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johnsons working theory on anger 🧵 tl;dr there's a difference between "offensive" and "defensive" anger, the former is destructive and hurts people, the latter creates safety and is divine. the root of the difference is whether one's pain is owned vs unowned
i'm going to use 2 words to point to these 2 distinct feelings: anger and rage. in my experience/observation, the heart of anger is protective, defensive - "no. stop. this matters". and when it's mixed with pain, it becomes offensive, which i call rage - "fuck you, you are shit"
what i call rage is what i perceive as what people associate with anger - destructive, lashing out, hurting people. there are good but unfortunate reasons why people do this.lovingly/compassionately, many people don't want to hurt others, and disown anger and make it Bad
the components of anger are 1) something that i love, often loved ones or myself or parts of myself, 2) an assumption that it's under attack/threat, and 3) sensations/feeling and an expression of the feeling
canonical anger is beautiful: "i love this thing. it matters to me so much. it seems like you're wanting to fuck with it. if so, don't you dare. ROAR" there's no tinge of blame, of hurting the other person, there's just love, an intent to protect, and checking an assumption
i was moved to tears when i first grasped self protective anger. what anger shows is that i matter, whether i like it or not. i don't get a say in it. in fact even if i don't want to matter, even if i try to suppress anger for decades, it still comes
the heat that rises in my body is unalienable proof that despite my best efforts to suppress my nobility, something in me (in the universe?) says "nope you are worthy, deal with it". anger is the first thing i've ever described as divine https://t.co/UpOM58WeWu
now rage gets a bad rap, as largely it should. it's not that taking offensive action in the name of defense is bad - sometimes we're truly backed into a corner, perhaps literally, and the only way to meaningfully defned is to attack. i need to be willing to do this if necessary
but the reality is that this is almost never necessary. there's almost always alternatives to attacking. one i've been learning the last year is "walking away". another one is checking my assumption with the other person (that the thing i love is under threat). it often is not
in practice, the offensive version isn't about necessity, but about unowned pain. rage is "i'm in pain and its your fucking fault". owning that pain is incredibly hard if you've spent a lifetime "being tough", if youve never learned to talk about it, if you have a fuckton of it
owning the pain, instead, looks like understanding my own pain. in my case, ive noticed and released massive backlogs of unexpressed pain that led to uncontrollable rage. expressing the pain can drastically moderate the visceral experience of rage https://t.co/k2H3xZhWmS
once my experience of pain is proportional to the present experience (and not amplified by decades of unexpressed pain), the question becomes - can i notice, admit to, express my pain? if so, then i don't need to go on the offense at all
in fact, i may not even need to go into anger, if i understand myself deeply enough to articulate, and it's with someone/people i trust. "ow, what you said/did stung, this hurts. it touched this tender part of me with this insecurity"
ive done this now with a few women i was seeing - instead of defend, let in the pain, let it land, and name it - with jawdropping results. completely changed the tenor of difficult conversations. led me to realizing this https://t.co/HrobV4qmtC
if in a conflict between people that love each other, you can stay at the level of pain, you can work through it. i shared this with a friend who reported massive success/effect when he said this, basically verbatim, with the woman he was seeing
the protection of anger only becomes necessary if the pain becomes overwhelming. to me there's a nobility to being able to allow more pain, something along these lines - but not necessary at all, defend yourself whenever you start feeling appropriate https://t.co/MFUNaRf57P
the energy of clean anger is a clear, blameless boundary. prior to pain it's a kind but firm "No." during pain it's a kind but firm "Stop." it's worth celebrating, because only when we can fully trust no's can we fully trust yesses
my sense is that healthy anger is early and often. if as soon as i feel some pain i can say "stop", ill say it with kindness, little emotional charge, no ill will. or i can drop right into the pain, letting it land, expressing it, and it won't feel overwhelming
it feels like there's something vaguely developmental/maturity related here RE: owning pain. i don't think it's a coincidence that most coming of age rituals/rites of passage involve doing something difficult/painful. https://t.co/XZ7VxUivHs
i dont want to veer too much into pain away from anger, but want to offer enough since the 2 are inextricably tied together. if anger is defensive, there's only something to defend if there's (potential) pain
an interpretation of anger that im quite proud of https://t.co/YCIiRZ5W8m
If I’m angry about something in the past, part of it is my inner child justifiably holding adult me accountable for failing to protect him. Part of resolving anger is owning that responsibility I have to myself. Often it looks like not honoring myself, or trusting when I shouldnt