Like all our emotions, anger is a biological and psychological safeguard to ensure our survival. Biologically, anger is defined as a stress response to internal or external demands, threats, and pressures. Anger warns us that there is a problem or a potential threat. At the same time, it energizes us to face the problem or meet the threat and provides us with the power to overcome the obstacle. So, it is both a warning system and a survival mechanism. Our first reaction to a perceived threat is fear. When we are faced with a threat to our survival, our nervous system prepares us to meet

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that threat by raising our defenses. This built-in defense mechanism is found in the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system and is triggered by the release of the hormone adrenaline. Adrenaline helps by giving us an energetic boost, which in turn provides us with added strength and endurance to fight off our enemy or added speed in which to run from the enemy. This pattern of biological arousal is known as the fight-or-flight response, an involuntary mechanism shared with all other species. Although it may not actually be a life or death struggle, we often feel threatened by the behavior or remarks of others; we experience a threat to our emotional well-being. When someone hurts or insults us (or someone we care about) by saying something inappropriate, disrespectful, or vicious, we become righteously angry. Anger also helps us to defend our rights and therefore it often has a moral or ethical aspect to it. According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition, anger is “a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by real or supposed wrong.” Those who are angry often have a strong sense of injustice, injury, and/or invasion. Anger gets a bad rap because it is often erroneously associated with violence. But in reality, anger seems to be followed by aggression only about 10 percent of the time, according to Howard Kassinove, Ph.D., co-author of Anger Management: The Complete Treatment Guide for Practice. Used constructively, anger can help us restore our lost esteem, prestige, and sense of power and control over our life. It can help us to recover emotionally and restore our well-being. The concept of constructive anger is gaining empirical support including evidence that it may have health benefits. Experts say that constructive anger can aid intimate relationships and improve work interactions and political expressions, including the public’s response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. A study in Psychological Science by social psychologists Jennifer Lerner, Ph.D., Roxana Gonzalez, Deborah Small, and Baruch Fischoff, Ph.D., of Carnegie Mellon University, found that anger served an empowering function following the events of 9/11. The first part of the study, conducted nine days after the attacks, gathered baseline data on a representative sample of 1,786 people concerning their feelings about the attacks and their levels of anxiety, stress, and desire for vengence. The second part, conducted two months later, randomized 973 people from the original sample into a condition that primed fear and anger. People in the anger condition, for instance, elaborated on their feelings of anger following the attacks and viewed photos and listened to audio clips designed  to provoke anger. Participants primed for anger gave more optimistic—and, as it turns out, realistic—risk assessments on twentyfive possible terrorist-related risks than those primed for fear. Anger is probably beneficial in this sort of context because it increases one’s sense of control. Your anger may signal that you are not addressing an important emotional issue in your life or in a relationship. It may be a message that your wants or needs are not being met, or it may warn you that you are giving too much or compromising too much of your values or beliefs in a relationship