Title: The Simple Truth about Anger | Psychology Today
Headings: The Simple Truth about Anger
Robert W Firestone Ph.D.
The Simple Truth about Anger
Suppressing angry feelings inevitably has destructive consequences.
THE BASICS

Content: It can lead to self-defeating, self-destructive, and at times, suicidal behaviors. Psychoanalysts have traditionally understood depression as being primarily due to anger directed against the self. 3. People who avoid or suppress anger frequently externalize their anger by disowning it in themselves and projecting it onto other people, thereby perceiving others as being angry or hostile. This causes them to experience the external environment as alien and dangerous. They then react to these perceived enemies with counter- aggression or paranoia, often triggering a dangerous downward spiral of progressive maladaptation and misery. 4. When people cannot tolerate angry emotions, they tend to act out their anger inappropriately. They find it difficult to control and are hurtful or abusive to themselves and others. Often, they act against their own best interests.