Responding to a Moral Outcry: Overcoming Aggression in the Heart

As half of the year has passed, we can sincerely reflect that 2020 has ushered in a new decade of parallel accounts of two urgent crises. Affecting our own nation’s dialogue, we have witnessed widespread agonizing activity in many metropolitan cities that have even unraveled in our own backyard: both the pandemic and the continual flare of racist fractures, ethnic conflicts, social hostilities, peaceful and chaotic protests that bring cultural challenges, violent acts that defy basic decency, and dazzles of deep and distressing emotions that demand attention and cannot be neglected. We have arrived at another collective and historic flashpoint. Local unemployment rates continue to soar, businesses are experiencing failure, and new waves of home foreclosures are trending upward on the market. We see the flawed approach of aggression choreographed with precision across our landscape: everyday storefronts are smashed, windows broken, and equipment stolen from shops as they burn to rubble. Many are not dismissive of these landmark pains of a new decade. We can identify that rage has no discernment as anger, anxiety, and fear continue to cloud the conscience of a generation. 

How aggression manifests

There are many recent and contemporary examples of human aggression that demonstrate verbal, physical, and even symbolic acts that violate the personhood of other individuals. Within social relationships through inter-group and interpersonal contexts in which aggression tends to manifest can be likened to a type of antisocial behavior that ultimately has a negative impact on the community at large. Truly, aggression can be quite difficult to interpret and understand as a societal reality. Social psychologists are now defining aggression with an emphatic focus on external behaviors that can be visibly observed as well as a deeper concern for the motives, thoughts (i.e. the tendency to interpret hostility as the intention in others), and attitudes (i.e. dehumanizing other individuals in different forms). Aggression can encompass a variety of wide-ranging behaviors as: physical assault (i.e. domestic violence), verbal assault (i.e. unmerciful gossip), direct aggression (i.e. any behavior aimed at the target individual in a direct manner as in the case of physical assault), indirect aggression (i.e. destruction of property), and active or passive aggression (i.e. ‘forgetting to bring the notes’ for a friend in order to study for an exam or hitting a classmate).

Aggressive and antisocial behaviors alongside impulsivity in children and adolescents tend to be the leading cause for referring to the medical community, and it becomes important to reflect on the neurobiological nature of aggression. Although there has been a complexity in a mixture of motives on behalf of the aggressor, aggression can be viewed as instrumental in the sense of obtaining an ultimate goal in the end as well as hostile in the sense of aggression being the goal in itself. Whether through insults, teasing, ridicule and sarcasm, or other forms that inflict psychological pain, recent studies confirm about 75% of men and 80% of women admit to engaging in verbal aggression in the workplace. Clearly, there is a relationship between physical and verbal aggression. 

As part of our responsibility to cultivate greater emotional health for children, teens, and families the clinical community uses a myriad of techniques and approaches to address the hostile feelings as well as the more active behaviors that stem from underlying themes of anger and volatile aggression. We can sincerely note that anger turns into aggression when driven down, suppressed, and undealt with as it results in uncontrollable and destructive expressions. Before it turns into aggression, we can target experiences of anger in tolerable and more selective ways. Here is one exercise: 

• Write out a circumstance that caused you to experience emotions of feeling mistreated, wronged, or having been wrongly discriminated against. 
• Use this wheel of emotions (or any other of your preference), determine your feeling state in this circumstance. 
• Act out this emotion within your circumstance, and move your body to better express it as needed. 
• Use your voice and cite it in the form of “I” statements within your writing or out loud and declare, “I’m feeling angry because…” or “I’m feeling more irritable because…” or “I’m disgruntled that…” 
• What typically results after you demonstrate your anger in this way? Is this empowering? Has this been productive? Did anyone withdraw from you as a result? 

Studying the cause

We use a combination of both biological and psychosocial explanations in order to better understand the origins of aggression. Biology is not necessarily the whole story just in light of researchers investigating factors related to behavioral genetics, brain structures, and brain-related functions since there are important situational, emotional, and socio-cultural factors that account for the rise of aggression in the recent decades. Neurological reflections using MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) and PET scans (positron emission tomography) have clearly indicated that more aggressive individuals maintain a reduced metabolism and less content volume of their prefrontal cortex (PFC). Many researchers and practitioners since the novel coronavirus outbreak have resorted back to the use of the scientific method to develop an array of frameworks that can boost the success of design thinking, discovery-driven planning, and dynamic decision-making during this international crisis.

In this sense, we also encourage the use of the scientific method related to emotion regulation of distressing emotions. Obtaining early feedback from others about how individuals navigate their troublesome emotions, running self-assessments on how well they navigate their emotional terrain, and making modifications as necessary to improve upon their success of effective emotion regulation are part of this approach: frame, identify, validate the problem, test the reasoning of why these emotions occur, and form healthier practices to better establish reliable behavioral responses to these challenging emotions. 

The PFC is responsible for higher-order thinking in the realms of reasoning, impulse control, and consequential thinking related to the outcomes of behaviors. Clinical studies that have been accomplished in brain-damaged regions of the PFC within individuals have demonstrated more aggressive behaviors (though not all individuals with damage in their PFC from the Vietnam War, for example, were seen as more aggressive). Additionally, the amygdala is seen to have an active role in the regulation of emotional reactivity. This brain region is functionally responsible for emotional learning, emotional regulation, and responding to emotional content as fears and threats. Studies have demonstrated evidence that the amygdala is more active in aggressive boys and less active in the PFC. Both the medical community and the research literature implies that impairments in this brain region will reflect greater propensity toward psychopathy (a history of violent aggression) as a result of reduced neural responses and emotional responses in anticipation of punishment, imagined threatening events, and maintained a difficulty in perceiving fear and distress in others. The neurobiology of aggression continues to provide the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala as well as create more understanding of the mechanisms to better control aggressive behaviors.  

Currently, there is mounting evidence to reflect that there are electrical (i.e. brain waves), chemical (i.e. neurotransmitters), and architectural (i.e. brain structures) factors that are all confluent and interplay in constant change and daily impact our adaptation to environmental and internal demands that produce antisocial, aggressive, and even xenophobic behaviors. In a 2015 study from the University of Birmingham in the UK, psychologist and director of the Social, Cognitive, Affective and Neuroscience (SCAN) lab Dr. Stephane DeBrito reflected with others that, “We know that severe behavioral problems in youths are not only predictive of antisocial and aggressive behavior in adulthood, but also substance misuse, mental health problems, and poor physical health. For that reason, behavioral problems are an essential target for prevention efforts and our study advances understanding of the brain regions associated with aggressive and antisocial behavior in youths.” 

Pioneer researcher and founder of emotion-focused therapy, psychologist Leslie Samuel Greenberg cites that, “Destructive anger and rage often come from a history of witnessing or having suffered from violence, and they cause real problems in relationships. Some people report raging at others without control, being volatile in many situations… becoming easily irritated without knowing why.” Here is another personal exercise to acknowledge and help address rising levels of anger: 

• Acknowledge the situations that have previously caused you to experience anger in a repeated manner in which this has caused loved ones to withdraw from you. 
• Write out the situation and the manner that it caused you to feel. 
• What part of your body did you sense the anger? 
• Look at the wellspring of your thoughts. 
• Write out the negative voice related to these feelings of anger. What does it cause you to believe about others, the upcoming future, and yourself? 
• When in this state of anger, can you speak out loud this voice to yourself? Is there another voice that is more dominant, and how can you use this to give you an alternative perspective? 
• Reflect and meditate on the opposite of anger. Think upon qualities as gentleness, warmth, lovingkindness, and longsuffering. 
• Learn to let go of the anger by replacing it with this alternative warm feeling as you picture the people you are angry with. Can you feel any measure of forgiveness toward this individual? Are you able to connect with any positive quality of the person? Practice saying, “I choose to forgive you.” 

In the overwhelming majority of case scenarios, the research evidence sufficiently provides reinforcement that serious mental illness does not lead to current-day violence. Rather, the current evidence highlights factors as alcohol abuse, drug abuse, conviction of violent misdemeanors, and perpetration of domestic violence significantly contribute to an individual’s risk of future violence. These factors and evidence-based criteria to prohibit firearm purchases from individuals with a higher likelihood of committing acts of violence all continue to be a promising avenue for reflection and examination in gun violence prevention policy efforts.

Individuals with existent mental health conditions as schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar disorders are not seen to be more violent toward others as those without these existent conditions. Those with a history of violent and aggressive behaviors maintain a better predictor than those with a mental health diagnosis for future violent behaviors. Three common themes for individuals that openly display violence revolve around previous associations with violent victimization earlier in life, substance abuse, and environmental exposure to acts of violence. Additionally, the period surrounding a psychiatric hospitalization, acute psychosis, and first-time manifestations of mental illness with externalizing violent behaviors are at a greater risk for displays of violence and have tragic consequences for victims, survivors, and society.

A 2001 study looked specifically at 34 adolescent mass murderers, all male. 70 percent were described as a loner. 61.5 percent had problems with substance abuse. 48 percent had preoccupations with weapons. 43.5 percent had been victims of bullying. Only 23 percent had a documented psychiatric history of any kind ― which means 3 out of 4 did not. Dr. Jeffrey Swanson, a leading researcher on mental health and violence and professor of biological and behavioral sciences at Duke University’s School of Medicine, reflects that, “People with serious mental illness are 3 to 4 times more likely to be violent than those who are not. But the vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent and never will be. Most violence in society is caused by other things. Even if we had a perfect mental health care system, that is not going to solve our gun violence problem. If we were able to magically cure schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, that would be wonderful, but overall violence would go down by only about 4 percent.”

Gaining a deeper understanding

Researchers have noted a variety of personality factors that are characteristic of individuals who display aggression. One of the first factors involves irritability, defined as the tendency to become easily provoked to react impulsively or toward provocation. Another identified factor is emotional susceptibility, the tendency to experience feelings of discomfort, inadequacy, and helplessness. An additional factor relates to dissipation versus rumination, and this is seen as the extent to which people are self-absorbed in their aggressive thoughts toward themselves and others. In this sense, the extent to which the individual ruminates (obsesses) about the event or by “letting it go” more quickly (dissipating).

These personality factors were seen to be positively correlated with aggressive behavior either with “cold-blooded” patterns of aggression that includes engaging in aggressive acts when not being provoked. The other includes “hot-blooded” styles of aggression that encompasses more short-lived and intensely aggressive reactions. Anger on one hand is being seen as a basic emotion that fundamentally orients the individual toward self-protection against undesirable restrictions, unfair social exchanges, and uninvited intrusions from others. Alongside other emotions, anger can be interpreted as either adaptive or maladaptive and able to help the emotional state of individuals working toward specific goals. 

Aggression can communicate strife in relationships and degrade the quality of our social connections. This emotional expression provides an internal sense of power and control, works as a shield to protect against primary human emotions, and typically focuses on an external scapegoat rather than any identified factors that need to change from within ourselves. Anger, aggression, and resentment are intertwined and usually flow together in the human heart’s experience. Here are several more mindfulness-based strategies to help navigate the aggression: 

1. Develop a focus upon your breath as you let your aggression arise. Mindfully breathing helps to assist you navigate the internal experiences of emotions and sensations associated with the aggressive-provoking circumstance. 
2. Express your emotions at this point through writing out and naming these emotions without judgment. Writing helps to externalize these emotions instead of effectively getting stuck with internalizing them. 
3. Shift your perspective from self-shame to self-acceptance as a result of these emotions by sharing out your story with other trusted individuals in your personal sphere. 
4. Find and replace a limiting belief about yourself based on the aggression with a new truth,  message, or affirmation that makes sense of aggression with reason and move past its hindrance. 
5. Rid yourself of aggressive thoughts and emotions through an active release ceremony. This implies a positive way to release tough emotions and distressing thoughts through activities that help you move forward. 

Feelings of anger and its various shades of emotions can have a dual nature of being both negative and destructive or healthy, adaptive, and empowering. Anger and aggression usually familiarize individuals with emotional pain and provide a sense of revolt against being powerless, invisible, weak, and victimized. Leading clinicians identify fear and shame as commonplace underlying emotions that stimulate anger with aggression. This relates to carrying a more profound layer of bundled emotions that surface. As raw and distressing emotions find healing, new emotional memories help to change current narratives. No emotions exist outside of the context of stories, and stories are how people make sense of their experience and construct identities. Social pressures, exposure of moral fissures, and acts of blame serve as social messengers that are part of the ongoing national dialogue. Whether addressing the ongoing racist fractures of our nation or emotionally responding to an economic decline within a pandemic along with the international movement for justice in a fragmented world, navigating anger and aggression are part of this profiled consideration. 

Recommended Resources: 

• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo 
• Open Season by Ben Crump
• White Awake by Daniel Hill
• A Cry for Justice by Shelley Hundley 
• Uncommon Ground by Tim Keller and John Inazu
• Letter From Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. 
• Crucial Alliance by Calev Myers
• More than Equals by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice 
• Bloodlines by John Piper
• Prophetic Lament by Soong-Chan Rah

Films to Watch: 

• Amazing Grace (2006) 
• A United Kingdom 
• Harriet
• The Hurricane 
• Invictus 
• Just Mercy 
• Les Misérables
• Remember the Titans 
• Selma 
• Woodlawn