Anger is a normal human emotion that everyone experiences from time to time. However, uncontrolled or excessive anger can cause problems in relationships and affect physical and mental health. Identifying the opposite emotion of anger can provide insights into how to better manage this intense feeling.
The opposite of anger is often considered to be calmness or tranquility. However, the true opposite emotion is probably more nuanced. Let’s explore what the research says about emotions that counterbalance anger.
Defining Anger
Before identifying its opposite, it’s helpful to define what we mean by “anger.” The American Psychological Association describes anger as an emotion that involves a strong uncomfortable and hostile response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat. Anger often involves a desire to punish or strike out at the source of the provocation.
Physically, anger leads to increased heart rate, blood pressure and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline. It activates the fight-flight response to prepare us to respond to threat.
Anger serves an evolutionary purpose to defend ourselves from danger and prepare us to respond quickly. However, excessive anger can be problematic emotionally and physically.
Common Opposites of Anger
Some common emotions that are considered the opposites of anger include:
- Calmness – A peaceful, tranquil emotional state.
- Peace – An inner sense of harmony and contentment.
- Empathy – The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
- Forgiveness – Letting go of resentment toward someone.
- Patience – The capacity to accept delay or trouble without getting angry.
These emotions counterbalance anger in different ways. Calmness and peace are low arousal emotions that physiologically counter the high arousal of anger. Empathy, forgiveness and patience relate to thinking about a situation or person with understanding rather than hostility.
However, some experts argue these don’t represent complete opposites of the complex emotion of anger.
The Role of Fear
Some researchers and psychologists argue that the true opposite emotion to anger is actually fear.
Dr. ROBERT Plutchik, an American psychologist who developed a psychoevolutionary theory of emotions, considered fear and anger to be polar opposites. Plutchik created a “wheel of emotions” that mapped out eight primary human emotions, each with an opposite. On this wheel, the opposite emotion directly across from anger is fear.
Plutchik theorized that fear and anger both help protect us from threats, but they do so in different ways. Anger gives us the response to fight a threat, while fear gives us the response to flee from it. Both provide survival value.
This perspective sees fear as the yin to anger’s yang – two sides of the same coin. Both prepare us to deal with threats, either by attacking them or avoiding them.
Fear Counterbalances Anger
Viewing fear as the true opposite of anger makes sense when you consider how these emotions counterbalance one another:
- Fear pulls us away, anger pushes us forward.
- Fear avoids, anger confronts.
- Fear retreats, anger attacks.
- Fear surrenders, anger resists.
In many threatening situations, fear and anger lead to very different behavioral responses. Someone angered by a provocation may lash out verbally or physically, while someone afraid may shrink away or withdraw. Both provide defense mechanisms.
Understanding this dynamic between fear and anger can help in dealing with intense anger. Channeling the high arousal of anger into fleeing from a provocation rather than confronting it directly may defuse the emotion. Fear can provide an emergency brake on unchecked anger.
The Role of Sadness
In addition to fear, some experts suggest that sadness is another emotion that balances out anger.
Anger often arises from feeling that your rights, needs or expectations have been violated in some way. This can elicit a desire for retaliation. However, sadness arises when we grieve what was lost that led to those unmet needs and expectations. Sadness pulls us inward rather than pushing us outward against the thing that provoked our anger.
Rather than fueling confrontation, sadness encourages withdrawal, reflection and release. Feeling sadness over the loss of what made you angry can short-circuit the desire to strike back. Sadness leads to acceptance rather than resistance.
So in situations of high emotion, switching from anger to sadness can create equilibrium. It counters the fight response with an inward-facing mournful response. This introspection can cool anger.
Turning Anger into Sadness
Some ways to turn anger into sadness include:
- Considering how the situation makes you feel sorrow rather than rage.
- Reflecting on the hopes, expectations or needs that were unfulfilled.
- Allowing yourself to grieve over the loss or offense that occurred.
- Sitting with painful feelings rather than lashing out.
- Focusing on your inner emotional hurt rather than external provocation.
This emotional shift from anger to sadness takes the steam out of rage by redirecting it inward. The high arousal of anger then becomes the low arousal of sadness.
The Role of Disgust
Disgust is another emotion some researchers propose as an opposite of anger.
Like fear and sadness, disgust counterbalances anger by turning us away from confrontation. But while fear makes us recoil from physical threat and sadness comes from grieving emotional loss, disgust makes us recoil from moral offenses.
Experiencing anger often leads us to vilify or demonize the person or situation that we perceive has wronged us. This black-and-white view fuels confrontation and attack. However, turning that anger into disgust makes the offense seem pitiable rather than threatening.
Disgust lowers our perception of the provocation from something formidable into something pathetic. This creates emotional distance and disengagement.
So moving from anger to disgust can short-circuit retaliation by making us look down on the provocation as unworthy of engagement. We override the desire to punish and replace it with revulsion.
Turning Anger to Disgust
Some ways to turn anger into disgust include:
- Viewing the offense as pathetic rather than threatening.
- Seeing the provocation as repulsive rather than rage-inducing.
- Focusing on the unworthiness of the provocation.
- Creating emotional distance from the source of anger.
- Replacing anger’s call to action with detachment.
This technique mental dehumanizes the provocateur in a way that lessens their power to elicit anger. It replaces retaliation with repudiation.
Practicing the Opposites of Anger
Here are some practices that can help cultivate the opposing emotions to anger:
Practicing Calmness
- Deep breathing – Long exhales signal safety and promote relaxation.
- Progressive muscle relaxation – Alternately tensing and relaxing muscle groups.
- Guided imagery – Picturing a peaceful setting activates calmness.
- Meditation – Observing thoughts and emotions without reacting to them.
Regularly using these techniques when you are already calm will train your body to enter into a relaxed state more easily when anger arises.
Practicing Forgiveness
- Empathy – Trying to understand the motives and viewpoint of the person who angered you.
- Perspective – Recognizing that external forces likely contributed to their actions.
- Acceptance – Realizing that anger will not change what happened.
- Release – Making a conscious decision to let go of resentment.
Actively practicing forgiveness even when it is difficult can help reduce anger in the long run by short-circuiting the desire for retribution.
Practicing Fear
- Risk assessment – Logically evaluating the potential consequences of confrontation.
- Avoidance – Choosing to detach physically and emotionally from provocations.
- Escape – Having routes and strategies to quickly leave anger-inducing situations.
- Distraction – Refocusing your mind away from the source of anger.
Approaching anger triggers with caution rather than aggression can activate fear’s self-protective escape instincts rather than anger’s fight response.
Practicing Sadness
- Self-compassion – Treating yourself kindly when you feel hurt or disappointed by others’ actions.
- Rumination – Journaling, processing and releasing painful emotions rather than suppressing them.
- Crying – Letting tears flow freely to express and discharge sadness.
- Comforting – Soothing yourself through affirmations, hugs, nice meals, etc.
Make time to grieve anger-provoking losses so the resulting sorrow can balance out rage.
Practicing Disgust
- Condescension – Viewing provocations as childish rather than threatening.
- Distancing – Detaching your emotions so offenses can’t affect you.
- Minimizing – Downplaying the significance of another’s actions.
- Ridicule – Using humor to make provocations seem silly rather than serious.
When offended, try to mentally reduce the stature of the provocation to replace anger with contemptuous amusement.
Conclusion
Anger arises naturally from a perceived threat, wrong or loss. But unchecked anger can be destructive and unhealthy. Identifying and cultivating anger’s opposites – calmness, empathy, fear, sadness and disgust – can provide balancing emotions to restore equilibrium.
Practicing these alternatives to anger, even when you don’t feel them, can help elicit them more automatically when needed. This allows us to respond to life’s provocations with a range of emotions, not just rage.
The path away from anger is paved with peace, understanding, caution, mourning and contempt. Traveling it leads to emotional flexibility, control and health.