New Paradigm Training Institute

Handling Protests

When educators are highly aware of some of the specific characteristics of people who have problems around their anger, they can be in a better position to respond in ways that can encourage healthier and more appropriate beliefs and behaviors. This awareness and an understanding of these characteristics can help educators become clearer about what they might decide to teach to others. It also can help educators recognize their own issues and needs for personal growth and change around their anger.

We expect to help participants:

  • differentiate between constructive and destructive anger
  • make conscious, intentional decisions to ensure the probability their anger is more on the constructive end of the continuum
  • appreciate the place for and value of venting anger
  • better understand children’s normal behavior, including many types of misbehavior that are often misinterpreted
  • understand the dynamics of “out of control” rage episodes
  • comprehend variations or masked forms anger can take
  • increase practical tools to help them handle the inevitable protests of children

Constructive Versus Destructive Anger

By being able to differentiate between constructive and destructive anger, educators can make conscious, intentional decisions about their anger that can ensure the probability that their anger is more on the constructive end of the continuum.

Core Principles to Apply When Determining How Constructive Anger Is

There are some core principles we recommend educators keep in the forefront of their thinking about and responses to anger:

  • According to McKay and Rogers (The Anger Control Workbook) “one’s thoughts might be responsible for some of a person’s most painful emotions.” (p. 45)
  • Anger starts with thoughts. Feelings of anger follow thoughts that serve as triggers.
  • The perception you have been deliberately harmed and victimized by someone who should have behaved better are the basic components of what McKay and Rogers call “Trigger Thoughts.”
  • Trigger Thoughts are often stored in people’s core belief systems. Sometimes those beliefs are incorrect and exist as global, absolute, critical and negative messages, increasing the intensity of anger and probability that it may be expressed and handled in an unhealthy way.

Educators can become clear about two broad basic categories under which anger can be described, with them falling on a continuum from very destructive to very constructive with increments along the continuum.

Knowing the descriptions, goals, characteristics and potential impact of each of these two forms of anger can help educators better assess how they and others are dealing with their anger.

In the book Inner Joy, Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D. and Robert B. Kory offer some specific ways to distinguish the differences between these two ends of the continuum.

At the most basic level:

Anger that punishes is Destructive.

Anger that communicates is Constructive.

Destructive anger can have a multitude of goals, including to:

  • Control, dominate, overpower
  • Intimidate
  • Coerce
  • Get revenge
  • Blame, attack, shame, embarrass
  • Block communication, avoid intimacy

Some of the characteristics and impact of Destructive Anger:

  • Weakens self-esteem
  • Creates impotence
  • Masks primary feelings with coldness
  • Inhibits communication
  • Leaves other person tense and bitter
  • Creates emotional distance
  • Damages trust in relationship
  • Unsatisfying for both people because of breakdown
  • Negative physical responses
  • Cumulative effects: general hostility, distrust, bitterness, divestment

Constructive anger has four primary goals. To:

  • Communicate feelings
  • Change hurtful situation
  • Prevent a reoccurrence
  • Improve relationship

Some of the characteristics and impact of Constructive Anger:

  • Contributes to the healing of emotional injuries
  • Does not involve an attempt to attack, blame, shame, cause guilt, humiliation
  • Communication of primary feelings
  • There is an appropriate intensity of expression of true feelings
  • Relationship building: trust, sense of understanding, appreciation, connection,
  • It sets a pattern for further communication
  • Groundwork is laid for forgiving, letting go, moving on

Educators are encouraged to use the information on Constructive and Destructive anger to help them better assess situations and to guide them in their decisions about their anger. This information can help them to be more aware of the dynamics of angry encounters they may observe others having or that are described to them. Educators are encouraged to present this information to students as well.

In that way, educators can help students become more aware of the goals, characteristics and impact of each form of anger and they can encourage them to be more intentional about being constructive with their anger.

A List of Characteristics

In Honor Your Anger (John Wiley and Sons, 2004, page 14) author Beverly Engel provides a list of characteristics of people who have negative anger styles, people who respond to their anger in destructive or underhanded ways that can harm others at whom their anger is directed and themselves.

We can consider each of the traits on this list on a continuum, where at one end it is an occasional behavior and on the other end where it is the common response. We also can consider how strongly or forcefully each is expressed or experienced.

People may find that several of these characteristics fit as descriptions of their behaviors or attitudes (or of behaviors or attitudes they observe in others).

People who are responding to their anger in ways that are more destructive:

  • Hurt others physically or emotionally with their anger
  • Hurt themselves with their anger
  • Allow others to hurt them with their anger
  • Are afraid to express their anger: fear they will go totally out of control, believe they have the power to destroy others or important relationships they have
  • Believe they never get angry
  • Hold on to their anger and are unable to forgive or forget
  • Find sneaky ways to retaliate and get revenge instead of expressing anger directly
  • Are angry a great deal of the time
  • Know they are out of control with their anger
  • Use their anger as a primary way to control others
  • Tend to be negative, critical or blaming toward people they care about and these behaviors are weakening and damaging their relationships
  • Hold on to grudges
  • Are bitter and resentful most of the time
  • Feel helpless and powerless when they do express anger
  • Make excuses for the damage done when they have exploded
  • Have had their job or career damaged because of the ways they do or do not express their anger
  • Do not know why they suddenly feel angry
  • Misdirect their anger by taking it out on innocent victims
  • Feel like their anger is eating them up inside
  • Constantly feel they must apologize for being angry or for what they did when angry
  • Find themselves in controlling or abusive relationships
  • Allow themselves to be emotionally or physically abused
  • Allow their children to be emotionally or physically abused

Educators can consider which of these characteristics can be the most toxic. Educators need to remember that these traits tend to be learned and often reflect the ways adults were treated as children along with what they were told is right or wrong with regard to anger.

The Place for and Value of Venting Anger

Because much of the information presented during this course on Anger emphasizes the importance of discouraging the strong expression of anger in favor of using and even insisting on quickly moving past emotional outbursts to begin processes that lead to resolution, a discussion around the place for allowing and even encouraging the venting of anger may help educators become clearer about if, when, where, how and why to do so.

What Is Venting?

Venting can be described as the emotional expression of intensely experienced feelings such as anger. In some cases it may be closely related to the term “raging” but the two terms are not synonymous.

In some situations venting may be an initial and important step in a therapeutic process leading to emotional healing.

As we consider the continuum that describes degrees of intensity, a person may vent everything from annoyances to full-blown rage.

People vent their anger in a variety of ways: yelling, screaming, cursing, hitting things (sometimes this includes other people), stomping feet, shaking their fists, drawing or writing menacing, venomous pictures or letters, re-enacting an entire scene with or without props and dialogue, to name a few forms venting can take.

Anytime venting causes another person physical or emotional pain or does damage to a relationship, it should be discouraged, limited or prohibited.

In addition to these potential dangers, the research now indicates that the negative impact of venting can be its propensity for rehearsing, increasing, and somehow encouraging more venting. There also may be inaccurate implicit or explicit core beliefs and externally transmitted messages that it is helpful, necessary and even important to emotionally express anger and that once a person does the right amount of venting, the anger will be released (much like a caged bird who escapes through an open door) and now the person is now free to move on.

These situations may more involve the form of venting described as raging, a sort of purposeless freewheeling, out of control ranting and emoting that tends to escalate and intensify the feelings.

Encouragement and acceptance of raging may also discourage people from taking responsibility for their behaviors and may serve to justify them to focus only on their feelings, perspectives and issues, not on moving on to achieve clarity, perspectives and resolution.

The whole concept of effectively addressing anger in healthy ways does not include the requirement of venting. Raging for the sake of raging in most cases is the least effective way of venting.

Most People Have Experienced Moments of Extreme or Passionately Felt Anger

Most people have experienced powerful degrees of intensity that can occur when anger is strongly felt and they know that it can be or was close to impossible to avoid an impulsive, emotional outburst; at the very least a face grimace, the clenching of a fist or jaw, the muttering or even louder voicing of an expletive, maybe a quick kick or smack at an inanimate object.

Sometimes when something is perceived as being enormously unfair, harmful, irresponsible, shocking, disturbing, especially if it seems there was some degree of awareness or intentionality on the part of others, it may be unreasonable and even unhealthy to expect someone to somehow not have some sort of initial emotional response.

Sometimes it is the flare of emotions that gets the attention of others, helps them to realize a person has been deeply impacted by something. The flare can alert others that something is happening that may need to be addressed. Responsible venting can be an effective way to communicate just how serious someone feels where merely saying in a calm, reserved voice that something is causing problems may not make an adequate impression on whoever needs to be alerted.

Some people, especially those with temperamentally higher levels of intensity may typically be more expressive and may find it nearly impossible to completely contain themselves under certain circumstances. It would not be fair or appropriate to expect people to ignore or dishonor their temperament and for any educator to believe that all people must have the same level of intensity around anger expression. A healthy goal can be to combine a level of respect for temperamental variables with an expectation that people work to become highly self-aware and appropriately responsible for the impact strongly intense expressions of feelings can have on others.

Educators can encourage others (including children) to make assessments with regard to what is a fair and acceptable form of emotional expressions and to be tuned in if they know they are high on the temperamental continuum of emotional intensity.

When others are aware of someone’s temperamentally generated reactions, they may be able to factor in the effect his or her temperament can have as a way to explain how and why that person is being so passionate and intense in expressing thoughts and feelings. This understanding should not be used as an excuse for either the person who is being emotive and/or others on the receiving end of the expressions of feelings to be irresponsible or damaging when feeling angry. It can serve as an explanation and it may be fair and appropriate to have a higher tolerance for the degrees of intensity being expressed.

Maturity and Anger

Sometimes a key factor that influences how much venting a person does is that person’s maturity levels. Less mature people are often lacking in judgment and can be highly impulsive and ego-centric, all of which can contribute to how intensely they express themselves, what they say and do during the process, how much self-control they have, how clearly they assess the situation before, during and after expressing themselves, and how much responsibility they take for the impact their behavior has on others and on their relationships.

This may explain why children often emote their anger quickly and may need to have the opportunity initially during an anger episode to have a time for their venting before being asked to calm down and begin to think rationally.

As people become more socially, emotionally, intellectually, relationally, morally and spiritually mature, there seems to be an overall decrease in the need to openly vent and there often is a decrease in the intensity of initial reactions to situations that might have evoked strong, angry feelings when they were less mature. Both an outward expression and true inner feelings of calmness in the face of some of the typical everyday frustrations may be a hallmark of a more mature person.

Perhaps these changes are due to achieving some the wisdom Erickson describes as one of the developmental tasks of a later stage of human growth. Perhaps values and priorities shift so the concept of “Don’t sweat the small stuff and it’s all small stuff” is more easily embraced. Perhaps over time new appreciations for the needs and growth processes of others increase one’s tolerance levels.

Consider how much more tolerant and relaxed many grandparents are who once were much less tolerant of their own children. It isn’t just because they get more sleep. They have a wisdom and perspective that have given them a broader appreciation about how children grow and develop. These realizations and appreciations for children’s needs and typical behaviors allow them to more calmly enjoy children as they move through the various phases of their journey of childhood. As a result, grandparents often have a deeper, more relaxed attitude stemming from their appreciation of the power of time and the natural progressions of each stage of growth.

At the same time they can be more tolerant and relaxed, more mature people may be much clearer about the deeper values and injustices around human rights issues, environmental concerns (i.e. the fundamentally more profound matters with greater potential to severely impact people now and in future generations that often require some degree of anger and even outrage to motivate and sustain the energy needed to persevere towards influencing change).

More mature people tend to use their anger wisely and appreciate it as a signal that does not need an outburst to be heard and respected. When more mature people are actively venting anger, chances are there is some powerfully important social injustice or critical unfairness that needs to be addressed.

Maturity does not automatically occur because of chronological aging. Some chronologically young people can achieve remarkably high levels of maturity in any of the following areas: moral, relational, spiritual, intellectual, emotional and social. Chronologically mature people (typically over the age of 40) are not necessarily mature in any or all of these areas. Other than physically, the process of maturing is not automatic. Just because someone is chronologically young or old does not automatically mean he or she will be highly mature or immature with regard to how he or she handles or responds to anger.

Venting With the Goals of Bringing Clarity and Mastery

Often children and sometimes adults can benefit from the process of acting out a situation in which they experienced a high intensity of feelings as a way of effectively dealing with and healing from a difficult experience. As they go back and re-enact and re-experience traumatic experiences, they can gain a greater and greater degree of understanding and appreciation for their pain, fear, losses, and reasons underlying anger. Such re-enactments can be a crucial part of a therapeutic process with the goal of achieving clarity and mastery over the helplessness such trauma can cause.