The angry man, the same tired trope wheeled out and worn thin by our media.
Anger. It makes me wonder. We try to understand, disentangle and colour in the infinite complexity of our human emotions; to find the contours of happiness, the shape of joy, the curves and hard edges of nostalgia, anxiety, sadness, excitement and grief.
It’s a life long journey we all embark on, in the hope to better make sense the miraculous pieces of our mind, to help manage them better – and one emotion I find deserving of further examination, is anger.
Anger. The loud, brash, bold and seemingly hamfisted brute we all fall victim too.
Well, from what I know, anger is usually a secondary emotion, not something that exists on its own, but as the result of something else.
To understand it, we should not ask what it is, but why it’s here? Why is someone angry? What is behind it? What is it hiding?
Is it fear, is it distress, is it sadness, is it insecurity, is it trauma? Ask that, and a fractal of deeper and more meaningful emotions will open up.
So look again at the angry man – are you really looking at a human who is more complex and who perhaps needs more time to express his feelings? A man feeling more than he is letting on, far better at concealing his true emotions than we give him credit for?
What do you see behind anger?
Illustration by RROOK from The Noun Project
#mensmentalhealth