"When Anger Boils Up, Do OO"

Psychology Reading / Kim Kyung-il × Sapiens Studio

[Asia Economy Reporter Seomideum] “In times like these, it is necessary to take time to accurately understand our own psychology. We need to check whether we are feeling depressed, anxious, struggling, sad, angry, or even experiencing a sense of loss. The reason why it is important to know all these emotions precisely is that the solutions differ depending on each emotion.”

Professor Kim Kyung-il, the country’s top cognitive psychologist and author of the book Reading Psychology, diagnoses the current social situation as above. Until recently, when the world was swept by the aftermath of the pandemic with terms like ‘Corona Blue’ and ‘Corona Black,’ modern people were easily dominated by depression and, further, anger.

While depression is a problem, anger is more serious than depression because the scope of damage is larger. Professor Kim says, “Anger makes you say words that hurt not only yourself but also others’ feelings (...) Of course, depression is definitely not good either. But it is rare for a depressed person to attack others and for that attack to come back to themselves.”

So why do people get angry? There can be many reasons, but people usually get angry when they think “the truth is being hidden.” Here, it is necessary to distinguish between ‘truth’ and ‘fact.’ Being late for a family appointment due to an unexpected traffic situation is a ‘fact,’ but not being able to leave earlier because you anticipated it is the ‘truth.’ This is why the author’s wife expressed displeasure.

Then how should we control anger? The important thing is who you surround yourself with. Professor Kim points out that people who usually say “I am objective” get angry easily, explaining, “Saying ‘I am objective’ means that the facts I see are non-negotiable and cannot be interpreted from other perspectives.” He continues, “It is more important than anything to meet people who think ‘I am very subjective’ rather than those who say ‘I am objective.’ When you meet people who easily accept that others may have different thoughts or ways of life, it becomes much easier to break the habit of hastily assuming that one fact is the absolute truth.”

There is another trap in anger. It is that “it can make thinking very short-sighted or fragmented.” “Generally, people who feel anger with clear grounds can clearly describe what harm the other person caused them. But people who feel anger without grounds keep talking only about the fact that they are angry, not about what harm the other person caused them. The ‘self’ is absent in that act.”

Walking can also be a way to calm anger. “When you walk, the soles of your feet are stimulated, which weakens the amygdala in the brain and activates the hippocampus.” According to Professor Kim, when a person walks, the amygdala, which is activated when feeling negative emotions, becomes deactivated, and the hippocampus, which helps recall new hypotheses, becomes activated. In other words, walking activity “allows you to think of and test hypotheses about other reasons or possibilities instead of making one small cause or one among many causes that you pointed out as the reason why the other person made you angry 100% true.”

Professor Kim advises that if you feel inexplicably angry and furious, try walking around your neighborhood. “You may experience an unexpected healing effect.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.