During my years of studying grief, both from the inside and the outside, I learned that anger is not a stage of grief, but an integral part of the process. Since much of grief is visceral — a response to perceived danger — grievers experience a tremendous fight or flight hormonal upsurge. The panic they feel after the death of a life mate is a natural part of this survival mechanism; it alerts them to the danger of being suddenly alone. Anger is the other side of this mechanism, the part that generates the energy necessary to take action.
Sometimes anger is an emotional response, especially if there is a direct action that prompted the anger, such as a doctor who downplayed the seriousness of the loved one’s illness, taking from the griever the opportunity to say goodbye. Other times, even though that anger feels emotional, it’s strictly a physical response to the flood of hormones in the systems of grievers. Their minds scurry around trying to find a reason for how they feel because as rational beings, people cannot accept unfocused anger, so they search for a target, for a reason for the anger. People can always find a reason, which masks the truth that in many cases, the anger came first, and the reason for the anger second.
Listening to people haranguing others who have a different lifestyle or belief, I wondered if this same lesson I learned from grief could hold true in a wider context. In almost every discussion, people seem to descend into name calling rather than trying to find a common ground or to explain why they think the way they do. The hatred and anger is almost palpable, more so than if it were merely an act put on for the benefit of their peers.
Like with grief, could the anger have come first and then only later did that anger go in search of a target? I know that many younger people are angry with their lives and seem to want to tear down the country and the system they think created the situation, but the anger seems so over the top. Are they just angry and their political stance is what they chose as a target for that anger?
I also wonder if that anger is catching. I do know people who think alike tend to support each other in what seems to be folie à deux, so it could just be that they exacerbate each other’s inclinations. It could be that the anger makes them feel alive, drugged as they are on adrenaline, but it could also be something else. For example, the only times I got blindingly angry, ready to smash someone with a baseball bat, was when my bipolar brother would dump his anger on me, back when we were both stranded in California. Out of his presence, I was fine, but oh, that reflected anger was more than I could handle. Well, almost more. I did handle it, and we all survived that situation, but it sure was bizarre to experience especially since I tend to be a rather phlegmatic person.
None of this matters, I suppose. To be honest, little of what I write about matters since there’s nothing I can do about any of it, but here I am, spinning my wheels anyway.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
