What About Anger?
The Pyschological Viewpoint

Let’s look at Lela Lee and Asian American identity from a psychological viewpoint. Her powerful use of anger and her enshrining of anger in an age of extreme emotions are welcome to many. And troubling to some.

What is anger? Is it good or bad?

Anger primes our bodies and minds for a fight. It makes you feel stronger in situations that seem threatening. It is to be distinguished from aggression, which is actual threatening or damaging behavior. It is also different than hostility, which is an attitude and set of judgments that lead one to dislike others and evaluate them negatively. Anger, as one of our basic emotions, is neither good nor bad in itself, but has potential for being either.

Generally, anger springs from three sources. You may feel angry when (a) you are being threatened; (b) someone/something you love or care about is being threatened, or (c) your needs aren’t being met and you become frustrated. At their cores, all these reasons hinge upon the survival instinct. If you are threatened or your needs aren’t being met—you might die. So your brain sends signals to tense your body, raise your heart rate, and pump up your adrenaline, as you get ready to attack. You’ve been pushed into fight-or-flight response mode.

Anger is a difficult emotion, a burning fire hard to tame. At times we need fire to clear the dead undergrowth so that a new forest can grow. And the anger of Lela Lee or Baûo Phi (the Minneapolis-based poet featured in the September/October 2004 issue of NHAØ) is vital in establishing our identities and boundaries as Asian Americans. Similarly, the anger of political activists is useful in motivating and energizing them to do great deeds on behalf of the community. Their anger may have its personal roots as well, but serves to protect threatened ideals or peoples.

So is anger good or bad? That question is probably not as important as getting curious about the anger itself: understanding where it’s coming from, and what to do with it. It’s an important signal that something’s awry. Perhaps its energy can be turned to constructive purpose. Certainly, “stuffing it” or bottling it up inside, can lead to worse problems—like depression.

But sometimes anger burns up both self and other. It can morph into hostility and aggression. It can burn unresolved for years, wounding the angry individual but doing nothing to the target of the anger. We are confronted with inappropriate anger frequently, from road rage to vitriolic marital arguments. Psychotherapists and other counselors help individuals and couples explore the roots of their anger and underlying fears, and coach skills to deal with unhealthy anger. A skilled therapist can help uncover and heal wounds of early life that can fuel and misdirect anger.

The most effective way to deal with a short fuse is to take a time out when you notice your tension rising. Distracting yourself, not thinking about the problem, even holding ice cubes or running cool water over your hands can help. Connecting with supportive friends helps.

Marital disputes are a challenge as well. The Gottman Institute in Seattle studied and analyzed many couples, and has generated a wealth of data about what works and doesn’t work, especially in arguments. They can actually predict whether or not a couple will get divorced by watching the first three minutes of their arguments! They’ve come up with the “Four Horsemen” of marital conflict, which actually can come up in all kinds of couples, happily married and not. They are (1) Criticism; (2) Stonewalling; (3) Contempt; and (4) Defensiveness. It turns out that stereotypically, women come into a discussion with a harsh, angry or critical startup, and men respond by stonewalling or shutting down. Obviously this leads to cyclical patterns which don’t solve or even address the real issues that are sparking the argument. Couples that do well in marriage have five times more positivity even in their disagreements. Couples that do poorly have more negativity. The biggest indicator for divorce turns out to be showing contempt for the partner, or deriding them as persons unworthy of respect. Contempt turns out to predict the partner’s likelihood of being sick over the next four years, since it actually weakens that partner’s immune system.

Learning communication techniques that don’t trigger your partner’s survival mode helps. One wise method for delivering criticism is “five strokes before a poke”, or leading any criticism with plenty of compliments. Building up your “emotional bank account” with many small acts of fondness and admiration for your partner can serve you when the chips are down.

Finally, becoming more sensitive and responsive to the emotional needs of those around us, and generating kindness, love and compassion even for those we disagree with is important in creating our own well being, and ultimately in creating a world where defensive anger is rare, because we will be actively protecting and nurturing each other.

Until then, though, here’s to all the Angry Little Asian Girls and Angry Little Asian Boys out there! Your energy and motivation is vital to all of us—and to your own growth! But remember, anger can destroy as it protects. Perhaps it’s possible to purify anger, to treat it like a precious instrument, finely tuning it so it hits the right pitch at the right time, and then goes silent afterward.

Is anger good or bad? It’s a question that needs to be asked about each instance of anger. Why did it arise? Where did it lead us?

Thanks to Lela Lee, we have another advocate for our identities as Asian Americans.

To find out more about Lela Lee and her work go to www.angrylittlegirls.com. Also check out the miniseries Searching for Asian America, available from NAATA at www.naatanet.org

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Ravi Chandra, MD is a psychiatrist and writer in San Francisco. He is involved with several local Asian American arts and social organizations, and is a regular contributor to NHA. He may be reached at drchandra@mac.com.