Understanding one's anger

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I am pretty sure that for a lot of people (and for myself more so in the past and less so now, and progressively less so it seems) - when they get angry, they are fairly sure what they are angry about.

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That was not my training or experience as a Lifeline counselor.

We were taught that at any given moment few people can accurately identify what they are really feeling.

Anger in men is text book example: The obvious issue may have nothing to do with the anger. Road rage is a good example. the violence may have little or nothing to with the road incident,which is just trigger.

Often anger masks another emotion.In our society is not acceptable for a man to express fear or sadness,so he expresses anger,which is far more acceptable.

Angers is not an acceptable emotion for a woman to express. Fear is OK,but sadness is best. A woman will often express sadness (cry) when angry.


I'm making a distinction between authentic and 'racket feelings' The notion of 'racket emotions' is from Transactional Analysis.

A racket is the dual strategy of getting “permitted feelings,” while covering up feelings which we truly feel, but which we regard as being “not allowed”.

More technically, a racket feeling is “a familiar set of emotions, learned and enhanced during childhood, experienced in many different stress situations, and maladaptive as an adult means of problem solving”.

A racket is then a set of behaviors which originate from the childhood script rather than in here-and-now full Adult thinking, which (1) are employed as a way to manipulate the environment to match the script rather than to actually solve the problem, and (2) whose covert goal is not so much to solve the problem, as to experience these racket feelings and feel internally justified in experiencing them.

Examples of racket and racket feelings: “Why do I meet good guys who turn out to be so hurtful”, or “He always takes advantage of my goodwill”. The racket is then a set of behaviors and chosen strategies learned and practiced in childhood which in fact help to cause these feelings to be experienced. Typically this happens despite their own surface protestations and hurt feelings, out of awareness and in a way that is perceived as someone else’s fault. One covert pay-off for this racket and its feelings, might be to gain in a guilt free way, continued evidence and reinforcement for a childhood script belief that “People will always let you down”.

http://www.epsychology.us/transactional-analysis/5/