How long does your anger last?

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What day is this again?

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Tuesday 12th November 2024.

I understand where you are coming from. I use my anger as fuel for my creativity side when I can. Some of my best ideas were born from my anger at something, but they can be malicious if I am not careful. There is a difference between anger and rage (directed at someone in particular). I am much more destructive with my ideas under rage conditions. Prolonged bullying puts me into the rage stage, as I had that for most of my youth. I still feel anger decades after certain events have long passed. I can forgive, but it is hard to forget.

Yes. I read that anger, or aggression at least, is psychologically necessary for solving problems. So aggression isn't always the monster it's cracked up to be. I've experienced trying to record a good vocal track, repeatedly failing, and then getting a bit angry, trying again, and getting it right. Something about getting mad enables us to cut through the crap and get the job done.

I think even rage can be a good thing sometimes. If you're being attacked, going ballistic can scare the attackers off. It may be folly to punch above your weight of course, but even there it's surprising how humans can sometimes be shocked into backing off rather than risk continuing into an unfamiliar situation. But the approach can backfire horribly of course.

For me, anger has always been destructive and painful. It has caused me to lash out at people and ruin interpersonal relationships and even jobs, a long time ago. I've never had a positive outcome from anger.

Yeah, I get the full set of lessons around anger and emotions in general. Forcedly. In different degrees, in different states.


It's one thing when it's at a moment or over a circumstance..

A situation, a problem, and then work with a solution or as a response or a warning.
Or something that had or hadn't happened and channeled it into something else.

Like I myself knew how and when anger is an appropriate response.


... It's another when it doesn't even reflect the present, or based on misperception and slights of immaturity from the ego, never went away since childhood and refused to leave past mid 20s.

No suppressions of expressions, no masking, no holding back -- none of that stupid pseudo-stoic repression crap.

Just sheer dysregulation of unprocessed emotions. No flee or fawn, just fight.

Not enough space for almost everything but emotionality.
All because emotions has no concept of time -- all because it happened in a less developed stage of my life and it got stuck there.

Yes, I needed therapy.
No, I solved it myself. It just took almost 25+ years to figure. Again, it is quite a contrast...

I experience anger as distress - it disrupts my concentration, sleep, motivation to eat and routines; it drains my energy.
Forbidden as a child to ever express anger, I internalised it to stay safe. Usually the disruption to my nomal mood an function lasts between 1-3 days.

Maybe the other thing with me is that the notion of offense-and-forgiveness doesn't quite seem to square with me. I think it's often a case of my inability to let anything go - a strong trait in me that's not just about bearing grievances, it's also about feeling that I need to rectify any imperfection that I see, to find anything I've misplaced, however trivial.

Derren Brown the illusionist once mysteriously said that he was an atheist and that he'd never forgiven anybody in his life. I don't know this for sure, but I suspect he may have been hinting that the concept of sin and forgiveness is more of an artificial, dodgy construct than a real description of human psychology and emotion, it may be a confused map of reality. So maybe we shouldn't feel ashamed if our anger lasts a long time. Having said that, if you're going to get your own back on somebody, it's not likely to do much good if it's so long after the offense that the culprit can't remember what they did to anger you. If there is a purpose to anger, it's probably about an attempt to condition the culprit a la Pavlov, to show them and perhaps to show others that actions have consequences. Certainly if a criminal act is serious enough, the law doesn't let it go while the offender lives.

Depends but it can last hours.

Exactly! I am the same way as you are. But honestly...Is it even a good thing? Sometimes I wish I could hold grudges for a long than few hours, cause I know few people who would deserve it, but I am unable to.