Anger,

 

A long time ago, I had one very pleasant skype conversation with the famous neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp. I had studied his book “Affective Neuroscience” and I felt compelled, to get in touch with him. Unlike so many other people, I had tried in vain to contact, I was surprised, to get to talk with him. I remember him saying, at the end of our wonderful conversation: “Keep raking the fields of Affective Neuroscience.”

 

Panksepp agreed, that his views about primary emotional systems, perfectly dovetailed with my description of the great difference between Disembodied Language (DL) and Embodied Language (EL). These two cross-species ways of expressing affect, contain our negative and positive emotions. These negative and positive feelings, are, of course, audible in the sound of our voice while we speak. Thus, if we listen, we can hear what someone is feeling. Naturally, we can also fake our feelings, but we can detect that too.

 

The big difference between our DL and our EL, is that in DL, we don’t listen to ourselves, while we speak, that is, we just don't want or like to hear it, but during EL, we listen to ourselves, while we speak, because we like and want to hear it. Our autonomic nervous system responds very differently, when we experience negative or positive emotions. During episodes, in which we experience RAGE/Anger, FEAR/Anxiety or PANIC/Sadness, our body has what is known as a fight/flight/freeze response, but when we have positive affect, such as SEEKING/Expectancy, CARE/Nurturing, PLAY/Social Joy and LUST, these evolutionary mobilization responses to a threat are absent and we are in the ideal state to communicate.

 

The word emotion comes from Latin “emovere”, which means, to move. Therefore, to feel, is to do something, because our emotions motivate us into action, to both survive and thrive. Since we are predominantly engaging in DL, however, we are almost permanently busy with surviving, with negative affect, but seldom with thriving, with EL, with positive emotions. We can only thrive and experience meaningful interaction or EL, in which we listen to ourselves – and, therefore, to each other – in the absence of any threat.

 

Simply stated, anger is a biological response, which prepares us to fight. The big mistake inevitably made, by people, who don’t know anything about the difference between DL and EL, is in DL, we believe, we can fight injustice by changing the laws or by enforcing new norms. However, all our endless arguments, discussions, debates or disputes prevent EL and will have to be stopped entirely, before we can finally have ongoing EL.

 

Honoring our anger – by taking the time, to talk  out loud, alone, with ourselves; by describing to our best ability, what it is that is demanding our attention; by listening to the sound of our own voice; by switching from DL to EL – is important for our health and wellbeing. There are so many things, we can become angry about, but with our unconscious DL, we never fully understand, why we keep being so angry. Only if we stop our DL – since we really don’t like to hear the sound of our own voice – our anger subsides, because we consciously decrease our involvement in DL and deliberately increase our involvement in EL.

 

Due to my discovery of the difference between my own DL and EL, I have found, that the most difficult thing about dealing with my anger was, that because of my mechanical involvement in DL, I felt angry, upset and anxious about being angry. In DL, we are always shamed for our anger. Once we begin to have ongoing EL, however, we realize, we have – in DL – always been punished for being angry. In EL, we come to grips with our anger, as we realize, that it was justified and necessary. While it may have been troubling, our anger was and is blessing in disguise, a form of protection. Moreover, with EL, we don’t find inner, but outer peace, as our relations change, in that, we only engage with those with whom we can have EL.