Payback Anger

     In Houston, Texas, a man using his gun robbed diners in a taqueria restaurant. The robber was on the verge of leaving that restaurant when he was shot 9 times by a vigilante diner, who then helped diners recover their money robbed at that Houston taqueria restaurant before disappearing.

     The police later discovered that the suspect’s weapon was only a “plastic gun.” Texas police began searching for that vigilante diner, with that “you-take-my-cash-I-take-your-life” mindset out of anger.

      Anger is more than a feeling; it’s a functional emotion. Its objective is to stimulate your mental awareness and direct your physical attention to something important going on in your own psychological world. Emotions are informants. Positively experienced emotions bring gratitude in appreciation, joy in fulfillment, and pride in accomplishment. Negatively experienced emotions bring anger, anxiety, danger, fear, frustration, worry, and even violence.

     Anger is about threats and violations to your wellbeing. So, being able to feel anger and use anger to safeguard your own personal wellbeing is important. People who can’t get angry often end up accepting aggressions and violations of their wellbeing. Many victims of family abuse simply adjust to verbal threat or even physical violence and accept mistreatment as an unhappy fact of life. They learn to deny its emotional impact, to rationalize its harm, and even to avoid upsetting the abuser. Adults, who’ve learned these “survival” skills as children, often end up marrying into abusive relationships not because they want to, but because they unconsciously feel the abuse comfortably familiar and even normal.

    Angry No More: A new book on how to control and eradicate your anger.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau