Tabitha Oyewole

There is a significant relationship between anger and power.

This sounds like I’m writing about the findings of academic research. Forgive me, but I’ve been in academia for so long not to sound like one. This thought on anger and the fact that I didn’t find a journal to post my book review is the reason I’m reviving my blog after 3+ years. I have an unpopular (probably popular) opinion about anger and I hope after reading this post, you stop getting angry, therefore eliminating one of the many negative emotions you feel.

Everybody knows me to be a calm person who seldom gets angry. It’s not because people don’t do shitty things to me or because I don’t feel things; I’ve just learned over the years that getting angry is not worth it because, at the end of the day, the other party has no idea what you’re feeling and you just keep hurting yourself.

So, here is my theory: when you get angry over something someone does or says, it means you consider the person relevant and have probably given them some sort of power over your emotions and your life. There is a popular saying, “You are betrayed by the people you trust.” I will twist that to say, “You are angered by the people you give power.” That sounds like a big quote by a genius. Call me Tabitha Einstein from now on, please.

Back to my theory: I have an acquaintance who said some crazy things to me one time. When they realized what they had done the following day, they asked if I was angry so they could apologize. I smiled and thought to myself, “It didn’t even occur to me to get angry because I don’t consider you relevant and you have no power over my emotions.” I definitely felt irritated by what they said, which is one of the stages of anger, but I felt nothing deeper than that because they were irrelevant to me. My only thought when I read what they said was to cut short the little power they had. I thought they had too much access to me and it was time to cut it.

Of course, I have had close people do terrible things to me that hurt me in that moment, but knowing that I was the only one going to feel the negative emotions helped me snap out of it faster.

One interesting thing about not getting angry when you should is that it makes the offender worried. Most times, they know they’ve done something wrong and expect some level of anger from you, but when you don’t show that anger, it makes them uncomfortable.

Therapists will tell you that it’s good to feel your emotions, and I totally agree, but I believe that you can quickly snap out of it when you think of reducing the power people have over you and your emotions.

I believe there is positive and negative anger—don’t fling your device yet; I will explain that belief. I know we think anger is a negative emotion, and I just discussed how to get rid of negative anger, but positive anger is the one that pushes you to make changes.

Anger towards a bad government is a positive and necessary one to help you fight for a better government. Anger towards inequality and some other societal issues is awesome for driving change. Positive anger fuels you and pushes you to be better. That anger is not the type that affects you badly, at least not in all cases; instead, it helps you find meaning or purpose. However, power comes into play here too, because when you give so much power to that anger, it can consume rather than fuel you.

I’m not sure how this is going to sound to you, but it made some sense in my head and I thought to share. All I’m saying is, don’t give people the power to control your emotions, and if there is any anger you should feel at all, it should be the one that pushes you to change the status quo and be a better human.