Читать книгу Managing Anger: Simple Steps to Dealing with Frustration and Threat - Gael Lindenfield, Gael Lindenfield - Страница 24

Another way in which people allow their self-esteem to be damaged by anger is by thinking that not only can it make them ‘bad’, but that it also has the power to make them ‘mad’ – and, of course, that label may have even more power to eat away at our self-image! We often hear variations on these themes:

‘He was so angry that he just lost his reason.’

‘She flew into a rage and went quite crazy.’

So let’s try to separate the myths from the reality around the relationship between anger and mental health.

To feel and express anger healthily is actually the antithesis of madness.

THEODORE ISAAC RUBIN

Links between anger and mental health have been made for many centuries. Horace, the great philosopher, who lived from 65 to 8 BC, is quoted as saying ‘Anger is a brief madness’. Nowadays, we may not equate anger with madness, but very many people still believe that it can directly cause it.

In fact, like many fellow therapists, I firmly believe that an ability to express anger in an assertive, healthy and controlled manner is indeed one of the most important signs of good mental health. But I do acknowledge that mismanaged anger can aggravate mental health problems. At this stage I would love to be able to quote irrefutable scientific evidence to support this belief, but I cannot, because it does not exist, and I very much doubt that it ever will. Unfortunately, disorders in this field are not easy to research because it is obviously very difficult to keep tight scientific control over human subjects without depriving them of freedom and privacy and the help they often need and deserve. So research data on the exact causes of mental health problems is still frustratingly inconclusive and most of the debate, therefore, has a strong subjective ring to it.

Much of the disagreement and argument centres around what is commonly called ‘the nature/nurture debate’. On the one hand, there are those who believe that almost all problems stem from biochemical or genetic faults (nature), on the other hand are those who believe that all problems can be traced back to parenting and other socialization factors (nurture) – and many other people retain a foot in both camps. Those who believe that the mismanagement of anger can be a cause of mental ill-health are most likely to be found closest to the nurture end of the spectrum.