Figuring Out Whether Your Anger Is Toxic

I coined the term toxic anger to convey the fact that certain subtypes of anger can be poisonous, even lethal. Other forms of anger are benign (nontoxic) and really cannot hurt you in any appreciable way. The trick is to know which is which. First, go to the “How often do you get angry?” section, earlier in this chapter, where you indicate how frequently you find yourself getting angry during a typical week. If you selected A, B, or C — “Not at all” up to “Three to five times a week” — your anger can be considered intermittent or episodic in nature. If you checked any of the other answers — “One or two times a day” through “More than ten times a day” — your anger is chronic. Generally speaking, episodic anger isn’t a problem, but chronic anger is. Now, go to the “How intense is your anger?” section, where you rate the intensity of your anger. If your intensity rating was between 1 and 3, I call that irritability. If your rating was between 4 and 6, I call that anger. And, if you rated yourself between 7 and 10, I call that rage. Rage is always a problem. When two or more people admit to being angry, obviously they aren’t talking about having the exact same emotional experience. Anger is just a word — a fairly meaningless concept — until you break it down into something that can be quantified.
Here’s where things get interesting. The final step in evaluating whether you have a problem with anger is to combine your anger scores in a way that gen-erates six possible subcategories of anger.
I find that most people are comfortable with terms like irritated and angry, but they don’t like the label rage at all. There’s something equally unsettling about the label chronic. And when you put the two together, people really jump out of their seats.

How intense is your anger?

Now you need to evaluate the strength of your anger. Think about how you feel most of the time when you get angry and answer this question honestly:

On average from 1 to 10, how intense is your anger when you get mad?

If your intensity rating is 6 or below, your anger is within a healthy, normal range. If your intensity rating is 7 or above, you likely have a problem with anger.

Of course, your anger may be more intense in some situations than others. But, by and large, feelings tend to be consistent from one episode of emotion to the next. We humans, after all, are creatures of habit!

Annoyance is anger too

In one study where 50 college students were asked to keep a weekly diary of how often they got annoyed or angry, they recorded 1,536 instances of emotion. The average student reported getting angry seven times a week, roughly once a day. However, the average student also reported feeling annoyed 24 times a week or approximately 3 times a day. In other words, their report of anger was four times greater when they included milder forms of emotions like annoyance.

How often do you get angry?

Start by answering the following question.

How often during a typical week in the past month did you get irritated, mad, or angry?

A. Not at all

B. Once or twice a week

C. Three to five times a week

D. One or two times a day

E. Three times a day

F. Four or five times a day

G. Six to ten times a day

H. More than ten times a day

Be honest. And don’t just think of the times you flew into a rage — think of all the times you felt even the least bit angry.

If you answered A, B, or C, your anger is within a healthy, normal range. If you answered D, E, F, G, or H, your anger is probably excessive (you’re angrier than 75 percent of most people I have surveyed). Most people tend to underestimate the extent to which they feel things. This is partially due to memory — only the more dramatic episodes of anger come to mind. Also, anger is one of those emotions everyone wants to forget as quickly as possible. Make sure that you’re being honest with yourself about how often you feel angry.

Evaluating How Angry You Are

Everyone gets angry. After all, anger is one of those universal emotions —along with sadness, joy, and fear — that people throughout the world recognize when they see or hear it. But you and I may not experience anger to the same degree — and that’s really the crux of what this blog is about. What you need to determine is exactly how angry you are. To do this, you first have to agree on what anger is and what it isn’t. Anger is often defined as:

• The emotion you reserve for your enemies
• The emotion that most often accompanies or precedes aggressive behavior
• The emotion that triggers the fight component of your nervous system’s fight-or-flight response
• The emotion that is the opposite of fear
• The emotion that expresses itself in revenge
• The emotion that signals that you feel personally threatened
• The emotion that’s associated with blame
• The emotion that’s negative in tone
• The emotion that can be deadly when it comes to your health
• The emotion that gets your blood boiling
• The emotion that you’re most afraid of
• The emotion that expresses the combative side of your personality
• The emotion that everyone else around you is most afraid of
• The emotion that always does more harm than good

Anger, on the other hand, is not the same as:

• Hostility: An attitude of ill will synonymous with cynicism, mistrust, and paranoia
• Aggression or violence: Various types of behavior that are always intended to inflict harm on others.