"Think of your psychological experience as running on two distinct tracks: Track One: Clean Emotions These arise directly from your values. When you lose something you love, you feel grief. When someone violates your boundaries, you feel anger. When you've harmed someone, you feel guilt. These emotions: Have clear objects (you know what you're feeling and why) Feel proportionate to the situation Resolve naturally when fully experienced Provide valuable information about what matters to you"
"Track Two: Anxiety Reactions These arise when you perceive emotions themselves as dangerous. Your body's survival system activates in response to your own internal experience. The fight-or-flight system-designed to protect you from external threats-fires up because you're afraid of what you're feeling. This creates: Physiological arousal (rapid heart rate, tension, shallow breathing) Confusion about what you're actually feeling Reactive outbursts or shutdown Persistent distress that doesn't resolve"
Explosive outbursts, rapid speech, muscle tension, shallow breathing, and difficulty articulating underlying causes often indicate anxiety rather than anger. Clean emotions arise from values, have clear objects, feel proportionate, and resolve when fully experienced; they provide information about priorities. Anxiety reactions occur when emotions themselves are perceived as dangerous, triggering the body's survival system and producing physiological arousal, confusion about feelings, reactive outbursts or shutdown, and persistent unresolved distress. Treating anxiety-like anger with cognitive challenges aimed at irrational thoughts can fail or interfere with healthy emotional processing. Accurate identification of anxiety versus anger guides appropriate therapeutic approaches and reduces unnecessary suffering.
Read at Psychology Today
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