There’s a lot to feel anxious about on this first day of a new year – war, the economy, climate, housing and more. And there is anger too – at the awfulness of Gaza, Sudan and other warzones and the more personal reasons to be angry that haunt many injured family, friend and work relationships.
Unshackled from routine in these strange midwinter days, it is all too easy to find ourselves immersed in ruminations about the state of the world, or individual hurts and perceived injustices.
Emotions evolved because they served a purpose – they helped us to survive and pass on our genes. Anxiety’s purpose was to make us run from danger. The purpose of sadness was to gain succour from others; disgust is designed to stop us being poisoned, and happiness to attract a mate.
Deprived of a clear goal and a specific target of the emotion, anger is like a car engine disconnected from its wheels – its revving becomes a useless whine which makes the car rattle and shudder but go nowhere
And then there is anger, a more complex emotion with a less obvious purpose.
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The poet Maya Angelou said that you should be angry but not bitter because bitterness “eats upon the host”. Instead, she says, you should avoid bitterness and use anger by taking action of some kind. Aristotle said something similar: 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 ... is not easy.
Angelou and Aristotle speak sense, neuropsychologically speaking. Deprived of a clear goal and a specific target of the emotion, anger is like a car engine disconnected from its wheels – its revving becomes a useless whine which makes the car rattle and shudder but go nowhere. In striving for some grip, this inward-directed energy revs faster and faster because there is no resistance from the road.
And here is the real sting – anger and anxiety have more or less the same bodily symptoms as each other, including beating heart, dry mouth, sweaty palms and twisting stomach. Anger that is not connected to the engine of action leads to a spiralling torment where anger morphs into anxiety and anxiety into anger and so on until you face the risk of Angelou’s “cancer of bitterness”.
Research shows that people who have suffered a severe trauma – say a road crash – may not recover emotionally if they are angry about what has happened to them. Rather than gradually regaining their equilibrium over the years, many get worse, because their anger and anxiety resonate together in a toxic feedback loop that spawns an almost constant negative emotional state.
Anger does not have to be shouted, it can burn quietly and will be all the more powerful because of that
To be angry about generalities of injustice or unfairness – whether global or highly personal – risks releasing a virus of negative emotion through your body and your days. Instead, you need to harness anger by getting clear in your mind something feasible that you want a specific person or group to do. As Aristotle said, this must be done in the right way. Anger does not have to be shouted, it can burn quietly and will be all the more powerful because of that. This is because anger’s evolutionary purpose is as a negotiating tool; the angry dog’s low growl will soon quieten the wild yapping of its adversary.
The biggest source of anxiety in humans is the same as what makes us angry – other people’s actions. Anger that is properly harnessed, targeted and expressed is, in fact, an empowering, positive emotion that helps release you from anxiety. But anger is a powerful tool and you need training to use it otherwise, it will injure you. So, if you are anxious about the year ahead – and particularly if you are also angry with someone – then harness these emotions into the redeeming outlet of action.
Talking to others about how to solve a problem, rather than wasting conversations fruitlessly complaining about it, can transform a state of anxious impotence into an empowered and mood-lifting sense of direction. This new focus of conversations with others and with yourself is on defining what should be done first, who should be asked to do it and how the request should be presented in a way that could result in consent rather than reciprocal anger and hostility. This will not alleviate climate change or the suffering in Gaza but it will put you into the mindset of taking action rather than engaging in emotionally-exhausting rumination. It will also focus your attention on specific goals outside of yourself and gently steer it away from anxiety.
We all differ in how much we can tolerate uncertainty. Low-tolerance individuals are much more prone to be anxious and depressed because uncertainty is everywhere, especially now
But the sheer unpredictability of what will happen in 2025, from Trump tariffs to Putin’s threats, means that even when we are focused on taking action, it’s hard to escape the uneasiness that uncertainty causes.
We all differ in how much we can tolerate uncertainty. Low-tolerance individuals are much more prone to be anxious and depressed because uncertainty is everywhere, especially now. But you can learn to embrace uncertainty – maybe even enjoy it a little.
Not knowing what’s going to happen makes us alert and attentive, and in this state, we are better at learning. You can even learn to enjoy this wait-and-see state of mind and body if you relax your impossible-to-satisfy need for certainty. This condition of edgy hope is nowhere more apparent than today in Syria.
Here is my resolution for 2025. If I find myself caught up in angry-anxious ruminations about anything, from Gaza to Donbas to the climate crisis, I will end that by embracing uncertainty and taking some sort of small action, ranging from making a donation to Unicef or contacting an advocacy group. Being alive in this incredible world is far too precious to allow our minds to be filled with anxiety and anger over things we cannot control. But there are things we can control and if we walk the walk rather than just talk the talk, the grand old stretch is already beckoning us toward spring’s promise.
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