Anger evolved in all mammals to motivate immediate survival defense, territorial dominance, and mating competition. But it reduces survivability when these motivations lead directly to fighting — even a scratch in the wild can become infected and life-threatening. All mammals, including humans, adapted anger for posturing to prevent violence. The adaptive motivation of anger — what it prepares us to do — is to devalue, warn, threaten, or intimidate. These are short-term motivations, experienced only occasionally, sometimes seasonally. Anger did not evolve and is maladaptive for its most common current use by humans — continual ego-defense.

We all have egos fed by ideals and cognitive biases, if not outright self-deception, and reinforced socially by impression management. We all occasionally use anger in ego defense. The frequency and intensity of anger depends on the stability of the ego, whether it’s externally regulated (what others think of us) or internally constructed from values and conviction. Relying on anger for ego-defense weakens the ego, just as owning guns makes us feel less secure without them.

Of course, not all anger is problem anger. Feeling anger is fine; it takes only a few minutes and does not typically lead to self-defeating or destructive behavior. As a rule, anger only becomes a problem when it makes us act against our long-term best interests or keeps us from acting in our best interests.

I have never seen an anger problem that was not a function of justifying anger. We completely lose sight of our best interests with a focus on justifying anger.

Justifying anger can only address why questions: “Why am I angry?”

“I’m angry because they disrespected, disregarded, cheated, deceived me.…”

When anger lasts more than a few minutes, it takes on a ruminative function, causing us to relive insults and make predictions of the future, based on past perceptions of insults.

We’re all prone to such rumination, due to state dependent recall, that is, when experiencing an emotion, especially a strong one like anger, we’re likely to access only memories encoded in that emotional state. When resentful at a spouse, we’re likely to recall offenses going back years. But we’ll remember only good things when we feel sweet and loving toward our spouses. If unaware of this aspect of memory, we assume that we’ve always felt the way we do now and always will. That assumption becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when the emotional state is anger, which is the most contagious of emotions. Angry people make people angry.

Most folks confine the rumination of justifying anger to low-grade resentment, with occasional angry outbursts. Although resentment feels bad and eventually destroys relationships, it’s not likely to get us arrested.

My first experience of the extreme effects of rumination/justification occurred many years ago. A young client was court-ordered into treatment for beating up a kid, whom he thought disrespected him. It turned out to be the wrong kid; someone else shouted the insulting remark. My client’s justifications were that the victim probably thought the insult but didn’t dare verbalize it; either that or he did something in the past to deserve the beating.

Even in minor cases, the rumination process of anger post-incident keeps the wound open. Each time we think of it, more cortisol is secreted, and a new memory of the memory is created. It feels like it didn’t happen once, it happened a thousand times.

Think How, Not Why

To be adaptive, that is, to meet the challenges of contemporary life, anger requires “how” questions and answers.

“How can I solve the problems or meet the challenges that made me angry?”

The rumination process can be adapted from:

“I’m angry because I was disrespected, insulted, abused. I must retaliate to hold people accountable for the damage I have suffered and set boundaries for future safety.”

Note that to justify the anger and retaliation, you must perceive yourself to be damaged. Boundaries set with anger and resentment are lines in the sand, which never feel quite genuine. They tell you what you’re against, rather than what you’re for. Genuine boundaries emerge from within, from your values and beliefs, which differentiate you from those you want to set boundaries against. Most people find internally regulated boundaries preferable to reacting to a jerk like a jerk. (A “justified” jerk is still a jerk.)

The rumination process can be adapted to:

“Here are the challenges or problems, and here are the possible solutions.”

Example:

"I can solve the problem of having been disrespected, insulted, or abused by focusing on healing and enhancing my self-value and self-interest. If there are legal avenues to pursue to prevent future violations, I will take them.”

Remember that anger did not evolve for problem-solving or negotiation. It oversimplifies and amplifies threat, makes it impossible to see other perspectives, lowers frustration tolerance, and blocks positive passion.

No Need to Justify

Tragically, the harm of justifying anger is completely preventable because justifying anger is completely unnecessary. You never need to justify it; it’s perfectly valid, and you have every right to feel it. The crucial point to consider is, do you want to feel it? Is it helping you be the person you want to be or have the life you want to live? Anger keeps us in a devalued state and devalues our experience.

Healing occurs when we shift focus from justifying anger to improving our experience and our connections to others. We must choose between healing and justifying anger because it’s hardly possible to do both.

While most problem anger serves as ego defense, some of it is directed at protecting others from unjust or unfair treatment. In my next post, I’ll show how passionate conviction is more effective for attaining interpersonal and social justice, and much better for your emotional and physical health.