Emotion Blog Series #3: Anger and Annoyance

Unhealthy Anger is an unhealthy negative emotion provoked by holding an unhealthy belief or attitude about i) you or another breaking your non moral rule or ii) a threat to your self esteem or iii) you experiencing frustration.

Healthy Anger or Annoyance is a healthy negative emotion provoked by holding a belief or attitude about i) you or another breaking your non moral rule or ii) a threat to your self esteem or iii) you experiencing frustration.

Anger is an unhealthy emotion but a natural one. Annoyance is a healthy anger

Anger is a common emotion and we all experience it. There are two types though; healthy and unhealthy. In this blog we will use the Anger to mean unhealthy Anger and Annoyance to mean healthy Anger.

Both Anger and Annoyance can be intense. You can feel Anger or Annoyance with yourself, with another person or with life and the world.

You can feel Anger or Annoyance about all sorts of things. The following are typical triggers. This is by no means a complete list of triggers.

Rejection
Unfairness
Disagreement
Lateness
Rudeness
Criticism
Failure
Insensitivity
Hassles e.g. traffic jams, weather etc
Having an emotional problem
And so on

How do you know if you are feeling Anger or Annoyance?

The easiest way to understand your emotions is to check your thoughts and your behaviour or behavioural tendencies when feeling the emotion.

When you feel Anger towards someone you will tend to exaggerate the actions of the other person, who has broken your personal rule. You will think that the other person had malicious intent. You will think that you are absolutely right and the other person is definitely wrong and you will not see the other person’s point of view at all. You mind will be focused on revenge.

When you feel Anger towards you will like attacking the other persona physically or verbally. You will feel like paying them back e.g. ignoring them or staying silent. You will feel like recruiting allies against the other person. Apart from feeling like doing all of these things, sometimes you will actually do them.

If you are feeling Anger with yourself you will tend to be extremely hard on yourself, call yourself ‘idiot’, ‘stupid’ and other self damning words. You will feel like punishing yourself or you will indeed punish yourself.

If feeling Anger due to life frustrations then you will feel high levels of frustrations, be damning of the life and situations or God. You may feel like taking your frustration on furniture, dashboard of your car.

When you feel Annoyance with someone your thoughts will be more balanced and you are less likely to see malicious intent behind someone’s actions. You will be more open to the possibility that you may be wrong, able to listen to the other person’s point of view. You mind will not be pre occupied with seeking revenge.

When feeling Annoyance you will feel like talking and behaving assertively but it will be with the right intent of solving the conflict. You will feel like asking the other person to make changes to their behaviour but you do not demand it.

When you feel Annoyed with yourself you thoughts will be focused on the wrong thing that you did but without damning yourself. Your mind set will be accepting of the fact that some mistake was made but you also see yourself as an imperfect person who will learn and move on.

If you are feeling Annoyance with life’s hassles, your mind set will be accepting of the fact that there are hassles and frustrations in life but you also think that you can cope with it even though it is a pain in the backside.