Anger is one of the most commonly experienced emotions.1Osgood, J. M., & Quartana, P. J. (2021). An overview of anger: A common emotion with a complicated backstory. It’s considered a negative emotion because it doesn’t feel good and can have negative consequences. Like other negative emotions, it signals that something has gone wrong in your life. Anger doesn’t occur in a vacuum. You’re always angry at something—yourself, someone else, life, the system, the world- anything.
Like many other emotions, we feel anger when we interpret a situation as obstructive to our important goal-achievement.2Wranik, T., & Scherer, K. R. (2009). Why do I get angry? A componential appraisal approach. In International handbook of anger: Constituent and concomitant biological, psychological, and social processes (pp. 243-266). New York, NY: Springer New York. The key word here is interpret. This interpretation can be right or wrong. If you believe someone has obstructed your goal-achievement, you’ll feel angry at them even if, in reality, they haven’t actually done anything like that.
Proportionate vs disproportionate anger
If someone insults you and you’re angry, people understand your anger and empathize with you. Many will see it as a proportionate reaction if you insult your insulter back. If, however, they insulted you once and you continue to insult them back for months, your anger reaction would be disproportionate.
The interesting part here is that you may be blind to the fact that you’re overreacting. In your mind, you might feel justified in reacting the way you did. Unless you have a high level of self-awareness, people around you may alert you and say that you’re overreacting. If you tend to get angry over little things, you’re self-aware enough to know that you’re overreacting. That’s an excellent place to be in to change your patterns.
Reasons for disproportionate anger
1. Negative emotional state
When I say negative emotional state, I mean anything that gives you a subjective feeling of discomfort, regardless of intensity. Hunger puts you in a negative internal state. So does lack of sleep. Other things that put you in a negative internal state include:
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Irritability
- Sadness
- Depression
- Dissatisfaction
- Jealousy
- Resentment
- Guilt
- Frustration
- Lack of love
- Lack of respect
- Going against your values
- Being under pressure
- Health issues
Anger is often experienced as a secondary emotion in response to some primary negative emotion. For instance, if someone makes you feel guilty, you’re likely to get angry at them for doing so. When you go against your values, you’re likely to be disappointed in yourself and then get angry at yourself.
When you’re already in a negative emotional state, you have limited capacity to handle any more emotional pain. So you get angry at people who try to bring more pain to your life. The little annoying things they do make you very angry because there is no more room left in your mind for more emotional pain.
For instance, if you’re stressed by work, you’re likely to be irritable and have a low tolerance for your family members’ bad behaviors. If your life is going well and you’re not experiencing a negative internal state, you’re more tolerant of others’ bad behaviors.
Resentment is a common reason people get angry over little things in a relationship. You do something wrong (X) that angers your partner. Since it’s not easy for many people to confront major issues head-on, they suppress their anger. Days later, they get angry with you over a small thing like “Why did you leave the socks on the floor?” You wonder why they’re getting so angry with you about such a small thing. You’ve left the socks on the floor in the past, too, but they never reacted so negatively. What’s different now?
What’s different now is that they’re angry over what happened earlier (X) when they suppressed their anger. They’re angry because you did X, not because you left the socks on the floor. Listening to what they’re saying during the argument will reveal what they’re really angry about.
Even not liking someone puts you in a negative internal state in relation to that person. You may find that you get annoyed with every little thing that they do.
2. Getting triggered
The same event may cause person A to overreact but not person B. To person A, their own reaction will seem normal. To person B and many other observers, person A definitely overreacted. As mentioned earlier, anger and other emotions arise out of our interpretations of reality—the meaning we give to what happens around us.
The meaning we give to what happens around us is primarily shaped by our past experiences, especially traumatic ones. So, a person who reacts with disproportionate anger when called ‘fat’ might be doing so because they were previously bullied for being fat. When insulted this way, they not only experience the pain of the present insult but also the emotional pain of similar past events.
When something touches our core wounds, we get triggered and are likely to overreact. This is an excellent opportunity to understand what parts of you need healing. When you work on your triggers and change how you interpret such events, you’ll find that these events no longer generate disproportionate anger in you.