Anger and addiction are often deeply connected: unresolved anger or emotional pain can fuel destructive behaviors when we don’t have healthier ways to cope. In this post, we’ll explore how to better understand your behavior, and how your environment plays a powerful role in shaping it.
We feel angry when we want someone or something else to behave differently, and we feel shame when we wish we could’ve behaved differently. We all hold some amount of anger toward others, and shame or guilt about ourselves, and can live a lifetime stuck with those if we don’t take a closer look at them.
You might think that if someone wronged you, or you’ve done wrong, you have to just live with the pain of that forever. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t need to hold onto your guilt for the things you have done, or anger toward people who’ve done you wrong. We’ll go over how human behavior works and how affected we are by our environment.
Every time we blame things on ourselves or other people, we only raise our anger and frustration. Once you start to open your mind to how affected we are by our outside world, you can begin to learn healthy acceptance and forgiveness.
We’ll go over how, any time we want to change, what we really need to do is raise awareness – or consciousness. We can’t be free from our automatic behaviors unless we build a way to notice and respond to things we’re not even aware of right now.
Where Do Anger and Guilt Come From?
We feel angry or guilty about things because we believe something should have gone differently – but it didn’t. If we hurt someone or make a mistake, and we feel like we really knew better, we experience guilt and shame. But if we know we were doing our best and it still happened to hurt someone, we might feel sorry for what happened, but we wouldn’t feel quite as guilty.
The same goes for anger. If someone rear-ends us with their car, we get angry if we think they could have prevented it. If they were texting at the time, we’d be furious. But if their brakes happened to fail, we wouldn’t be nearly as upset, because it wasn’t their fault. We might then get angry at the carmaker, but not the person. Our anger shifts toward whoever we believe is responsible for a bad choice.
What’s the Antidote to Anger?
At the heart of any painful emotion is the desire for something to be different – whether it’s ourselves, someone who hurt us, or the world around us. We suffer because we want things to be a certain way, and they’re not. This desire for change can lead to feelings of frustration, anger, guilt, and shame.
The antidote to frustration, anger, guilt, and shame is acceptance and forgiveness. When we truly learn to open our hearts – to accept and forgive others and ourselves – the grip of anger and shame begins to fade.
How the Environment Affects Our Actions and Behavior
Our actions are often a result of our circumstances. I had a patient who used to be a really nasty guy. He used to beat people up for just about anything – and he could. He was a huge guy and a trained fighter.
He’d take people out if they crossed him, but also for money, and even for fun. He was usually sober and knew just how dangerous he was. It only got worse after several rounds of incarceration. But by the time he came to me, he believed he was the lowest of the low for having done what he did.
His guilt was off the charts – thinking about suicide all the time as a way to make things right. He had a father who beat him before disappearing forever. He had a mom who left him to raise himself.
And he grew up in a neighborhood where any sign of weakness was bullied.
Growing to the very large size he did, he became a target for punk kids trying to become the alpha male – always needing to prove himself. Was he really going to let people beat him up every day? And the story goes on.
Do You Really Think He Became Angry and Violent Just Because?
Do you really think he could’ve just chosen to be wiser and kinder when he didn’t have parents to teach him how to take the higher ground, teachers who took the time to listen to him instead of kicking him out of school, or a family member to show him a way out? Not a chance!
He was making the best decisions he knew how to make at each moment – albeit bad choices, but his best choices given his environment and how he was raised.
A Metaphor with a Tree
If he were a tree, it would be like expecting him to grow well even without sun and water. Or better yet, like expecting grass to grow well even if it keeps getting walked on. Once he felt the truth of that reality, the burden of guilt and shame he’d lived with lifted.
Over the next few days he literally felt lighter, and his headaches went away. And over the next several weeks, he slowly began to feel like he deserved to live again, and connected with people he never really could before, comfortable now that he deserved to feel good.
Our environment trains us to be certain ways, and your environment has trained you to think addiction is your best option at the times you turn to it. The best choice at any moment may be an awful one, but it’s always our best one at the time.
Our Environment Can Be Sneaky
How many people do we all know, including ourselves, that we’re so sure could’ve done so much better, or made a much wiser decision? We think to ourselves: there’s no way we can be affected by our environment just like a tree is. It’s even harder to believe when we think of someone we hate, knowing how evil and manipulative they are.
We don’t usually wanna believe for a second that our worst enemy is that affected by their environment. But where does this come from? Why do we reject this idea – that we can be so affected by our environment?
Well, our minds wanna believe so strongly that we’re so strong we can grow however we want, regardless of how much sun or water we get. We want to believe this, because it gives us a sense of control.
It lets us believe that we’re in full control of our lives, and it also lets us believe that it’s OK to hate bad people because they’re also in full control of their actions.
The Illusion of Control in Daily Decisions
We’re fooled into thinking we have full control of life when we consider most of our everyday decisions. We think: “I choose my meals, my friends, my job… I choose everything – that’s me!” And that’s precisely where the pain begins.
It begins in that moment when you believe you’re in that much control – that our own bad choices are our fault, and that our enemies’ bad choices are theirs.
How couldn’t the mind be tempted to believe this? If you look around at the world, it certainly looks and feels like people are in control of themselves, right? I have something to say that might frighten you: that’s a delusion. Let’s start by looking at the science of it.
It’s a delusion to think you – or anyone else – is in full control. Our environment affects us even when we least expect it. Don’t underestimate that.
I Still Don’t Believe We Can All Really Be Trying Our Best
So you might be thinking now:
“But humans have such powerful brains, there’s no way we’re so innocent… people sometimes just make terrible choices, even while we’re aware of how bad it is, and we know better.”
That’s a common source of confusion around this concept. On the one hand, you might be able to think of several choices people make that are bad, but at least innocent (like making a joke they didn’t realize was gonna offend you).
But on the other hand, I’m sure you can think of several examples of someone letting you down even though they knew better and knew very well what they were doing and what would happen. Like instead of an innocent joke, they might’ve known very well that it would offend you and said it just to get under your skin.
You might think of tons of examples where we make bad choices even after being warned, or after we get older, or know better.
Well, yes, we hopefully get wiser over time, and on average, we DO know better as time goes on. But that’s a big assumption to make – that by knowing something, you’ll ACT better. You know this yourself already.
Angry and Addiction
With your addiction, you already know better, and that your addiction hurts you, but that doesn’t mean you ACT better.
Knowing better does not mean you act better. If you understand this for your own addiction, what makes you think that we behave differently when it comes to letting a friend down, or lying about something, or staying up late, or eating a piece of cake?
We all know we should be a good friend, tell the truth, get good sleep, and eat healthy, but that doesn’t mean we always do them all the time. Can you start to imagine that there must be something that gets in the way? It’s OK if you don’t know right away what gets in the way, but can you at least imagine that it’s gotta be something that gets in the way?
The Forces That Take Us Away From Acting Healthy Are From the Unconscious
There’s always something that makes us do what we do; otherwise, we wouldn’t do it.
We have to admit to ourselves that, in any moment, our actions are the best we could do.
Sure, I might have it in me to tell the truth to all my friends, but at least in the moment that I lie, it feels like the best option.
The reason doesn’t have to be a good reason, but it’s still a reason. And just because you don’t know all the reasons that lead to your actions doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
This doesn’t just go for bad choices—it goes for anything neutral or positive too.
For example, I can delude myself and pretend I made the choice to be a psychiatrist. I can tell you a ‘feel-good’ story about certain turning points that led me to it, but those are only my best guesses.
I can remember some of my conversations and experiences that led me to it, but there are many more conversations and experiences that I don’t remember because I didn’t even realize they affected my decision. I’ll never really know just why I chose this.
Remember, my mind wants to believe I’m in full control of my choice because then I get to feel special and smart. But the reality is I only had some choice in the matter, and my experiences and environment played a huge part in my actions. I’m made up of all my experiences and interactions with the world. Our shortcomings are no different. We all just exist. Sometimes we know most of the reasons, and sometimes we know none of the reasons.
Applying This to Anger
Anger is fine to feel for a few seconds or hours. Our body needs a natural way to know something might threaten or hurt us. But that’s all we need it for, just long enough to notice what’s bothering us.
After that, it really serves no purpose and only begins to harm ourselves. Remember, our bodies are using animal machinery, and anger taps into our body’s natural response to threats.
Even if we’re not being harmed physically, our body uses the same hormones and body response as if it were. And the response keeps going and going, pumping more cortisol and adrenaline into us until the threat is gone.
Anger only helps to identify what’s bothering you, but after that, it only harms yourself. It can make us lose sleep, make us irritable and snappy to people who don’t deserve it, and make it hard to concentrate on just about anything. Then, we get even more angry with the person because the thing we’re angry about is hurting us more than them.
So Why Do We Stay Angry Even When We Know It Hurts Us?
We all want to feel important or special in some way. We look for any chance to prove to ourselves or the world that we’re right and feel better about ourselves. Also, we can’t help but believe that we’re right, they’re wrong, and we need to make sure they know that. We can’t help but want to teach them a lesson.
We want justice, and we can’t let go until things are fair. But look at what that’s based on. We can only think of this as unfair if we believe that someone made a bad choice they were in full control of.
If it wasn’t because of a bad choice, we’d simply call it unfortunate. If we trick ourselves into thinking it was a fully conscious choice, we feel angry and can say things like:
“You’ve been such an awful friend! How could you do this after everything I’ve done?!”
But if we recognize that no choice is really fully free of our environment, it becomes free of anger. It becomes only unfortunate, and nothing more. Something like:
“Oh, it’s too bad you never felt like being a good friend.” Or “It’s unfortunate that you don’t have enough sympathy to care about what you’re doing.”
It’s a way of living in the truth, that it was never a fully controlled choice, but a choice affected by that person’s environment. I’m sorry if this doesn’t sound gratifying to you. I realize it’s not a fun way of getting back at someone, because you don’t get them to feel the pain of what you went through. But realize that’s just your ego looking for revenge.
But I Don’t Want to Just Give In to People
You might think this is weak – that it’s just giving in to bad people. But it’s actually the opposite. Can you remember a time when someone who could’ve been upset with you took the time to help you instead? It’s really powerful, way more powerful than an immediate attack back. Immediate attacks usually come from insecurity.
Think about a scene in a movie where one guy hits another, and instead of fighting back, the other person just laughs and goes [act out the chuckle].
Now That’s Power
It’s a lot scarier and usually makes the other person run for their life. We can do this in our everyday life too.
If someone pisses you off, a calm approach to see what’s bothering them speaks volumes. If someone at work says something nasty, how much more powerful is it to say:
“I notice how much you put people down all the time… what’s going on in your life that makes you feel like you need to do that?”
And if they just laugh or make fun of you, you could follow that up with something like:
“I know it’s really hard to talk about stuff like that, especially if you’ve never had anyone to do that with. You let me know if you need me for that.”
That response acknowledges the reality that being mean was the best thing they knew to do in that moment. Unfortunately for them, they’ve been through experiences in their environment that led them to think that being mean was a good option. It’s very likely that the coworker was teased a lot or made fun of enough that he’s more comfortable attacking others than facing his own faults.
If you can respond to that person – the one acting out of their own weakness and shortcomings – it helps to change them and change the world in a way that is much more real and effective than an automatic reaction to hurt them back.
A tree might be ugly or not growing well, but there’s obviously something that made it grow that way. Maybe it got an infection from beetles, or maybe it’s in too much shade from other trees, but something in its environment made it that way. It’s just trying to grow the best it can.
Any time you spend convincing yourself otherwise is another moment you spend in anger. And any time you spend responding to the tree with acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion is another moment you spend in peace and as an agent of change.
Understanding Addiction, Anger, and Much More with Self Recovery
I created the Self Recovery program to help people gain deeper awareness of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
This program guides you to understand what really drives your actions, how your environment affects you, and how to build healthier responses. It’s about taking back control, forgiving yourself, and creating lasting change from within. Discover more!
