Finding Feeling and Purpose BY Michael Samsel
Right now, at the outset, I would like to make an important distinction between, on one hand, a healing emotion, anger, and on the other hand, a destructive force I call rage. When most people speak of ‘anger problems,’ ‘anger management,’ or fearing someone’s anger, they are speaking about rage. Rage is a destructive action. It's only possible outcome is to break someone or something.
The most fundamental reason that a self-protective impulse emerges as well-possessed anger in some and distorted rage in others is physiological. Rage results from the impulse of self-protection being forced through the 'fight-or-flight system, that is, mediated through the sympathetic nervous system. Anger, on the other hand, is mediated by the ventro-vagal 'social receptivity' system, part of the parasympathetic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is not under immediate conscious control, but it can be purposely shifted over time toward relaxation and social engagement. which is what much of this website is about. Although the goal of this page is the understanding of the healing and beneficial qualities of anger, it is necessary to have one's mind put at rest about violence. To this end, rage is discussed rather thoroughly in the box below, so that a more confident discussion of true anger may follow.
Rage is not so much an emotion as it is an activation of the emergency defense system. Three broad biological conditions are involved: 1) the fight or flight system of the sympathetic nervous system is activated, 2) certain, “conflict recognition” areas in the limbic (emotional) brain are triggered, and 3) the executive part of the cortex (orbito-frontal) loses contact with the previously mentioned limbic areas.
