Emotional relief is not the same as emotional recovery

Venting can be like scratching a mosquito bite. It feels like it works at first. Studies have shown a drop in diastolic blood pressure of 1 to 10 points after venting. But they show no attendant drop in hostility. It feels like we release anger or frustration, but we don’t. Even if we didn’t experience this temporary alleviation, there’s the fact that negative feelings naturally dissipate over time. People who do nothing assume the abatement owes to time; people who vent believe venting did the trick. And our choices can be self-reinforcing. If it seems like venting worked, we’re less likely to abide by social norms around holding back in the future. 

Gail Cornwall & Juli Fraga writing in Slate

How Numbers Can Lead to Biases

To simplify the world enough that it can be captured with numbers means throwing away a lot of detail. The inevitable omissions can bias the data against certain groups. (Deborah Stone in her book Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters) describes an attempt by the United Nations to develop guidelines for measuring levels of violence against women.

Representatives from Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand put forward ideas about types of violence to be included, based on victim surveys in their own countries. These included hitting, kicking, biting, slapping, shoving, beating, and choking.

Meanwhile, some Bangladeshi women proposed counting other forms of violence—acts that are not uncommon on the Indian subcontinent—such as burning women, throwing acid on them, dropping them from high places, and forcing them to sleep in animal pens. None of these acts were included in the final list.

When surveys based on the U.N. guidelines are conducted, they’ll reveal little about the women who have experienced these forms of violence. As Stone observes, in order to count, one must first decide what should be counted.

Hannah Fry writing in The New Yorker

5 internal contributions to anger

1-Self-esteem

People who try to be self-sufficient are easily frustrated and angered when they see evidence of their dependence on others. They get angry at themselves for needing others and they get angry at other people for “keeping” them in this weakness.

2-Desire for Power in Relationships

Some people feel threatened by the need to give up power in love relationships. For instance, a batterer may use anger to intimidate others in a quest for power. It’s a way to caution the abused person against using their own power. To avoid rousing their anger, spouses end up tiptoeing around the other to avoid confrontation because the price is too high to pay.

3-Desire to be Perfect

Unrealistic standards must be met for the person to feel worthwhile and accepted.

Whenever there is a perceived loss of perfection, the person becomes depressed (angry with themselves) for small failures. The student who gets a B-plus instead of an A, etc. These people also set up high standards for others to achieve and are quickly judgmental. They are hurt by others who do not join them in the quest for perfection. Even though they may be chronic confessors, but growth comes slow because they don’t want to accept their limitations.

4-Guilt

Unresolved guilt can lead to irritability. People have trouble admitting their faults.

5-Rejection

Rejection leaves people feeling hurt and worthless. When significant others disdain our contributions or act as if we are inferior and unimportant we bolster self-esteem by rejecting others ourselves, using the weapons of anger and hostility.  Since it does not heal the relationship or self-esteem, it is a temporary fix. 

Taking the Abuse

When someone stays in an abusive situation, there must be a measure comfort in that identity for the victim. The abused, in effect, says to themselves, "I know what to do when playing this role." To become someone different means acknowledging there is a choice--and with that realization comes the uncomfortable recognition of responsibility.

A victim may tell themselves, “At least in the abusive situation I know the old pain and its ways."  Moving toward change means stepping into the unknown. Fear can freeze the victim into making no decision, defaulting to the status quo, keeping the situation the same as it has always been.

Perhaps the abuse fits some part of how they have chosen to define themselves. To choose not to be abused means redefining the identity. In the end, some people would prefer to keep the painful but familiar abuse rather than entering a new kind of pain--one that accompanies building a new identity.

Victims who choose to no longer be victims take an heroic step. It's an empowering choice--and only those who have made a similar decision can fully grasp its breath and courage.

Stephen Goforth

A taste for the bitters

Why do we accept bitter feelings? Why do we nourish acidic emotions and slowly allow them to eat away our attitudes, motives, and even our spirits? The bitters come in so many varieties.

There’s the I’ve-been-used-and-abused brand of bitterness that lets us stew in our own anger juices. It grows when we have no opportunity to vent these hostilities against the person who has hurt us. As a substitute, we take it out on ourselves.

There’s the everyone’s-against-me-nobody-cares kind of bitterness that grow into a full-blown martyr complex. Complete with self-pity and all the extras.

Bitterness can form from a sense of I’ve-been-neglected-forgotten-and-overlooked-a routine especially real when someone feels trapped in the house all day long with whining toddlers, endless chores, and a spouse who is out all day what appears to be an endless fascinating world.

Or it may be the blind, curse-it-all-I’d-rather-be-dead bitterness that follows tragedy, grief, or failure. We withdraw into ourselves in despair.

Our world is infested these bitters and unless we build a support system externally and internally we may find them all too often corrupting our palates so the whole of life tastes bitter.

Based on a passage from Gene Van Note’s Building Self-Esteem