions, thus generating movements that release.

Can anger benefit us like this? Or only due to the fact of feeling anger do men come together for a social change?

Let us see what Joanna de Angelis tells us: "Inherent to all animals, and in the human beings, because they are the carrier of will and insight, anger is responsible for disorders that can blur their reason and disturb their balance, producing emotional damage of small or large range, depending on the extent and depth contained. When there is the primacy of aggressive instincts on the being, then before any unpleasant incident, real or imaginary, he prefers harmful situations with reckless agitation, the results of which are always regrettable, if not fatal”. Here the Mentor uses the structure of the collective or individual unconsciousness formed since our ancestry and through the ages.

Again we turn to Joanna de Angelis and she tells us that "Silence in the face of disturbing circumstances, not allowing the invasion of mental firecrackers brandished by the opponent, is an indispensable feature to prevent the fall into irritation and its consequent damage”. And she also tells us about the psychotherapeutic resources saying that the careful psychotherapy will remount to the conflicts dormant in the unconsciousness, and both may have been generated during childhood or during adolescence, when they had the right to an explanation or justification of an act committed or in the primeval era when the being could not quite resolve its conflicts and frictions.

Emmanuel tells us that they outbreak of us. They leave us asking for solutions. Hence, parents and educators should take care to listen more to the children and teenagers. They lack this attention from adults. Great problems could be avoided by this procedure when they reach adulthood. All that is repressed tends to loosen up violently. 

This issue is really exciting and needs to be constantly studied and discussed in schools, community centers, churches, religious temples, spiritual centers and the media as a whole. It is time to improve our social cohabitation. It is time that we align with the new era that is arriving. It is time to leave definitively these terrible and unfortunate reactions that show weakness and insecurity. 

If someone slaps you on one cheek...

Self-control is the key to the solution of this great problem. And here we also include vigilance and prayer. If an opponent turns up in our patch, let us enforce the evangelical maximum "Quickly make peace with your opponent while you are on the way with him”. Jesus said that in case we do not do this, we may be delivered to the Judge, to the Minister or to the Officer, who will hold us and we will only leave after we have paid the last cent.

Through the Law of Action and Reaction we know that our opponents are all and everything that takes our peace away or that disturbs us in our comfort zones. They arise from our mistakes in the distant past or even in the present. But reincarnations are stages of spiritual growth, so they will always go back to the platforms where our freedom is. For this to happen, today’s man needs to disarm himself. To try and live better and with physical and spiritual health, avoiding excessive loads of adrenaline in the body, which will certainly decompensate the perfect functioning of one’s physical body, God's tabernacle, as we were told by the Apostle Peter in his Second Letter to the Christian community.

"The key to being in a permanent state of connection with our inner selves, or our expanding consciousness, is the desire to feel it at all times. This practice can intensify our progress, transforming our lives. The more we guide ourselves to our inner field, the more the vibrational frequency increases in the same manner as light becomes more intense when we switch the dimmer⁽¹⁾”, tells us Eckhart Tolle, University of Cambridge, in his book The Power of Now.

Joanna de Angelis tells us, closing the chapter on anger in her book Existential Conflicts that we must discipline our will, educate our feelings and adapt ourselves to new healthy habits essential to a healthy life. And Jesus told us: "If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to him the other also”. And the other side of the face will always be the one of love before hate, peace before war, union before discord, forgiveness where there is offense, joy where there is sadness, the truth where there is error and light where there is darkness. And further, paraphrasing the Saint of Assisi: it is better to console than to be consoled, to understand than to be understood, and it is dying for the harmful and primary reactions of the Spirits that we are born for eternal life.


(1) Dimmers are devices used to vary the intensity of an electric current.