Anger (1)

I am reading a book "Women at work: strategies for survival and success" by Anne Dickson. It is marketed that it offers practical suggestions on how to develop genuine self-confidence based on discussion of real life problems that women encounter. It is a pretty thin book and I did not expect much from it.

I was surprised to discover that this book was more than just a bag of pseudo-practical empty tips of what to do and what not to do, like many others such book are. This book digs deeper, to the roots of problems. It is a book about assertiveness, but it is even more a book about emotions. The problematic and destructive emotions, the ones that we call "negative emotions" such as anger, anxiety and depression.

Dickinson argues that many of problems that women face at work stem from inappropriate dealing (or not dealing) with those emotions. She proposes healthy and appropriate ways that enable women to set boundaries.

For me the personal revelation was the chapter on anger. I have recently recognized that I am angry at issues that were happening at work. But I did not exactly know where this anger was coming from, I knew that this is a diagnostic signal to myself that something was not quite right, but I did know what. So I had no idea how to prevent it. Also I did not have a clue what to do about it. How to react to it and how to get rid of this powerful emotion.

The chapter on anger helped me to see where it could be coming from:

"The emotion of anger and associated feelings of irritation, frustration and resentment are associated with [..] needs for engagement and containment. When these needs are interrupted or blocked in some way, we experience anger."

It listed some of the possible reasons for feeling angry at work:

"Anger is a healthy, natural response to the experience of being cheated, invaded, deceived, treated unfairly, to the experience of having no choice. Anger is a healthy, natural response to effort being wasted, goalposts being changed, being excluded from information, being denied resources [..].Both too little structure and too much structure can make us angry."

Now I know where my anger was coming from. Whether I will be able to deal with it appropriately I am not exactly sure yet. (to be continued in the next post)