The Importance of Anger

A New Post

It's been a long time since I've written anything, hasn't it? Sorry about that. I have my reasons. My last blog post got such a heartwarming reception, and I was kinda hoping I could leave my legacy at that and wait for heart disease to take me while people still thought I was clever. You know, the George R.R. Martin approach.

The truth is that I haven't been burning to speak about anything for a while. When you're a lifelong depressive and you make the decision to try and be about something else, there's suddenly precious little to you. Your fashionable coat of suffering has been taken away and suddenly you're not Mr. Tortured Artist, you're just some frowny guy with sleep problems and man-tits.

In my quest to become a real person again I've had to start welcoming those pesky human emotions back into my life, and out of all those Anger has been the hardest to incorporate. I'm determined to bring this unsavoury feeling back into me in the healthiest way I can, which has got me thinking. How much anger should a person have? In what ways does anger help? In what ways does anger screw you over?

I want to talk about the Pros and Cons of being too angry, and the cost of repressing it, as I have ample experience with both.

What Does Too Much Anger Look Like?

The Cause

We've all seen someone with an explosive temper. It's an uncomfortable thing to witness, and it begs the question: Why would someone allow such a toxic emotion to take over their life?

When I was a kid, I got a reputation as the angriest kid in school, and I think the root of it was feeling perpetually out of favour with other kids. People didn't call me angry, they called me stressed, and I think the distinction was important. I wasn't using my anger in some sort of clever, Machiavellian, "give me your Pokemon cards and I'll leave you alone" sort of way. The anger was bigger than me and I was at its mercy a lot of the time, and I think other people picked up on that.

The Benefits

So anger sounds pretty destructive. But is there more to it?

A question: In television, why do we root for protagonists who are:

Surly?

Sarcastic?

Rude?

And Aggressive?

There are lots of characters we admire who you couldn't call 'nice'. That should clue us in that there's something we admire more than niceness and agreeableness, and that anger has some utility.

We prefer honest meanness to impotent niceness. There's something cathartic about a person who calls things like he sees them. More importantly - if these shows are anything to go by - we like people who can do things.

You could make the argument that these characters would be even greater forces for good if they managed to regulate their aggression, but the point still stands that in a world of people who want and need things, useful trumps nice. And maybe for some people there has to be a tradeoff between those two qualities. Maybe in order to become someone disciplined enough to cater to people's needs, you have to compromise your ability to be easygoing.

And maybe you're thinking that you'd rather take the nice person over the dutiful person. Don't be so sure. I bet you've had an amiable, weed-smoking roommate who never, ever cleaned, and I bet you'd be willing for them to have a little more of a stick up their ass if it meant you could walk into a kitchen without crying.

The Problem

That all being said, there are probably others like me who have taken that lesson too far.

Something that I had to realise when I was being mean to people is that the camera isn't there. This isn't a sitcom. That little tantrum you had in front of your friend wasn't worth it because you got to say something that sounded clever in your head. No one is keeping score of that.

There's a reason characters get away with being assholes on TV. Dr. House is a brilliant Diagnostician. Malcolm Tucker is a formidable spin doctor. Sherlock is a genius detective. A lot of characters get away with having a temper because they are too useful to be replaced. Not to mention there's a team of about 20 scriptwriters engineering every scenario so the angry man looks great and the person he's talking to looks like a big dumb loser. That just isn't how it works in real life. When you're an asshole, people get sick of you and stop hanging out with you.

And you have to practice your devastating one liners on the Samaritans Hotline.

I whined above about how - when I was in school - I used anger as a coping mechanism to deal with loneliness, depression and anxiety. But does all anger have such a sympathetic origin? Could there be more insidious reasons why someone lets anger take over their life?

I've been thinking about this a lot. About the reasons myself and others have lost their temper, and I don't think it's always as simple and blameless as 'Daddy didn't love me enough' or 'the other kids picked on me for being the only ten year old with a comb-over'.

I think people can be Angry to disguise the fact that they are Cruel.

Everyone finds sins committed in Wrath more palatable than sins committed in Cruelty. Crimes of Passion tend to receive lighter sentences than Premeditated crimes, for example. If you say something horrible to a friend, you're far more likely to be forgiven if you said it because you lost your temper.

It certainly goes over better than "I just wanted to see the dumb look on your fucking face".

Along with this sleight of hand comes the unpleasant task of having to generate reasons to be angry with people. It's a lot easier, for instance, to get away with saying something horrible if your excuse is "Well I shouldn't have, but by God he was dancing on my last nerve!". It is entirely possible for someone not to notice that he has been on his last nerve every day for a decade.

I've seen people engineer their body language and choice of words so that every encounter - every exchange with friends and shop clerks and family - ends poorly, and the angry person ends up being in the sympathetic position of Them against the World. What better excuse to act like an asshole?

What Does Not Enough Anger Look Like?

The Cause

Plenty of us have known someone like that; someone who was so toxic and unstable that it can be tempting to - consciously or unconsciously - make the internal decision "I'm never becoming like that!" I think I made a decision like that when I was about 12 years old.

The Benefits

You get into less arguments. People tend to think you are nice. You are less likely to be fired for something you say on Twitter.

...Yeah, that's all I have.

The Problem

When I was in secondary school I thought I'd cured my anger. If I got bullied, I became sad instead of angry. Given that I used to be a scrappy little fucker in primary school, I saw that as some sort of moral progress. Looking back, I guess I wasn't overflowing with the monk-like calm I thought I was, seeing as I ended up stabbing a kid with a pen several times in an eruption of repressed rage.

It turns out the only thing worse than someone dangerous is someone unwittingly dangerous. I didn't know I was capable of that right up until I did it. Most kids who knew about that incident gave me a wide berth after that, and I got a reputation as someone dangerous, and deeply, deeply angry. It didn't occur to me until ten years later that they were right.

Things snapped into place for me fairly recently. It was like my body was trying to pull itself in two different directions, until I heard an explanation that clicked with me.

You are capable of doing horrible things, and you will feel the ugliest of emotions. Anger, envy, resentment, bitterness and cruelty. And you need to own that before you will ever be at one with yourself, otherwise you'll feel like you're wandering around in a world made of cardboard. You'll scare yourself with your own thoughts, or lie to yourself and end up confused about what you want and who you are.

Once you've brought these feelings to consciousness, things become a lot clearer. It's like Captain Holt said before he joined the Brooklyn Nine Nine:

"You, Tim Bayliss, you have a darkness inside of you. You've gotta know the darker, uglier sides of yourself. You gotta recognise them so they're not constantly sneaking up on you. You gotta love em, cos they're part of you. Because along with your virtues they make you who you are."

Maybe this whole process seems dramatic and unnecessary. After all, I'm the weird unhappy kid who couldn't be trusted with writing implements. And look, fair enough, but I think the whole thing could have been avoided if I hadn't spent two years being incapable of pushing back when I needed to, in moderation.

This might be the part of the article where a smarter person would quote Dostoevsky or some other fuckin' guy with a beard. But books make me sleepy, so I'll give you a quote from an Adam Sandler movie, Anger Management:

"There are two kinds of angry people. Explosive and Implosive. Explosive is the kind of individual that you see screaming at the cashier for not taking their coupons. Implosive is the cashier, who remains quiet, day after day, and finally shoots everyone in the store."

And then Adam says something like OOPSIE POOPSIE I SHIT MY PANTS and we all laugh heartily.

Anger doesn't even have to result in a catastrophic violent meltdown. Maybe instead of shooting up the store, your anger could culminate in the quiet decision that you're going to make everyone's lives as bad as you possibly can within the confines of the law. You don't have to be criminal or even confrontational to be horrible.

I struggled with the section above where I talked about the benefits of Not Enough Anger. I just can't bring myself to admire someone who acts like a doormat in the same way I begrudgingly admire someone who's capable of being an asshole. I just don't find it believable.

A question to doormats: How much of your spare time do you spend thinking about the transgressions your friends and family have made? Really think about it. Is there something within you that has remained unspoken and needs to be expressed? Do you need to speak up, as carefully and tactfully as you know how to, about the boundaries that your friend is pushing up against? Are you mature enough that if you keep quiet, you won't find other outlets for revenge?

That last question is important. As far as I can tell, no one is mature enough that they won't retaliate if they're made to feel small. There are plenty of ways people will find to fight back that don't involve fisticuffs or a raised voice. Maybe you'll act disinterested when your friend comes to you excited with good news. Maybe you'll shut your bedroom door when you hear your wife struggling to take care of your kids. Maybe you'll order a Hitman off the deep-web and ask him to poison your husband's coffee.

Conclusion: What's the Right Balance?

So packing your anger away into a murderous little compartment doesn't seem to be the best option. Neither does picking fights with strangers or yelling at shopkeepers or leaving nasty reviews on Yelp. So what's the solution? What's the magic balance?

There are people all over the anger spectrum, and most manage to find some way to survive in society. So maybe how angry you are isn't the right issue; the issue is how much of that anger you have under control. I don't think people get uncomfortable if you have anger in your heart. You can have quite a temper and people will still talk about you fondly. It's a question of volatility. People don't like unpredictable tempers. More importantly, people who have their anger under control can bring it to the table when necessary.

And I think there's nothing more attractive than that kind of emotional competence.

Apart from some tits, maybe.

Julian Page is an aspiring writer who plays video games by day and writes blogs with pretentious third-person summaries by night. If you want someone to write for you, hit me up. I have absolutely no principles and I like money.

The Depressed Loser's Guide to not Being a Depressed Loser

Some people have told me that it's bad form to create a blog, make two posts, then not write anything for three years. I heartily disagree. Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen, that's what I say, and if my speculation is correct, anyone still interested in my Blog will be the keenest motherfuckers in the world by now.

So what inspired me to write again? My first post was a pretentious review of a TV series I watched one episode of and never saw again. My second post was me pettily deconstructing things my good friends said to me in casual conversation, because I am a dickhole. Hard articles to beat, I know. But I'll take a stab at a new topic:

These last few months I have had the worst Depression I think I've ever had in my life. 

At least the worst I've ever been consciously aware of. Externally, I'm probably doing better than I've ever done; I'm more comfortable talking to friends and strangers, I like to think I'm less angry, and hopefully less thoughtless. I'm a Bartender. I've finally figured out what to do with my floppy schoolboy hair and I've discovered clothing combinations other than black t-shirts and jeans. But it doesn't help the fact that I just feel awful 80-90% of the time.

I used to be better at distracting myself, but as of late I've started suffering from Tinnitus. If you're unfamiliar with Tinnitus, imagine what it sounds like when you get hit by a flashbang in Call of Duty, only all the time. Maybe it doesn't sound so bad to put up with a perpetual background ringing noise, but all I can say is that this condition really fucking sucks. It makes it hard to read. It makes it hard to sleep. There are times when I would have gladly been completely deaf instead. It flares up when you're anxious and tense, locking you inside your own head when you need to escape it most. 

I'm whining a lot, and of course I know I could have it much worse, but I do feel that I have rather a bum deal at the moment. I didn't write today to complain though. I wrote because I'm slowly learning how to deal with Depression and become a better person, and I thought I'd share the lessons I've learnt along the way.

Most of you are miles ahead of me. But maybe some of you are are roughly in the same place as me and want any advice you can get. So here we go.

Disclaimer: I have been informed by friends that this article may be a little depressing to read, so I've taken countermeasures. Every time this article gets a little too heavy, it will be cut off and replaced by a bad freeze frame of The Simpsons, like so:

Beautiful.

So, where's a good place to start? I don't really know, so I'm going to go with my gut and say:

Try to be about more than your problems.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, a little part of me didn't want to get better. I've tied so much of my identity into the fact that I'm sensitive, seclusive and neurotic. I've almost tried to cultivate those qualities because I thought they would make me interesting. They don't, of course. You only have to look at people like me at a party to realise that isn't true.

People often mention that the funniest people are the unhappiest. For a long time, I've had this secret fear that if I worked on my neuroses, my creativity and sense of humour would suffer. I felt I had to balance my own mental wellbeing against the ability to make people laugh.

John Cleese mentioned that he and his comedian friends were scared to go into therapy for fear their creativity would suffer. He came to the realisation that whilst creativity and neurosis have similar roots (trying to make sense of conflicting viewpoints of the world) learning to get a handle on your baggage actually gives you more creative freedom. By tapping into all those repressed feelings and ideas you were previously afraid to think about, you have more access to that gut emotional instinct people just respond to.

Also, please don't try and paint yourself as a tragic character. For your sake as well as others. There's a passage from the book We Need to Talk About Kevin that I like: “Only the untouched, the well-fed and contented, could possibly covet suffering like a designer jacket.” I see it too much and it upsets me. You can have problems, but for God's sake don't be your problems.

"Have a life that doesn't revolve around my problems? Where will I find the time in the day?"

Well-

Get up early and focus on what you want.

(Hypocrisy Warning)

I used to hate getting out of bed. I never had a reason to. Even the motive of getting up for a job, so I have enough money to not starve didn't work out that well. I've given up careers to be able to stay in bed before. I lost one job in London because I pretended I was dead so I didn't have to go to a shift. They might still believe that I'm dead. I don't know.

I'm not going to lie, I still struggle getting up. The advantage I have now is that I know how different a day is when you get up with the rest of the world.

If you wake up with a sharp focus on what you want and what steps you're going to take today to achieve it, the rest of the day tends to follow suit. My best days are when I wake up at eight and start running.

It kind of speaks to a defeatist attitude in us if we only get up when we literally have to, and that kind of behaviour definitely contributes to Depression. There is some power in the fact that we choose to get up, to have a stab at changing our circumstances. One of those unwanted circumstances for me is the fact that - whilst I am skinny - I have the constitution of the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Which brings us to -

Exercise.

I used to make grand plans to get fit. I told myself that when I had enough disposable income I would buy a gym membership and not leave until I could knock the door off its hinges in one punch.
I realised I had enough money whilst I was living in London. I paid £10 for the registration. I paid £30 for access to the gym for a month. Then I never went to the gym again.

In essence I paid £40 for a plastic card with a picture of a man in his underwear on it. And I can find pictures like that online for free.

It was only much later, when I was willing to do anything to treat my Tinnitus that I started running. I never ever thought this would happen, but after about two months of doing it more or less every day, I've started to somewhat enjoy it, and I feel listless if I haven't been for a run. Disgusting, I know. I've become one of them. But the point is I never had to wait to start getting fit. I spent all that time bullshitting myself about optimal conditions and researching exercise techniques when the secret is to just not be a fat piece of shit and do something. To paraphrase David Wong of Cracked fame: "You need zero equipment to lose weight and gain muscle. You can literally do it butt naked on the floor of your room." I don't do it butt naked, incidentally. That's an image no-one needs to picture.

I still haven't noticed any change in my physique. My nipples still look like warm pepperoni slices. Maybe it just takes time to see long term changes. Or maybe I've just stopped myself from looking even more gross than I would have at this point without exercise. I mean my diet is just atrocious. Seriously, it's awful.

Exercise isn't just useful because of the stress release and personal fitness and all that good stuff. It's a good way of practising the principle of Discipline. The idea that you keep moving towards an ideal long after the initial excitement's worn off.

Which reminds me -

Always have a Project.

Ever wonder why movies seem so much more appealing than real life? Fictional characters have the luxury of events naturally leading from one to another, which constructs an interesting narrative. You don’t have that luxury. If you don't have any overarching goals you're working towards, why should your life change from how it is now?

I cannot express how validating it's been these last couple of months to have creative hobbies. I've learned how to draw better. I've made music on my computer. I've made another entry in my shitty blog. Writing this article puts me in a good enough mood sometimes that I don't feel justified in writing about Depression. A lot of the time it feels arduous, but that's good. Humans need challenges to stay sane.

When I say 'have a project' what I really mean is have an outlet for self-expression. It doesn't have to be art or anything like that. Just creating something tangible seems to help the soul. Gardening or drawing or making songs. I think people have less incentive to do that with the invention of Social Media and Online Comment Sections. All that pressure to create and express yourself is siphoned out of you bit by bit by writing snarky Facebook statuses and leaving nasty comments on YouTube videos while you take a shit. But you're not giving yourself anything meaningful by making those.

Nor anyone else, probably.

The more I write the more my advice seems kind of obvious and self explanatory. But it wasn't obvious to me, which is why I make my next point-

Talk to human beings in person.

This is probably apparent to people who haven't spent their childhood in seclusion, but there is no substitute for shooting the shit with friends in person.

I've spent a lot of time on the internet or playing video games. The Steam or Facebook Friends List was my only company. I felt lonely a lot of the time and used to resent the company I kept. I felt that all my friends were uptight, or condescending, or angry. It was only till I started socialising more in my 20s that I realised that I was projecting the shitty moods I was feeling onto the messages I was reading. There's no body language or voice inflection to work with, and without that people's words can be interpreted a lot of different ways.

I mean, usually.

People often don't acknowledge the therapeutic power of hanging out with friends in person because they take it for granted. As someone who's grown up in a village in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, I wish I could tell you what good your friends are doing for you just by being in your company. It makes me feel normal. Not even necessarily happy all the time, but it doesn't matter as much because I start to feel like a human being again.

Another point I'm not even sure is worth mentioning is that a job is worth infinitely more than the income you get from it. My lazy ass was unemployed for four months, and it was more tedious and soul-grinding than any 9-5 I've ever worked. Not to mention you feel guilty all the time.

I've had a lot of experience with guilt, which is why I can say in confidence-

Excess guilt doesn't make you a better person.

Which is also why you shouldn't try to force someone to improve by shaming them or making them feel shitty. People are much better at coming out of their shell when they have a loving support network behind them. No matter how I feel at times, I am endlessly grateful to my family for having a safe place to fall back on when I mess up, which is a lot. A lot a lot.

I had a brief stint on anti-depressants, and one of the most significant changes that happened during that time was that I wasn't feeling an acute sense of guilt all the time. Because that weight had been lifted from me, I didn't feel that usual social pressure to please everybody all the time and I started saying and doing things because I wanted to. My confidence must have grown during that time because people seemed to like me more. Or maybe, without that guilt I was able to perceive that people have, in fact, actually liked me all along. (That's the most Disney-esque thing I've ever said and I hate myself for saying it.)

I'm off the happy pills now, but I'm trying to keep that lesson in mind. People don't want to hang out with a doormat. People want to hang out with a person who has their own desires and opinions.

I used to try and bully myself into becoming a better person. I want to save you guys some time and tell you that it doesn't work. I also used to try and bully friends into self-improvement, because I am a fucking bastard. I am literally Hitler. On the Hitler scale of Evil, that ranks at about five Hitlers.
Out of Seven.

I don't really know where I'm going with that, so let's move on. This is one of my biggest worries and I think it would do some good to put my mind at rest by talking about it. Namely:

Nostalgia is not what it used to be/ a.k.a Fuck you, it does get better.

I'll level with you, these last few months are the first time I think I've ever been envious of my childhood, or even my adolescence. This sad nostalgia is very cloudy and unformed - which is what gives it power - but if I had to transcribe it, it would look something like this:

"I'm so jealous of all the free time and lack of responsibility I had! Sure, I was unhappy almost all of the time, and I couldn't talk to people properly, and I was so knee-deep in escapism that I didn't learn anything, and -"

It looks silly now that I put it into words, and that's exactly what nostalgia is. It's pretty silly.

"So what are you saying? That we were probably as unhappy then as we are now and our selective memory only remembers the highlights of our lives?" Sort of. Is it time for a bad Simpsons picture?

No, it's not. Don't look at the Simpsons picture. Scroll down. Stop looking at it. And I'll tell you why. It's because nostalgia is such a goddamn trap for a depressive.

If you're reading this you're probably on my Facebook Friends list, and making your first thrust into true adulthood as well. It's important to realise how much power you have now. I was miserable for the longest time because adults kept on telling me to say goodbye to my Best Years, because now True Adulthood starts.

First off, if you're an adult and you say that to someone in their teens or twenties trying to find themselves, then you are a bad person. Stop doing that. Not only are you kicking people at their most vulnerable, you're wrong, you cock-juggling chundercunt.

Alright, alright, I'm calm. I get why people think that. People remember not having to pay bills and having more free time. Classic nostalgia magic makes them forget that teenage years are just a blizzard of awkward conversations and unwanted boners. It just doesn't compare to the amount of freedom you get as an adult. For me, the first taste of that freedom was deciding that I don't believe what these unhappy adults are telling me, so I'm going to try and have some goddamn fun.

You ever take a look at the ridiculous ways people can make a living as adults now? People play video games professionally. People film themselves doing stupid shit, put it on YouTube, and get paid. People can upload music to sites like Bandcamp and get money. Some guy started making goggles and putting them on dogs. He called them Doggles. He sells them now and he's a millionaire.

I mean, I can see why.

I'm not saying it's easy or simple, or that you won't have to commit yourself to time that could be spent playing video games and scratching yourself. But it is possible.

Now that we've (hopefully) got a positivity vibe going, let's move onto the last point:

Acknowledge the Good.

I didn't want to make this heading because every Depressive I know (including myself) will want to give me the middle finger for saying it. Maybe it feels like nagging, or maybe it feels like something happy people say and it's easier said than done. But it's true, unfortunately. Happiness is something that needs to be exercised, like a muscle. So for God's sake try to build up the habit of seeing the good in each and every scenario you find yourself in.

I'm not saying everything happens for a reason. I'm saying that human beings are blessed with the ability to salvage good out of any situation. We don't even have to try, it just happens.

For instance, I used to be so awkward and reserved that it would hinder me from going about my day. I was so petrified of coming across as 'creepy' that it stilted my language and made me tense and uncomfortable to be around. However, I've been so anxious and depressed these last few months that I just haven't had the energy left over for those inhibitions. I just couldn't be arsed with the fear of 'saying the wrong thing', so I've said what I felt like. And the perverse thing is that's what people respond to. You can work and work at seeming 'nice' and 'saying the right thing', but you'll only come across as so timid and insincere that people don't know how to react to you.

So yeah, that was good coming out of bad.

Every now and again, when you're going for a walk or doing some mindless task, you should make a list of things you're thankful for. Including all the inconsequential stuff. In fact it's the petty shit that seems to carry the most weight, as it tends to change on a day-to-day basis. All the big stuff - 'I have a home, I'm able to eat, I have legs, etc - is taken for granted, so the stuff that pleases me tends to look like 'I get to watch Bob's Burgers when I get home' or 'I get to go to Morrisons and fill my face with pastries like a fat piggy.'

I'm not even saying you should deny yourself sadness. Sometimes life is just a shit sandwich no matter how you chew it. Some of my better days are when I've acknowledged that I hate the situation that I'm in and I cry like a little bitch. (Crying, incidentally, is incredibly useful, and that's an important enough thing to know that I'm willing to drop my macho facade for just a second)
But sweet Jesus once you've admitted to yourself that you're unhappy move on and look for the positives. It's ultimately up to you to find them.

-

Well, I hope this did something for someone. But please, for the love of God, if my advice puts a sour taste in your mouth then don't give it a second thought. One of the greatest pieces of advice I could give is that you don't have to listen to other people's advice. Does listening to someone give you that awful feeling in your stomach? Fuck em. Someone telling you how to be happy, even though you'd never want to turn out like them in a million years? Yeah good luck with that, asshole. I used to be very impressionable. I'd take everything people said as gospel, as long as they said it with conviction. It took me a long, long, time to work out that we're all still just children, stumbling through life in a vague fog of emotional incompetence, hoping that a savior will come down from the heavens and steer us through this terrifying labyrinth of bad decisions and -

Have a good day, everyone.

Joe Melville is some guy who tends bar by day and writes Blogs with pretentious third-person summaries by night. He is desperate for any kind of job involving writing and has absolutely no principles, so please, hit him up. He also wants it on the record that he spent so long procrastinating on writing this article that his Tinnitus is mostly better.