Anger is a PRIMARY emotion

I get irritated by this idea that anger is a 'secondary' emotion. It seems patently stupid.

Look at a newborn infant. See that squalling, red, angry face? That maddened bellow is pure, raw life force, expressing itself from the very deepest level of the organism's need to survive. That newborn hasn't yet had the chance to develop the multitudinuous and ever-increasingly complex layers of obfuscation and delusion that allow us to survive in a world filled with bullshittery. That baby is telling it like it is: "I want what I want, and I want it NOW! And all y'all better drop everything you're doing and get it for me or I'll just scream and scream and scream 'til my little lungs come out my body or I DIE, whichever comes first..."

Anger is, then, the ultimate protective force, the power that is our shield, our armor, our battering ram, the life force that propels us unstoppably through life.

It's all the other emotions that are secondary, that come afterward, from damming up and blocking that life force, such as shame, guilt, humiliation, even sadness. Sadness at opportunities lost comes rather painfully to mind.

Calling anger a 'secondary' emotion is a cop-out by generations of sheep-people who've been too brainwashed to see or think straight any more. It's another one of those bogeymen/man-behind-the-curtain distractions used to scare children (and not very bright people) into conforming to the expectations of others. It's just another bludgeon or cudgel that power abusers use to keep others in line with their expectations. (People who see anger as a problem in *others* are often the ones who most often use anger as a weapon themselves...)

This (shrink-written) article says some things about anger that I quite agree with (and says a few other things that I find objectionable - shrinks are always a little too sure of themselves, making broad sweeping generalizations based solely on their own experiences. Like Freud, e.g.)

I've split it up into smaller pieces so that I can focus on each bit more easily. From this website:

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/200901/the-primacy-anger-problems

In psychotherapy, the single most powerful and healing intervention the clinician can offer is to listen to the angry patient, and to acknowledge and accept his or her rage.

Yay! One of the paid brainwashers finally tells the truth!!!

Anger and rage have to first be validated, expressed and understood before the underlying affects or cognitions can be effectively addressed. The dilemma is that most mental health professionals denigrate and demonize anger, dismissing it as an inappropriate, destructive and negative and neurotic emotion.

Yes, exactly. The whole reason people remain 'trapped' in anger is because people trap them by being unwilling to listen to, hear or understand their perfectly valid reasons for being angry in the first place. Thus perpetuating the cycle endlessly.

Like the stupid idiot who wonders why you're hassling him about his behavior yet again. Clue stick, asshole: I'm hassling you again because you're still being a fucking asshole.

Very simple equation for you, you mindless twit: You do something to piss me off? I'm pissed. It's not random, or crazy, or wacky, or incomprehensible. It is a totally rational response to YOU being a complete fucking asshole.

***

This is how I see anger:

But anger is an appropriate, natural and healthy response to frustration, injury, insult, and anything that threatens one's survival or psychological integrity. We need to be able to get angry at such obstacles, challenges and assaults.

Anger can bestow strength and tenacity in the face of adversity.

Our culture expends vast quantities of human energy on bottling up anger, one way or another. I've always thought this was stupid, and wrong. Yes, I agree it's important to try not to do damage with one's anger. But I think it's like sword-fighting - in theory a person who really knows what they're doing with a rapier can be like a surgeon, cutting away the dreck and using their sharp edge to keep others from doing them harm. But like anything else, an inexperienced swordsperson can do incredible amounts of damage. So, they need to be trained. Not how to not use the sword, but how to use it carefully, in a controlled fashion. Like some of what I've read of martial arts training, where preparedness is everything. Or, as Edna Mode puts it,

"I'm sure I don't know, dahling. Luck favors the prepared."

Also:

When we are socialized to view getting angry as negative, evil, immoral or unspiritual, as so many of us have been, we repress our anger--as we repress other impulses or passions of which we are ashamed.

This is exactly what Jung describes as the shadow: those aspects of experience we find unacceptable, reject, and quarantine to unconsciousness. Anger is commonly experienced (if it is consciously experienced at all) as a shameful emotion which must be hidden from others, and often, even from ourselves.

The last thing therapists should do when working with angry patients is to further shame them for feeling angry.

Shout it from the rooftops.