Sunday 1 April 2012

A is for Anger

A is for Anger and Annoyance

Emotions such as Anger and Annoyance are often regarded as ‘bad’ with current cultures having strict taboo penalties for displaying such negativity. On the other hand, the people who get very defensive when someone displays angry or annoyed feelings at them will be the first to tell others that it is not healthy to keep such feelings bottled up.

Displaying anger or annoyance at the majority of people is a useless endeavour as more often than not rather than getting an apology or fear (depending on your aim) in return you will be greeted only with higher levels of anger or annoyance. This then just escalates a simple emotion into things which are much much worse.

This kind of takes the point of feeling annoyed. Surely the emotion is designed to spark guilt in the other person/people involved. It stops doing it’s job when the response you get is people becoming very defensive and annoyed back, a kind of counter attack.

I cannot help but wonder why such an emotion develops, since it is seemingly useless.

Kierkegaard (Omg I actually just spelt this right first time!!!) has a very interesting take on emotions. He believes that there are actually only two emotions, Love and Fear. I’m inclined to agree with him on this particular point.

The more I think about my own emotion responses to a situation I can easily link them to either Love or Fear (or even more frequently, both).

To me anger and annoyance stem from fear primarily. Things that annoy me are usually money related, so my fear of not having enough money, or losing money, causes the irritation. So here it would be on a scale with Love at one end and Fear at the other.

Admittedly feelings like Fear and Anger are hard to place as they are slightly different feelings, but to me Anger very much branches from Fear. I get angry usually out of Fear of losing something or someone I Love. This causes Love and Fear for me to be connected quite frequently.

The thing I fear most if having no love. But fearing this makes me angry, which is more likely to prevent you from getting love, terrible pattern that.

DFTBA

9 comments:

  1. A very interesting post. Giving the reader something to think about. Congrats on spelling the name the first time. ;-)

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    1. I do like to provide food for thought... and thanks I always remember when studying Philosophy we would be told that if we spelt it right on our written exam we would get extra marks. I never spelt it right first time without a spell checker or copying off google!

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  2. Hi!
    I'm going to echo Dawn here and say that this was an interesting post!
    As someone who finds it hard to control her emotions, the idea of there only being two - love and fear - is fascinating. And it's true that spending the rest of my life alone, never being loved again, is something that scares the hell out of me.
    Good luck with the challenge!

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    1. Naturally I will not pry into why you find your emotions hard to control, but do you tend to find Love and Fear as the main branches?

      And which do you find harder to control... I used to think Fear at first, not so sure now, they are both tricky feelings to conquer!

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  3. Very interesting post, although I do not fully agree.


    www.thesocialfrog.com

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    1. Ah pray elaborate? I was hoping someone would disagree and find the fatal flaw :D

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  4. I disagree, partly for the sake of argument: u may wanna rephrase 'Making Love and Fear intimately connected quite frequently' grinning

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  5. *giggles* ah, this is why I need to proof read better... *facepalm*

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  6. You have made a logical assessment of this topic. I sometimes get angry or annoyed if it seems appropriate to do so, but usually I see little point in it for the reasons you state. I tend to be pretty patient and tolerant. I like to see things from the other sides of the story and come to rational conclusions about situations I encounter.


    Lee
    An A to Z Co-Host
    Tossing It Out

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