How Not to Get Rid of Your Anger: Venting

Last updated on: March 26, 2015 at 11:47 am by Kyle Roberts

How Not to Get Rid of Your Anger: Venting 2015-03-26T11:47:55-05:00 Kyle Roberts

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Have you been trying to give up anger for lent?

How’s it working for you? If you’ve been trying to get rid of your anger by venting, then odds are: not so well.

Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, authors of Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me), give the example of the “Damn it Doll,” a cathartic method suggested on the internet for getting rid of your anger and frustration. The source suggests that, after putting your Doll together, just “grasp it firmly by the legs, and find a place to slam it. And as you whack its stuffing out, yell, ‘damnit, damnit, damnit!’

The problem is, such cathartic methods of releasing anger and frustration don’t actually work. Psychological studies show that in fact they do the opposite: “releasing” (expressing) anger actually creates more of it. They summarize:

The Damn It Doll reflects one of the most entrenched convictions in our culture, fostered by the psychoanalytic belief in the benefits of catharsis: that expressing anger or behaving aggressively gets rid of anger. Throw that doll, hit a punching bag, shout at your spouse; you’ll feel better afterward. Actually, decades of experimental research have found exactly the opposite: that when people vent their feelings aggressively they often feel worse, pump up their blood pressure, and make themselves even angrier (p. 26).

This all seems so counterintuitive to us because we have come to expect that expressing outrage will assuage the fury within us. It surprises us only if we don’t understand how “cognitive dissonance theory” works. We

I just had to use this here #unfinished business

humans don’t do well with cognitive dissonance, which is the a psychological term describing the contradiction or conflict that occurs in a person when what they assume to be true is being challenged by newly available evidence. A really handy way to overcome cognitive dissonance is to double-down on what we assume to be true–to turn a blind eye to the evidence and to work even harder at convincing ourselves that what we have assumed to be the case is true–despite evidence to the contrary. People are remarkably adept at justifying their (current) beliefs and convictions about things.

So here’s the kicker: When we express outrage or anger at something or someone, our internal self-justification mechanism kicks in full gear. We cannot abide by the possibility that our anger might not be justified, that it might be misplaced, that it might over-reach, and so on. And, we can’t imagine that we are the “type” of people who are just angry people, or who lash out for no good reason, or that we have impure motives. So, when we express anger, we double-down on that anger and get even angrier. This continuation or intensification of the anger only serves to confirm that our first expression of anger was justified.

We are remarkable creatures, aren’t we?

The authors then suggest that the “mechanism” at work in children, when they justify their aggression against other children by saying things like “he deserved it,” or “she started it” (i.e. “doubling down”), is the “same mechanism,” at work in bullies who mistreat vulnerable people, police beatings against already-captured suspects, and all manner of senseless, needless violence. As they write,

In all these cases, a vicious circle is created: Aggression begets self-justification, which begets more aggression (p. 27)

So if you’re trying to release your anger for Lent (or get rid of it generally in life) know that the way not to do it is by, well, expressing anger. Venting does not solve your anger problem–not even momentarily. It only increases it.

The psalmist seems privy to the way anger works:

When you are disturbed [or “angry”],do not sin;
ponder it on your beds, and be silent. (Psalm 4:4)

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/17587393@N03/4627769920″>Alien Doll</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>

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