What Price Anger?

Anger comes naturally to us humans when someone causes us pain, and the
experiences of childhood and youth are replete with painful situations. As young children we want, and need, not only our parents’ love, but also their affirmation. We need to be told, and demonstrated to, that we are valued as a person. Parents often, out of their own need, do not affirm us enough; and the more we feel (consciously or unconsciously)unaffirmed, the greater our craving for it. The denial of affirmation, all the way to actual abuse, causes us pain to which we respond with anger because we have not learned that we can do or feel anything else.

Most of us, if we are spared outright abuse, learn to get affirmation by being obedient, cooperative,
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