Anger, says Smalley, is a secondary emotion, not a primary feeling. It arises out of fear, frustration, hurt, or some combination of these three. Anger is actually a coping strategy to attempt to banish fear from our lives. Sometimes our parents have non-verbally taught us that perfect anger casts out all fear, when the truth is that only perfect love casts out all fear. Smalley comments that anger can be thought of as a sticky, bad-smelling dangerous substance that can be compressed and stuffed into something like a spray can.
Angry people tend to go around spraying their anger on other people.
The spray is felt by others as meanness, insensitivity, and general offensiveness. Most angry people have no idea that their angry spray stings others like hydrochloric acid. Some of us as men pride ourselves that we are not as other husbands, who physically beat up their wives in drunken rages. Yet even if our anger never turns violent or illegal, unresolved anger can still prove destructive. All of us want to feel connected in our primary relationships.