3 Attitudes Towards Others: Introvert - Extrovert - Ambivert

Introvert and extrovert are perhaps two of the most popular words in psychology that everyone knows and uses to describe themselves and the basic behaviour or attitude of others.

Everyone knows that an introvert is someone who is inward-looking, who speaks to his buttons, while an extrovert is outward-looking and needs others like he needs the air he breathes.

The first to coin these terms was the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, Freud’s dissenting disciple. Let us take a look at how he differs not only from Freud but also from another great contemporary, Adler, and then we will focus on these traditional attitudes or tendencies towards life and others.

Freud, Adler and Jung
Sigmund Freud – He is the great master and founder of modern psychology, understood in his time as psychoanalysis. Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung are his followers and disciples who, at first, fundamentally follow the theory of their master, but later diverge considerably, each taking on a different course.

Freud understands that the root of all psychological problems is sexual, that is, the repression of sexual desires in the unconscious leads to neurotic behaviour in the conscious. Freud is the first thinker to take the subject of sex out of the dark, away from the scope of sin. To speak about sex in his time was a taboo, and perhaps this somehow led him to give so much importance to it.

The division of human personality into three instances is his great contribution to understanding human nature. The Id is the first instance and the one that brings us closest to the last primate we evolved from, we are born with the Id and we never lose it. The Id is unconscious and thus remains within us; furthermore, the Id relates symbiotically to its surroundings, not detaching itself too much from it.

As the child grows and relates to his environment, he begins to stand out and to differentiate himself from it, eventually reaching self-awareness: this is how the self, the Ego, is born. Later, the child conscious of his being also becomes aware, through education of how he should be, and that he can grow and be better, and so the Superego is born, the last instance of personality according to Freud.

Alfred Adler – Less introspective than Freud, he was more interested in the relationships that the child establishes since the beginning and how he sees himself before others. Contrary to Freud, he understands that the reason for all psychological problems is the inferiority complex that makes a person thirst for power.

In analyzing the unconscious, Freud discovers erotic fantasies and repressed desires; Adler, on the other hand, thinks that this unconscious contains feelings of inferiority and desires for power and greatness that will turn the person aggressive in the struggle for power, or apathetic if he understands that he cannot attain this power.

In their psychotherapeutic approach, the two are also different. Adler does not use the couch because he sees that it replicates a parent-child relationship which reinforces the client’s inferiority complex. Instead, he uses two chairs facing each other thus making the client and the therapist equal participants in the psychotherapeutic process. Perhaps this is the precursor to Carl Rogers’ non-directive therapy.

Carl Gustav Jung – He extends the Freudian unconscious beyond the boundaries of the individual, creating the collective unconscious, which is similar to a database to which everyone naturally connects because it contains all the archetypes of humanity.

One of the reasons for the divergence among these three great psychologists may be that each tends to lean towards a different stage of growth, despite the fact that their theories were intended to be applied to man at all stages of growth. Freud is more interested in childhood, Adler in adolescence and Jung in adulthood.

In this sense, Jung abandons Freud because he understands that our behaviour is not dependent only on past events, whether these were traumatic or not. A person seeks always to live in the present moment, and is oriented towards the future and, in this sense, takes on the attitude he thinks will best solve his problems and satisfy his needs.

In this context, Jung proposes two attitudes, tendencies or approaches towards life: introversion and extroversion. These ideas are considered to be Jung’s greatest contribution to personality theory. In fact, Jung’s theory of the introvert and extrovert types serves as the basis for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Without fretting over the past, the Myers-Briggs duo, studies the person’s behaviour in the here and now, and analyzes it as to what extent it lies between the two opposing attitudes or tendencies.

• Concerning our motivation and the way we acquire energy, we are either introvert or extrovert.
• Concerning how we acquire and process information we need in our lives, we are either sensitive or intuitive.
• Concerning how we make decisions, some are more regulated by thought and others by feeling.
• Concerning how we situate ourselves in life at the existential and professional level, some rely more on their ability to judge, others more on their perception.

The results of the MBTI test never show a person to be 100% introvert or 100% extrovert, sentimental or rational, sensitive or intuitive, judgmental or perceptive; they indicate only in percentage a tendency or inclination toward one side more than the other.

The aim of this article is not to study the Myers-Briggs theory but rather the introvert and extrovert behaviours according to Jung and other authors that came after him. The title of this article not only refers to introversion and extroversion, but also ambiversion.

Admittedly this term was unknown to Jung but from his observation he already noted that there was no one who was 100% introvert or 100% extrovert. Today the authors understand that there are people who are neither one nor the other, nor the two at the same time, depending on the situations or motivations at that moment.

What does it mean to be an introvert – an extrovert – an ambivert? Is it an attitude towards reality, towards others, towards life? Or is it a drive, a tendency, a psychological type, a character, a personality type, a temperament?

I had difficulty in deciding on the title of this article because each author uses his own way of understanding these fundamental behaviours of the human person. We keep the word “attitude”, and if we had to choose a second one we would choose “tendency”, to define the way a person situates himself in life in relation to himself, to reality and to others.

What is the natural orientation of our energy? What drives us the most? Each person has two faces. One is directed towards the outside world of activities, enthusiasm, people and things, and the other towards the inner world of thoughts, interests, ideas and imagination.

Since these two sides of our nature are complementary, most people have a preference to one over the other. Therefore, one of their two faces – extrovert or introvert – takes the lead in the development of their personality and plays a more dominant role in their behaviour.

Lately there has been talk of a third tendency – ambiversion – that is basically a synthesis of the other two. Personally, I have always understood myself as an introvert; but all the tests that I have done on the subject have put me on the borderline between an introvert and an extrovert, that is, an introvert with facets of extroversion.

Discovering the term ambiversion was for me the Eureka moment, like discovering myself. After all, I am not as introverted as I thought nor am I an extrovert, but rather a synthesis or mixture of these two attitudes. I couldn’t be any other way, being who I am and, in my work, dealing directly with people more than with things or paperwork.

Childhood: introversion and extroversion
Jung understands that we acquired these two fundamental attitudes towards life, reality and others which we then maintain for the rest of our lives. These attitudes appear when the baby cuts the umbilical cord that connects him to his environment and starts to differentiate himself from it. We can say that the introvert is born or is emancipated before the extrovert, to the extent that he differentiates himself more strongly from his environment than the extrovert who, in some way, still remains for a longer time in symbiosis with it.

Faced with this fact, a child with an extrovert tendency shows a readiness to act and respond to the stimuli and requests from the surroundings; his attention is directed to the outside world and he interacts with objects without reservations and without fear, even if they are foreign to him.

An introverted child, on the other hand, takes on a reflective and even suspicious attitude towards what he does not know, he feels scared and understands that he must protect and defend himself against the influence that objects may have on him. Therefore, he keeps a distance from them in order to get to know them better and to acquire power and self-confidence in his actions over them.

Little is known about the way we become introverts or extroverts. Initially much importance was attached to educational factors, but it is often the case that children of the same mother who were theoretically educated in the same way are found to act and react in different ways under the same situation.

In the case of psychological attitudes, the educational factor is apparently not the most important determinant in acquiring introversion or extroversion attitude. It is likely that there is a genetic or biological predisposition in assuming one or the other attitude.

The introvert attitude
The introvert’s way of knowing – The world of the introvert is within himself; it is similar to the world of ideas of Plato’s Cave. At the philosophical level, at the act of knowing things, the introvert does not deal with their existence or accidents, that is, their characteristics, but with their essence, with what these things mean in themselves or for him.

Of course, this basic attitude can lead to misunderstandings from the fact that the introvert does not relate to the object itself, but to the subjective idea or image he has of the object, thing or person under his consideration. The introvert's perception of the reality is never objective because he does not see things as they are, but how he understands that they are, that is, as they are to him.

For the introvert, the psychic reality is a relatively concrete experience, sometimes even more concrete than the external reality. What counts is not what the thing or person is in itself but how the subject knows it. The mistake is of course in confusing what the thing or person really is with what it is to me. The subject who is knowing is more important than the person or thing to be known. People and things are not what they are in themselves, but what they are to me.

They say or used to say that the Japanese do not enjoy in the here and now the places they visit because they are too busy taking pictures and videos, which they eventually enjoy in the comfort of their homes as they revisit them through the videos and photos that they replay on the TV screen, drinking sake. This can be a caricature image of an introvert who disregards the external reality in favour of the internal one.

The mind of the extrovert is guided by and reports faithfully to the objective facts; it remains always in contact with the reality to be known, and its conception may vary as this varies. The mind of the introvert, on the other hand, is like a camera: the shutter opens for a short span of time, reality enters, and then it closes and does not open again. While the introvert may look at the extrovert as superficial and too dependent on reality, the extrovert looks at the introvert as prejudiced, selfish and distant from reality.

Introversion and shyness – Introverts may or may not be shy; the timid ones are insecure, apprehensive and nervous when they are with people; the introverts may even have good social skills, but they get tired of being with others and need to be alone to recharge their energy.

In summary

• He is inward-looking and has a preference to finding energy and drive in the world of ideas, emotions, impressions and personal experiences. He prefers to reflect before acting and then reflect again. He needs time to think and recover his energy. In general, he is not very sociable by choice and it is not because of shyness. Very hectic surroundings, with lots of people, tire the introvert.
• From an energy point of view, the introvert produces his own energy, he is self-motivated, autonomous and independent.
• The introvert’s way of learning is by observation, he is a more thoughtful and introspective person. The introvert needs to be alone. He doesn’t express much, but thinks and analyzes much.
• He thinks and reflects and only then acts, he hardly changes his mind, so he may be fundamentalist and intolerant when he is negative.
• He needs a lot of time for himself to recharge his batteries; the extrovert needs to connect to the outside world to motivate himself, to connect to others to have his batteries charged.
• Motivated from within, his mind is sometimes so active that he tends to shut out the outside world in order to protect himself. His mind is his castle.
• He has a preference for communicating and relating one-on-one. The conversation topics are profound and revolve around ideas and concepts; he does not waste time on trivial topics or gossips.
• He prefers to direct his energy studying and analyzing ideas, information, explanations and beliefs.
• Paraphrasing Descartes, the introvert thinks and therefore he is, and then may or may not act; the extrovert is and therefore he thinks.
• The introvert is Plato, the extrovert is Aristotle.
• The extrovert is easy to get to know, the introvert is difficult to get to know.
• The extrovert expresses emotions, the introvert controls or suppresses them. The former needs relationships, the latter needs solitude and privacy. One brings breadth to life, the other brings depth. The extrovert may be accused of being superficial, the introvert of being an island.
• Introverts make up a small part of the population. 

Professions and ways of life
Introverts are good researchers, engineers, architects, philosophers, writers, psychologists, teachers, or areas where the ability to reflect before acting is valued. For example, a soldier can and should be extroverted, while a military strategist should certainly be introverted; but this doesn’t always happen. When it comes to human nature, more are the exceptions than the rules.

The extrovert attitude
The world of the extrovert is the real world, outside of himself. For the extrovert, the outside world seems to be the subject while he being the object. The individual is impregnated by the exterior which invades him. According to Jung, the extrovert lives in such a way that the object, as the determinant factor, plays a much greater role in his consciousness than his own subjective opinion. He feels and thinks about the object, person or thing, of his knowledge, losing in this his subjectivity or individuality.

An extrovert may or may not be a friendly and sociable person. What really defines him is his need of others and the outside world in order to be himself; he feels full of energy when he is with others, because he draws his energy, his drives and ideas from them.

The extrovert’s subjective considerations exist but they are not privileged at the level of his consciousness, because he favors the object and its circumstances instead of highlighting himself as the subject. This can lead the extrovert to distance himself in the sphere of thoughts, evaluations, sensations and subjective intuitions. With this picture of the psyche, it is much more likely for an extrovert to alienate himself and lose his freedom in an addictive behaviour than for an introvert who maintains a safe distance in relations to things.

The extrovert tends to live dissociated and divorced from himself, and from his feelings and thoughts. He takes refuge in objects to ward off pain and suffering, and realizes his needs when the unmet needs have already become problematic. The subjective needs, in fact, are his weak point, ignoring the health of his own body through unhealthy behaviours. The conscious non-recognition of his needs may take on catastrophic proportions to the point of losing the reference and magnitude of things in relation to himself: he is so absorbed in the reality that he gets confused with it.

In summary

• He needs to be with others and to be in touch with them to recharge his energy externally. He is driven or draws his energy from the world of things, people, relationships, and activities. The way of learning is also external: he needs conversation, the exchange of ideas. He hates to do things on his own, without interacting with others and the world around him. He feels that he lacks something when deprived of interaction with the outside world, because this is what drives him. He looks for inspiration by thinking out loud and in dialoguing with others. He works better in a team than alone.
• He gets his energy from action; his psychic energy, attention and interest are directed outwards, towards people and the world around him. It is the world around him that is real and it is this and not his thought that determines his behaviour. His interior world is less real and more secondary on his list of priorities and has less influence on his behaviour. He is more interested in what happens around him than what is happening inside of himself.
• He likes to do various activities; he acts first and thinks later. When inactive, his energy diminishes, may even enter into boredom and depression. In general, he is sociable. While the introvert seeks to adapt the world to his mind, the extrovert adapts, accommodates himself to the world. In this sense, he easily changes his mind, like a reed stirred by the wind, or like a chameleon, and when he is negative, he is a person without principles. He makes new friends easily or adapts easily to a new group, and just as easily breaks up undesirable relationships. He is open and says what he thinks, and may even say things without thinking.
• He is not necessarily altruistic since he deals with others because he needs them. The topics of conversation are trivial and superficial, the everyday things and even gossips. He is open and talkative, objective and a person of action. He is tediously long-winded in his interests and has difficulty keeping his attention focused on only one thing.
• Most people in the population are extroverts. 

Professions and ways of life
Extroverts are good managers, salespeople, trainers, presenters, journalists, or in areas where it is important to interact with people and things.

The ambiverts
There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum. Carl Jung

The experts in ambiversion say that the majority of the population are ambiverts. That is, we all fall somewhere in the attitude spectrum between introversion and extroversion. It is a new concept, unknown to Jung, the founder of the theory of introversion and extroversion, although he himself understood that there could be an intermediate degree between these two opposites.

This intermediate degree is the ambiversion. In my opinion, the ambivert is fundamentally an introvert, that is, he is rooted in introversion, but he also does well outside of his shell, to which he needs to return. He is versatile like a duck that can fly as well as walk or neither if it so wishes.

He does well in solitude and in a crowd. In fact, to be himself he needs to alternate between being alone by himself and being in a crowd with others. He feels both needs, so that he can either spend days away from home, or spend days without going outside the house.

Faced with a specific stimulus, the reactions of an introvert and an extrovert are quite predictable; the reaction of an ambivert, on the other hand, is neither clear nor predictable, not even to himself. It depends on many factors, including the current interests of the individual. The ambiverts can be excellent conversationalists and communicators on the one hand, and good listeners on the other.

The first person to use the term “ambivert” was the American psychologist Edmund S. Conklin in 1923, according to Ian Davidson, a professor of Psychology at York University, Canada, in an article dated 2017. Davidson explains that a psychologist at the time said that Conklin “invented the word” to describe those individuals who find themselves between the introverts (who live in their heads) and the extroverts (who live outside of their heads).

The ambiverts find themselves in the middle of the spectrum between extroversion and introversion; they are not very talkative nor do they live too focused on themselves; they do not have a strong and almost compulsive need to interact with others, like the pure extrovert, nor do they seek solitude to escape from reality, like the introverts. They are reflective, tolerant, ambivalent, bilingual or polyglot, and eclectic, and they live with one foot in each of the two worlds.

In summary

• The ambivert is not afraid of being the center of attention, depending on the context and situation. In many cases, he prefers to simply observe quietly without actively participating.
• He enjoys and has fun at parties and social events for hours on end, but his energy can suddenly run out and he needs to withdraw to his comfort zone.
• Like the extroverts, he likes to talk, but not about trivial topics or football.
• He likes to socialize, but sometimes he is reserved, especially if he does not know anyone. And he will not take the initiative to introduce himself like an extrovert would.
• Some of his friends think he is an extrovert, and others think he is an introvert, this is because he presents himself in different ways in different situations.
• In general, he thinks before speaking; if someone speaks a lot, he listens; if others are quiet, he speaks.
• The ambiverts are the best at dealing with the extremes that tend to cause the collapse of the introverts or extroverts, since they have a greater degree of tolerance at the extreme of introversion and at the extreme of extroversion. 

Conclusion
The introverts stay at home on a sunny day, the extroverts stay out on a rainy day, and the ambiverts take advantage of the sun and steer clear of the rain.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

3 Attitudes Towards Anger: Aggressive - Passive - Assertive

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. Aristotle

Love and anger are the most basic emotions of the human being. They are the Eros and Thanatos of Freud, the positive and negative poles of human energy, the Yin and Yang of the Orient, and the affection and aggression that permeate all human actions.

Aggression is as necessary as affection and the optimum dosage of both in everyday life is a matter of learning. Both energies must be sublimated so that we can make good use of them, at the individual as well as at the social level. Problem arises when the education on anger management during early childhood is inadequate. Parents inadvertently pass on to their children their good or bad ways of managing anger.

The nature and the origin of anger
Anger is like fire, you can only put it out at the first spark. After that, it’s too late. Giovanni Papini

Anger is born of fear and a feeling of weakness or inferiority. If you have courage or determination, you’ll feel less and less fear and, as a result, you’ll feel less frustrated and angry. Dalai Lama

Anger, rage, wrath and fury are several words to designate the same feeling or reactive emotion which we feel in the face of adversity that can manifest itself in events, persons or things that antagonize us. It is a natural feeling: without anger, life would not be possible, therefore, in itself, and from a natural point of view, it is morally neutral, neither positive nor negative, because it is necessary for life.

Having said that anger is a basic emotion, this does not mean that it is a primary emotion. In fact, it is a secondary one; it is just the tip of the iceberg of many other emotions that exist below the “waterline” of our conscience. Anger is an individual’s response to these emotions which are, in fact, primary.

What do I feel before I feel anger, that is, before I get mad? I may feel fear, anxiety, shame, frustration, humiliation, discouragement or sadness. All these feelings may precede and motivate anger. The problem is that anger replaces these primary emotions so quickly that we are not even aware of them; but they are the ones that motivate anger as a reaction, that is, anger is indeed a reaction to these primary emotions.

However, we are only aware that we are angry or, very often, not even that. It may happen that others on seeing us angry may confront us and draw attention to the fact that we are angry. Our first reaction is to deny that we are angry, even if the anger has already drawn from us a bad word, an insult or a violent reaction.

Anger is a powerful emotion: either we control it or it controls us. The function of anger is to protect us against the environment and other people. When negative thoughts result from negative primary emotions, like the ones we have mentioned, and fill us, all we need next is a trigger from any situation to make us blow up. Everything happens in a flash of time.

Anger management is only possible if I give myself time to figure out the primary emotions that motivate it. Where there is smoke there is fire, every primary emotion is already a reaction to an unmet need. The primary emotions that we listed above as origin of anger are themselves a reaction to a human need that is not being met.

Once these needs are discovered, all we need to do is to satisfy them properly and the feeling of anger implodes, like the explosives placed to demolish a building, which cause the structure to implode on itself rather than explode and project debris in all directions.

There are two types of anger: just or justifiable anger and unjust or unjustifiable anger which is a personal and referential wrath. The two are similar or may even have the same outcome in as far as action, intensity and violence, but the objective is very different. Furthermore, one is controlled by those who use it, the other or the referential one usually controls those who use it; the righteous anger is proactive, the referential one is reactive and has to do with the shortcomings of our upbringing.

Justified or righteous anger
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation. Matthew 3:13-14

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he (Jesus) entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”? But you have made it a den of robbers.’ Mark 11:15-17

Jesus of Nazareth, as a person who is 100% human, experienced anger many times in his life precisely because he encountered much adversity and antagonism, especially among the scribes, Pharisees and doctors of the law. He certainly felt anger because his contemporaries were obtusely closed to his message, and faced with the powerlessness to change them, he wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44). Crying is, in fact, one of the best ways to get rid of negative emotions like anger.

We have just exemplified the times when Jesus’ actions were motivated by anger, that is, he expressed it in the accusations he repeatedly made against the leaders of the people and in the cleansing of the Temple of sellers and their wares. On these two occasions, we can see the marks that distinguish righteous anger from referential anger:

Adequate and proportional – Righteous anger is controlled by the person who uses it, that is, the person who uses it never loses his temper because he has no intention of infringing damage on others. It is controlled and appropriate like the anger parents use with their children: they do not want to harm them, on the contrary, they fear that their children’s behaviour will be self-destructive.

It has no relation to the past – Contrary to the referential anger that comes from the individual past of the angry person, what motivates and arouses justified anger belongs to the present and is, in itself, evident to everyone’s eyes.

Altruistic anger – The objective of the anger is to restore harmony, justice and peace. This was the case with Jesus. He was never angry for personal reasons, as it is the case with referential anger, but was angry to defend the poor from their oppressors. It is in this sense that I call it a selfless anger, in opposition to the referential anger which is selfish.

Referential anger
Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one. Benjamin Franklin

In defining referential anger, we realize that it serves the opposite of everything we have said about just anger. It is neither adequate nor proportionate or controlled: on the contrary, it is often disproportional and inadequate, and it does not have the good of others as its goal, but rather some selfish or even petty reason. Often it is the anger that controls the angry person and not the other way around.

The origin of this anger lies in the past, that is, it is contained in the person who lives in anger and only needs a situation or event to trigger it; that is why it is called referential since it was generated from a past event as the person at that time did not express it because he was in a position of inferiority, for example, because he was still a child, he ended up suppressing or repressing it.

A classic example of repressed anger is seen in the case of the boss who harshly rebukes the employee; the latter not being able to unload his anger back on the boss, gets home and takes it on his wife for the smallest of reason, the wife then takes it on her son and the son then kicks the dog or cat, hoping that the latter will know how to deal better with the anger because there is no one below it to take it out on.

In this case, the anger came out of the individual and was not repressed or suppressed, it fell on another person who served as a punching bag. Referential anger comes from a more distant past: an episode, or episodes, that gave rise to it were serious abuses of authority over a defenceless person who had no way of expressing the anger which evidently was internalized. Time can make the person forget the facts that gave rise to this anger, but it does not erase the anger and many times even strengthens it.

This internalized anger does not disappear and whenever an event in the present bears similarities to the one in the past, unconsciously our psyche looks for that anger, connects to it and expresses presently what he was not able to express at that time, in the past. Rage is triggered when present events or persons are interpreted in a similar way to past events or persons.

At every infraction in the present, we unconsciously see the monsters of the past and react as we should have done at that time. It is clear that the righteous ends up paying for the sinner. The person in the present upon whom we unload our anger is only a scapegoat to the anger that we have accumulated and which was not discharged at the time when and where the anger first originated.

Cervantes, the author of the book Don Quixote of the Mancha, describes this case very well in the famous and emblematic scene of the windmills. Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Pança were riding through La Mancha when they spotted about thirty to forty windmills. Don Quixote addressed his squire Sancho Pança, “Do you see those giants over there?”, “What giants?” Sancho Pança asked. “Those that you see over there with long arms.”

Despite Sancho Pança’s warning and realism that he only sees windmills, Don Quixote charged towards the windmills, thinking they were giants. Don Quixote saw in them his enemies from the past who were giants to him and who had defeated him; but at this moment, he found enough courage in himself to defeat them.

How the Non-Violent Communication sees anger
Anger is a suicidal expression of an unmet need. Michael Rosenberg

We deceive ourselves when we think that our feelings are the result of what others say or do. Instead of looking inward for the cause of our anger, or any other feelings or emotions, we look outward, blaming others, and searching for a scapegoat and often discharging our anger at it in the form of vengeance or punishment.

Anger is to its cause like smoke is to fire; where there is smoke there is fire; where there is anger there is a need of ours that is not getting met, it is this need that is the true cause of the anger and not what the other person said or did.

Rosenberg gives the example of a prisoner in a Swedish prison, when asked what the prison authorities had done to provoke his anger, the prisoner replied, “I made a request to them three weeks ago, and they haven’t responded yet.” The prisoner made a pure observation without mixing in any evaluation, that is, without qualifying the behaviour of the prison authorities; however, the stimulus seems to coincide with the cause, that is, he blames the authorities for his anger.

When he turns within to find the reason or the cause of his anger, he discovers that what in fact he feels is fear of getting out of prison without receiving the training he requested in order to be able to support himself financially. What causes anger is not what others say or do, but our interpretation and negative evaluation of what they say or do, as well as what we tell ourselves.

In the case of the prisoner, he discovers that he was angry because he thought it was not fair the way he was being treated, that they were not treating him right. We feel angry because we interpret and deem as bad, unjust, inhuman, the behaviour of the one who triggered our anger. The behaviour triggers the anger but the cause is our interpretation of this behaviour and the verdict we pass on the people by judging them as selfish, unjust, cruel etc.

Anger results from focusing our attention on what the other person “should” or “should not” do and judging them as being “wrong” or “bad” or “selfish” etc. Anger keeps us focused on what we don’t like instead of helping us connect with our needs. By shifting the focus of our attention to asking what needs of ours are not getting met when we accuse others, our feeling of anger disappears or is replaced by feelings that serve life such as fear, disappointment, sadness or pain.

The sentences that we pronounce in judging the one whose behaviour spurred our anger are life-alienating tragic expressions of needs that are not getting met. Instead of looking into ourselves to connect with what we need, we come out of ourselves, and accuse and blame others for our needs not being met.

Going back to the Swedish prisoner, Rosenberg asked him what unmet needs of his lie behind the accusations he made against the prison authorities. The answer did not come easily and that is because most of us are more used to reacting and judging others than to doing exercises of introspection and connecting with what we really need.

Finally, the prisoner said, “Well, my need is to be able to take care of myself when I am released from prison. So, the request I made of the prison officials was to learn a trade while I am an inmate.”

Rosenberg asked the prisoner, “How do you feel now?” He answered, “I’m scared.” In connecting with the need that provoked fear as a primary emotion and anger against the authorities as a secondary emotion, the anger eventually dissolved, imploded as we have said before, and stopped making itself felt.

Recapping what we have said so far, when faced with anger, the first thing to do is to contain it by taking a deep breath, count to 10, then check the primary emotion that underlies the anger by answering the question “why am I angry?” Finally, it is our responsibility to find out what need is this primary emotion referring to and to check that the solution or satisfaction of this need does not lie with the person against whom we are angry.

Reactive versus proactive
A man in a passion rides a mad horse.  Ben Franklin

Much of what we say in this section refers to other emotions and not only to the emotion of anger, but since this is the most reactive of all emotions, everything we say here can be applied to anger when we experience it in an aggressive and explosive manner, that is, reactively.

It goes without saying now that reactive behaviour is our animal behaviour, since it comes from our limbic and reptile brains that have been designed to rid reptiles and mammals of the dangers they encounter in their daily lives.

They are not designed for situations that a human being encounters in himself and with his fellow human beings: in these situations, it is the neocortex that helps us and not the other two. What we know a priori at the theoretical level, however, is not what we apply in our daily lives at the end of the day.

Way of acting – The reactive person acts within a framework of cause-effect, stimulus-response, while the proactive person is aware of his emotions and freely decides what is appropriate to do with them, consciously assumes the reins of his behaviour.

When faced with error – The reactive person says that it is not his fault and if he admits it, he would say that everyone is like that and that to err is human. The proactive person believes that in excusing oneself of a wrongdoing, by saying that everyone does it, serves as a justification only for foolish people. The wise rather than excusing themselves take responsibility and learn from their mistakes.

When faced with adversity – The reactive person feels victimized, discouraged, loss of control, depressed, questions his self-esteem, fears failure and does not act. The proactive person knows that adversity is the best teacher; where there is a crisis, there is an opportunity to grow and discover new things, and a much-felt need sharpens our mind’s creativity to find ways to satisfy it.

When faced with future – The reactive person thinks he is persecuted by misfortunes or thinks that those who succeed in life do not get there by hard work, but rather by luck. He is superstitious and believes in fate or predestination. The proactive person understands that his future and success depend on him, they are in his hands, and that whatever happens will happen because of his ingenuity and effort.

When faced with spending time – The reactive person is always very busy and doesn’t even have time for himself, he is anxious and lives stressed from lack of organization, he often misuses time, wastes it on unimportant things and then has no time for the important ones; he boycotts himself. The proactive person is organized and methodical, so he always finds time for the important things in his life, for himself and others, he lives without stress and anxiety.

When faced with challenges – The reactive person flees away from pain, risk, self sacrifice and challenges, does not face them, and hides his head in the sand like an ostrich. The proactive person faces challenges one by one, with a plan, organization and courage, he believes in taking the bull by its horns, and by not running away from it.

When dealing with commitment – The reactive person makes promises that he does not deliver, he is like the Gospel character who tells his father he will work in the vineyard, but then does not do it, and always finds justification for his sloppy and lazy behaviour. The proactive person is trustworthy and reliable because he does not break his promises. He has a wider perspective and can see the puzzle in its entirety while the reactive one is only fixed on the piece that he is supposed to place in it.

In front of a mirror – The reactive person says “I’m not as bad as they say, there are many worse people than me” while the proactive says “I’m good, but I can be better”, there is room for improvement.

In dialogue – The reactive person does not wait for his turn to speak, interrupts and thinks that what he has to say is more important, is not a good listener and is always thinking of an answer, he wants to win the argument and does not mind losing the opponent; on the other hand, he resists everyone who knows more than him, and only fixates on their faults to throw them back at their face. The proactive person is calm, listens, understands, thinks and responds, and finds positive things in what others say and begins his intervention by mentioning them, respects those who know more than him and tries to learn from them.

When faced with progress – The reactive person resists progress, is in love with the “status quo” and its routines, he thinks it has always been done this way and always will be done this way. The proactive person wants to grow and thinks that there must be a better way to do things. So, in short, the reactive person’s attitude is part of the problem, while the preactive’s person attitude is part of the solution.

Anger management
You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire.

So, when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Matthew 5:21-24

As we saw before, human behaviour is preceded by thoughts and feeling before it reaches action. If we want to stop the action, it is wiser to catch it at the feeling or thought stage than to catch it later. This is true of all thoughts or feelings and even truer in relation to anger. As mentioned above, anger is like fire that is relatively easy to put out if we catch it at the start; but if we let it spread, there will be nothing we can do to stop it.

The longer we spend nursing a resentment, the more we nourish it; in the case of anger, from resentment we move to hatred, from hatred to insult and from insult to action. This is why for Jesus, sin is not only the killing, but all the steps that led to this act; like the good psychologist that he was, Jesus lists these very steps: the feeling of anger, the insult and punishment, these steps are as much a sin as the act of killing.

To safely reduce the high speed of a car, it is preferable to change the gears from 5th to 4th, from 3rd to 2nd, rather than to slam on the brake because the brakes only lock the wheels and not the inertia and the speed of the whole car. On the other hand, there is always one wheel that brakes more than the others dangerously unbalancing the car.

By reducing the gears, I am braking with the engine, that is, I am forcing the whole car to enter into a lower speed and thus reducing the speed of the car safely. I am resolving the problem at its root and not at its manifestation, in the case of the car, reducing the speed at the engine level and not at the wheels. You cannot do this with an automatic car and that makes it less safe than a standard one.

The same is true of our behaviour: if I give free rein to my thoughts and feelings, and try to stop the action, it is like locking the wheels; if on the other hand, I control my thoughts and feelings, I am braking or avoiding the action at my centre where they originate, or from where they are projected.

There are three ways to manage anger: aggressively, passively and assertively. The aggressive is violent, he screams, explodes, takes revenge for everything and nothing, and only realizes the evil he has done after the fact; he is the Incredible Hulk. The passive denies and hides his anger from others, and even from himself; he explodes later without him or others knowing why, or slaps then quickly hides his hand behind his back; he is the terrorist. The assertive distances himself from his anger, he separates the baby from the bath water, denouncing the sin without accusing the sinner; he is the diplomat.

THE AGGRESSIVE
Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. (…) Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:29, 31-32

• Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. Ambrose Bierce 
• Anger is one letter short of danger.  Eleanor Roosevelt. 
• How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. Marco Aurélio 
• Acting with anger is the same as setting the sail in a storm. Euripides 
• If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size? Sydney J. Harris 
• He who angers you, conquers you. Elizabeth Kenny 

Anger, which exists naturally because it has the function of protecting us and launching us into life, when used aggressively goes against our life and those of others, it destroys harmony and only achieves the deadly peace of a cemetery.

Being under the influence of anger is like being under the influence of alcohol: we don’t know what we are saying or what we are doing. Anger envelops our neocortex in a thick fog, can even deactivate it, scoring a KO over it; anger divorces the person from himself, leaving him without any control, completely possessed by the “demon” of anger who makes of the person whatever it wants.

An action not enlightened by reason is an instinctive and animal-like action. The aggressive lives in the past, misinterprets the present because he deals with it from the reptilian brain, which is only adequate for snakes. That’s why we say “he is as bad as a snake” when we want to say that somebody is evil. Or he uses the mammalian brain that was designed for wolves, not for humans; that is why Thomas Hobbes claims that man is wolf of man. The aggressive person is against everything and everyone because he lives with the belief that everything and everyone antagonize him, he trusts no one.

For the aggressive person, the attack is the best defence, he explodes readily, boils in little water; he controls others and seeks power over them, because he has no power or control over himself; he often uses intimidation; is in love with power and never comes to know the power of love. He likes to pull the rug under the feet of others and takes pleasure in unmasking hypocrites.

He uses obscenities, insults with ease, possesses a firm, hard and sharp voice, shouts, rising in tone at the end of his speech. He has a cold and sarcastic tone of voice, he is loquacious, his speech is smooth, without hesitations; he has the tendency to use accusing words, he fixes his eyes on his subjects with the intent to intimidate and dominate. He points with his finger, hits with his fist, and he is impatient.

The farmer’s vengeance
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. Chinese proverb

A farmer enraged by a fox that stole his chickens finally manages to catch it. He decides to take his revenge not just by killing it but by first making it suffer all the resentment that it had caused him in the past. He ties the fox’s tail to a thick rope well soaked in oil and sets it on fire. The fox by a strange fatality or irony of fate sets off running in the direction of the farmer’s golden and ripe wheat fields. It is harvest time, but as the consequence of his revenge, that year the farmer is left with no crops to harvest.

Whoever wants to do evil, the evil will return to him. The spell has turned against the wizard. What goes around comes around.
   
Much more positive is the story of Buddha, who as he passed from village to village with his disciples, the villagers would throw insults at him as they believed he was perverting the youth with his ideas. At one point, one of his disciples could stand it no longer asked the master, “But don’t you hear the insults the villagers are throwing at you?” to which the master replied, “yes, I do hear them, they are insulting me but I don’t feel insulted.”

The domino effect of anger
When one responds to anger with anger, inevitably it increases exponentially in intensity and involves more and more people; this phenomenon is called the spiral of violence. But anger or violence also has a domino effect, as the following story shows:

While the family was having breakfast, the little girl accidentally knocked a cup of coffee that ended up staining her father’s white shirt. He scolded her severely and she began to cry. He then blamed his wife for having left the cup too close to the edge of the table, and the wife reacted by starting a verbal battle.

Defeated and grumbling, the father went to change his shirt and when he came back, the girl was till crying and ended up missing her school bus. The wife went to work upset, and the father had to drive his daughter to school. Since he was already late for work, he went over the speed limit and was caught and fined by the police. He finally arrived at the school and the girl quickly got out of the car without saying goodbye to her father.

When he arrived late at the office, his boss gave him a lecture on punctuality and on top of this, he suddenly realized that he had left his briefcase at home. He had to return home to retrieve his briefcase, and had to listen to more impropriety from the boss. At the end of the day, he went home to an atmosphere so stormy and cold that one could cut it with a knife.

Whose fault was all that? It was his and only his. Accidents like a cup falling off the table are quite common and they are nobody’s fault, but the way we react to them is completely our responsibility. All he had to do was to say, “It’s okay, it can happen to anyone,” and the day would have been very different.

PASSIVE
Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Ephesians 4:26-27

• Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. Mark Twain 
• Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. Maya Angelou 
• Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.  Mitch Albom 
• Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. Buddha 
• Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Saint Augustine 

“Evil stays with those who practice it”, says the proverb, and anger harms especially those who feel it and not so much those who receive it, unless those who receive it are children. Suppressing or repressing anger is really deceiving oneself, since neither neutralizes the anger, it does not go away but enters into the unconscious because the conscious denies it.

Anger is not lost, what is lost is the control over it. For the emotional and physical health of the person, an explosion would be better than to keep it bottled up. Even if we have told ourselves that what happened is of no value, our unconscious gives it due value and defends us, in some way, from ourselves.

Suppression can erase our feelings towards people, it can place mines that at some point can explode and harm the people who live around us. Unresolved chronic anger can lead to health issues such as ulcers and depression.

The passive person gives in to the exaggerated demands of other people. He suffers from apathy, lets others control his life, and is uncritically submissive. He never offers his opinion before others give theirs. He never criticizes or makes a negative comment, he assumes guilt even when it is not his fault.

His voice is sometimes fragile or soft, in a monotone, it is extremely timid or quiet and so silent that it often trails off at the end. The flow of speech is hesitant and full of pauses and doubts, he clears his throat frequently, puts on a fake smile when he is irritated or criticized, raises his brows always expecting a rebuke, etc.  The eye contact is evasive and downcast.

What makes a person passive? Probably everyone in the family was so considerate and helpful that the child never had the opportunity to practice saying no. Obedience may have been so deeply rooted in the child that he cannot rethink things for himself as an adult. 

Passive aggressive
The passive aggressive person is the combination of the aggressive and the passive type. Many passive people are, in fact, passive aggressive. To better understand them, we have to compare them with the aggressive ones. The aggressive person is frontal, declares and fights in an open war; the passive aggressive person, on the other hand, is more like the cowardice attitude of terrorism – a combination of aggression with the fear of expressing it openly.

To a large extent, the person is not aware of this behaviour, of slapping someone’s face then hiding his hand, or of having negative behaviours towards the person he seeks to distance himself. For example, the housewife who is angry with her husband without blatantly showing it, cooks meals that he does not like or puts too much salt in it to spite him.

The passive aggressive person forgets commitments and things that have an impact on people’s lives, confuses everything accidentally. He makes sarcastic statements, is not punctual, is stubborn, often has headaches or backaches or invents them. He fails on purpose or performs his tasks poorly so that they replace him. He is happy when things go wrong.

ASSERTIVE
‘Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.’ When he had said this, one of the police standing nearby struck Jesus on the face, saying, ‘Is that how you answer the high priest?’ Jesus answered, ‘If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?’ John 18:21-23

Postpone today's anger until tomorrow. Filipino proverb

The High Priest was not following the Roman or the Jewish law; in fact, he was breaking the law by directly interrogating the defendant. What he should have done was to question the witnesses. Jesus in his intervention alluded to the law and the practice of the law, but he did this without accusing the High Priest of doing something illegal.

The assertive person mentions the sin, being careful not to accuse the sinner in the hope that the sinner himself on seeing the sin and its effects or consequences on his victims will end up accusing himself and recognizing his mistake. Accusing the sinner of his sin is usually counterproductive since the sinner’s tendency is to defend himself when feeling attacked and will try to justify his indiscretion.

Jesus behaved assertively when the soldier struck him on the face. He did not react aggressively by words or actions, he forced the soldier to question his own action, to let go of his reptilian and limbic brains and to use his neocortex, seeking within it a justification for his aggression by asking him, “Why do you strike me?”

The aggressive person aims to punish while the assertive seeks to help the person who erred. He tries to be understanding and flexible, and is willing to look for alternatives. He recognizes that we all have flaws, and knows that even the best of us sometimes make mistakes. He knows the value of forgiveness, recognizes that one can always improve, does not say enough is enough, and never gives up on anyone, or cuts anyone out of his life forever.

He is able to defend his own rights without violating the rights of others. He can express his own needs, desires, opinions, feelings and beliefs directly, honestly and appropriately.

The assertive person has in mind that when someone addresses him angrily for no apparent reason, this anger is referential and at that moment he represents to that person someone from his past. Therefore, the anger is not towards him, but towards a monster in the past, which at that moment he represents. This is particularly true in schools when students revolt against the teachers.

The assertive person takes responsibility for his own feelings, reveals the wounds that the action of the other person has caused him, but without accusing him, in the hope that the other person will also become aware of his action. He never tells others that they irritate him, nor calls them names or labels them, but he takes responsibility for his own anger when he feels it. Even when angry he recognizes virtues and not only defects in the one who aroused his anger.

Using the subject ‘I’ instead of ‘You’
Aggressive – (You) are always interrupting my stories.
Assertive – (I) would like to tell stories without being interrupted.
Aggressive – (You) embarrassed me in front of all those people.
Assertive – (I) felt embarrassed when you said that in front of all those people.

Using factual descriptions instead of value judgments or exaggerations
Aggressive – This work is garbage.
Assertive – The punctuation in your report needs more work. In addition, the titles are spaced inconsistently.
Aggressive – If you don’t change your attitudes, you’ll have big problems.
Assertive – If you keep coming in after 8:00 a.m., I’ll have to deduct two days’ pay from your salary.

Expressing thoughts, feelings and opinions assuming responsibility for them
Aggressive – He makes me furious (denies responsibility for feelings).
Assertive – I get angry when he doesn’t do what he has promised (responsible for feelings).
Aggressive – The only acceptable policy is to equalize competition (states opinion as if it was a fact, is being aggressive and controlling).
Assertive – I believe that equalizing competition is the best policy (takes responsibility for the opinion).

Like any other feeling or emotion, the feeling of anger is not under our control in certain situations in life, but it is our responsibility to appropriate it, making ourselves responsible both for feeling it because it comes from inside of us, and for the way we manage it.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC