What is Anger For?

CNI psychological defense class

Some anger burns as hot as a billion suns. The trick is to burn the cause.

It seems like a good moment in time to discuss anger by exploring the question, “What is anger for?” This concept was inspired by a poetic description.

“Anger is frustration with something you cannot change.”

Current experiences in family health struggles have revealed there is a lot of truth in this definition. Through philosophical examination, the expression has also become a surprisingly useful calming mantra when anger strikes in unchangeable situations.

Indeed, once I was able to fully process that anger fueled by unchangeable frustration is a complete waste of time and energy, an ability to logically vanquish such anger became a new favorite in the self-care toolbox.

The Tool’s Process - An anger is questioned, if recognized as unchangeable, the mantra is recited. The fire dims once the anger is identified as a completely useless waste of time (beyond one’s need to vent). Learning trigger issues speeds the process.

From a CNI perspective, it is highly recommended to give this recognition technique a try because we will all be facing many frustrating situations we cannot change in the next few years, and there are two certainties in this inevitable outcome: We do not want to assist the sinister and shameless by self-gaslighting, nor do we want to waste any of our precious anger on things that serve no positive purpose.

Obviously, emotional self-control over things we cannot change is easier said than done, and even more so for some than others, but it is definitely something to aspire to for both self-care and the effectiveness of your power because, “When everything is an outrage, outrage has no meaning.”

The Serenity Prayer

What is Anger For?

As I am sure many have already recognized, the above mantra can only be one definition of “anger” because as we all know from personal experience, anger can cause changes in both positive and negative ways, and often both.

Of course since anger is a negative emotion, it is always important to keep in mind that activating one’s anger is far more likely to turn out negatively than positively.

This means in a perfect world we can channel our anger into fueling positive things, effecting positive change. This is what anger is for. What anger is not for is being uncontrollable it in situations where it just makes things worse for everyone we care about, including ourselves.

A solid definition by Psychology Today that aligns with the CNI view.

“Prolonged release of the stress hormones that accompany anger can destroy neurons in areas of the brain associated with judgment and short-term memory, and weaken the immune system” makes perfect medical sense, and explains a lot.

Anger revelations

As a quietly fiery youth, I liked Mr. Spock’s advice on handling and suppressing most anger for logical reasons, but it took hearing something outside-the-box in my early 30s to empower me to let perhaps 90% of my anger go.

While I was studying mental yoga to better understand myself and the mysteries of a beautiful friend’s exceptional mind, I came across yoga teachings that basically said,

“Your anger only hurts you” because it has a negative effect on almost everything you will say and do, those you care about, and anger essentially takes every interaction you have in negative directions that may have much wider repercussions, and it rarely if ever has an negative effect on the focus of your anger, so you are wasting energy there too.

I saw the light.

Again, there are certainly times when righteous anger is called for, productive and even positive in evolutionary and revolutionary senses, but a key to building up your own Counter-Narcissist defenses is to clearly be able to identify the circumstances when your rage is harming you, helping you, or can be used against you by a malignant-type narcissist to control you.

One must always remember there are a lot more of these pathological psychic vampires who manipulate and feed off of everyone’s anger than most people realize. It could be as high as 10-15% of every family, group, community, organization, nation, religion or ethnicity.

With so much predisposed psychological cruelty and injustice out there, it is just more reason we must all work to understand, control and channel our anger in productive ways and learn to eliminate its negative effects.

Otherwise, we are just hurting ourselves and leaving a psychological backdoor that allows malignant-types to hack, gaslight and trigger us into doing things we would never do, such as foolishly going against decent and logical human interests.

Ergo, yes you can still be a naturally intense and fiery person who controls their anger with logic, but we are definitely in a time where you want to further limit the opportunities for any narcissistic predator to feed your dark side by identifying areas of anger that are fruitless, and therefore only self-toxic.

As we have seen in recent political developments, mind-tricks distorting reality work far better on those who have had their anger hacked and gaslit with lies. To make matters so much worse, these types of psychic vampires are being aided and abetted by the corporate and mainstream media they have captured.

In fact most major American media is now wittingly or unwittingly grooming their audience’s narcissism while simultaneously sane-washing all the malignant-types of narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths who are always trying to trigger the anger of others for selfish advantage, amusement, or both.

Based on a Native proverb. Which do you feed?

A Buddhist teaching but not by Buddha. Buddhaghoṣa wrote it in the Visuddhimagga circa 5th Century, per Quote Investigator.

"Our diversity is our strength, our unity is our power."

One of the most powerful mantras of CNI philosophy is we are always stronger together. We know this with certainty because narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths instinctively work to isolate anyone they prey on from their support network, because then they can groom and gaslight the innocent without interference in a controlled environment. No surprise that like most others in nature, the human animal is much safer in groups as well, so yet more proof we need each other.

Narcissists are the ultimate “virtue-signalers”

One infuriating anger trigger that is currently important to identify is that malignant-type narcissists are the ultimate virtue-signalers. They do this to maintain false public personas, private lies they tell themselves and to trigger good folks into anger, often to keep the heat off themselves. In fact, it is 100% predictable pathological behavior that they would declare everyone who is selflessly doing good deeds to be virtue-signalers.

This kind of dishonest negative labeling is of course pretty standard narcissist projection meant to poison the well and positivity of any sincere efforts to do good, and to portray do-gooders as the fakes their narcissist accusers really are. Ironically, their disdain is sincere because these dark pathologies see virtue and good deeds as weaknesses of suckers to be ridiculed and exploited.

Ask yourself, how would you react if you were trying to do good and someone accused you of only doing it to trick the public into thinking you have virtue? I know pre-psychological studies, I would have become very angry at the untrue insult, but after really understanding the psychology behind this narcissist’s trick to trigger us normies, it lost its power over me and is now a clear malignant tell.

It is so simple. Narcissists regularly try to trigger the innocent and their targets by throwing massively insulting and untrue accusations at them, which of course causes a normal human to respond with anger and rage. Then the narcissist immediately points to the righteous indignation and says, “See, they are the crazy one, not me,” which obviously becomes even more enraging.

I saw this dynamic play out over and over again with my friend caught in a sociopath’s web, having already been going on for years before I went down my friend’s PTSD rabbit hole.

Certainly for those with emotional regulation struggles and/or narcissistic abuse PTSD like my friend had very badly at the time, it is clear that recovering from having your anger triggered over and over is a much steeper mountain to climb.

Getting to the point where you can inoculate yourself from other narcissists doing the same is always a worthy goal on the path towards recovery, but the truth is not everyone makes it back, so if building these defenses is “a bridge too far,” it’s more than ok, and it happens to many, so you are far from alone. You just had your limits exceeded by a psychic vampire, which can happen to anyone. Here’s to hopefully getting there in the future.

“Hope is a gift you give yourself.”

Predator camouflage

Logic and empirical psychology tell us that faux good deeds trick their prey into not running away. Indeed, pretending to care about others through “good deeds” is a key part of the camouflage they wear in society to appear like they are not shameless greed monsters completely out for themselves, in their black heart of hearts.

Clearly anyone who has a malignant antisocial disorder has learned over time that if it is truly revealed that they do not see other humans as people but rather as purely transactional tools to use at their whim, the vast majority of good folks will cut them off, shun them, expose them, or hold them accountable, which are all bad results and a massive ego blow for any egomaniac who thinks of themselves as a stable genius.

Remember, Wall Street con man Bernie Madoff was a big supporter of charities as he was running his Wall Street pyramid scheme. In turn, many charities were tricked into trusting him with their money because they thought he was virtuous, due to all his charitable support. “It was all a lie.”

Then there is Big Oil’s manipulative pattern of spending $1 million to do something good for the environment and then spending $100 million to advertise their “good deed.” This manipulative behavior is just another form of false virtue signaling used by psychopathic polluting predator-types to obscure their true nature from the public.

In fact, it is completely standard and predictable that every malignant-type pretends they care and have virtue so us “suckers” keep treating them as normal and trusting them to be honorable or at least competent, when their obviously selfish primal compulsions and tells keep screaming at us, “It’s all a lie.”

Anger and frustration will lead to the dark side if used wrong.

Conclusions

We are currently in an era where narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths have hacked far too many minds with anger via grooming and lies. Certainly the dishonest and unearned political power they have gained from such manipulations has now triggered many who played fairly to righteous anger as well.

Hopefully, this exploration will be useful in helping more understand or realize those we are up against are total liars always trying to use our anger against us, and that we all need to be more aware of these and other predatory dynamics, so we can consciously send our anger and other negative emotions to where they can do the most good, instead of the most damage to those we care about and ourselves.

A solid place to start the process is by asking the questions: What parts of my anger are wasting my valuable time and energy on things I cannot change? Is there any value in it? Are these long-held feelings things I can let go of in the name of self-care?

The Thinker - Rodin - Paris

This introspective review is also here to start conversations on other defenses or anger questions supporters of CNI may have and wish to share in the comment section. No tldr or overtly negative comments please! Those just make people angry ; )