Anger is God
“Anger is what anger does.” – Dr. Adam O’Brien
Introduction
The fields of evolutionary biology and industrial psychology deserve historical context around what emotions are and what they are not. Our shared reality is becoming a cognitive truth that is not adding up because who is labeling who has not been clearly defined by psychology and Western Civilization (O’Brien, 2024c). We see the need to place another check in this quiet game of chess that we find ourselves playing with the powers that be (HERE). Finding a professional balance between the power of ignorance (denial) and the control that intelligence elicits (arrogance) is difficult when one does not know what side one is on (HERE), what side one represents (HERE), when one is emotionally existing (HERE), and what one has to sell to keep what they have bought. Otherwise, neither can win.
When emotions are present in daily life, there is a world of difference in how the lived experience is experienced (e.g., arousal states). Typically, they label their experience from their worldview. People give their opinion on what others “should” do with their emotions (e.g., like “go for a run”). When this somewhat conditioned response is on autopilot when sharing, there is wisdom in it. For generations we see that trusted people who we look to for support with our emotional needs for the previous generations knew what science doesn’t or at the very least, what they are unconscious of. What is unconscious can now be known but even that is contested by rationalists and cognitive religions HERE). As a result, there has been a string of APA-supported quantitative and evidence-based requirements that are being associated with law, insurance, and practice (HERE; HERE; HERE). We have our concerns about the need, intention, and desired level of oversight into common aspects of citizen’s lives and the conflicts with their civil liberties (HERE; HERE; HERE; HERE).
A new meta-analysis on anger management programs and programming is states in the abstract that, “Arousal-decreasing activities were effective in students and non-students, in criminal offenders and non-offenders, and in individuals with and without intellectual disabilities. Arousal-decreasing activities were effective regardless of how they were delivered (e.g., digital platforms, researchers, therapists), in both group and individual sessions, and in both field and laboratory settings. In contrast, arousal-increasing activities were ineffective overall (g = −0.02, [−0.13, 0.09]) and were heterogenous and complex. These findings do not support the ideas that venting anger or going for a run are effective anger management activities. A more effective approach for managing anger is “turning down the heat” or calming down by engaging in activities that decrease arousal.”
The type of logic behind these findings, the interpretation of the data, and the conclusions are what we will be addressing here because an age-old wisdom is being lost with what cognitive science and cognitive religion are psychologically preaching. While also showing how our new anger healing program sees things differently, readers will be able to see how our programming and dissociation-informed approach may be more of what they need than other approaches and professions offer (O’Brien, 2024a). Using anger as an example, we will continue our post-doctoral meta-analysis by using Applied Recovery as our moral standard (HERE). For this work, we will reference this recent meta-analysis on anger management, our post-doctoral meta-cognitive analysis (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024e) and work in applied recovery (HERE) from our emerging healer perspective (O’Brien, 2024a) and the Path of the Wounded Healer (O’Brien, 2023c).
Orientation
There are two main ways that anger is expressed: internally and externally. Therefore, our work on its emotional origins, biological unpinning’s, psychological expressions, spiritual context, and how dissociation is addictive is also relevant (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023c; O’Brien, 2024a). Our dissociation-informed and recovery-focused healing services offers an alternative to those who have to engage with programs and for those who don’t (O’Brien, 2024e).
Reorientation
From our experience, emotions like anger produces “God-like” states (any emotion really can tap into this God center) (O’Brien, 2023a; HERE) to those who think that emotions are separate experiences from our body and psychological unconscious, as if these could two experiences could be separated. By contrast, our work sees the body and the psychological unconscious as one and the same, they cannot be separated and are being labeled from different perspectives of self from different professions’ points of view (O’Brien, 2023a). Healing, recovery, and regulation approaches offer different ways to explore aspects of self to do the healing work that is fueling explosive anger.
Anger provides the dissociative edge that has been suppressed for generations with our industrialized polite society and deserves to be historically recognized as a contributing factor to our overall health. To be fair to industrialized society, the time has come to allow these more primal emotions to heal rather than continually be expressed without consequence, but we cannot do this at the cost of our freedoms and civil liberties because, like an individual suppressing unresolved trauma, anger will not go away unresolved or without a consequence. What is not best for all, should be left to personal choice. Which way of suppressing anger is healthy? we see a double standard (HERE), implicit bias (HERE), and hypocrisy (HERE).
Those who are afraid of their emotions, like fear and anger, don’t know where they come from, need support in understanding why and how emotions exist, and want to work on their emotions by healing would be best served by first contacting us to explore our programming. This writing is intended to be written for those who are interested in our programming, but who also want to know what we are doing and how we are doing it. We are doing our work because people and communities need healing. More than emotional management techniques, they also need some answers, direction, and leadership on what is going on psychologically because psychology has been that far off in their pursuit of scientific validation. We are now offering cannabis-based anger management program (O’Brien, 2024a; O’Brien, 2024e) to help our clients see the difference between what decreases arousal is and what helps resolve unresolved traumatic memories and material.
This writing, and our work in general, also discusses how we have come to see anger as addicting (O’Brien, 2023a), a perspective that is missing from current psychological models of care. We will also be addressing the reasoning for having to activate the unresolved trauma in order to process it, instead of managing the symptoms. Lastly, addressing generally how dissociation, like addiction, is not equally understood by those working in the field of psychology, and the issues that this causes in our emerging recovery profession of Healer (HERE).
Background to the Problem
Because psychology has been so off on its journey of identity, labeling, packaging, branding, sales pitching, upscaling, and naming mental health disorders (O’Brien, 2023a), it must not philosophically understand that its medicalized business models exactly why we must question its protocols, reasoning, and global intentions. The industry of psychology is misguided by and expected to act like the medical model’s co-pilot in trying to eradicate all diseases (e.g., similar logic to the goal of exterminating another race). The problem then becomes that it unconsciously they creates more diseases to eradicate and label, or blame on its target audience (e.g., anyone who is abnormal according to the stated norms), which buys into what is sold them. But what our work (O’Brien, 2023a) is showing is that as a mechanism of social control, a psychology that is based on cognition psychology is a dangerous game to be playing with a citizen population that is so armed guns, ammounition, and a hatred for authority that it would be willing to risk life and limb to preserve its right to keep what is has, since it does not want to lose what previous generations have sacrificed themselves to obtain (e.g., freedom of choice).
To our main point of this writing, emotions are not diseases that need to be eradicated because they can’t be. This logic is the malady of the disease of addiction, which we hold is dissociation (O’Brien, 2023a). Because diseases are related to unconscious choices, then emotions are not the only problem. If one does not know what emotions are, then it may be more helpful to do some meta-analyzing with an emotional healer instead of a cognitive therapist or rationalist, since those professionals are missing the point of our moral professions (HERE; HERE). The Healer does is accesses your bodily needs and knows what suppressing emotions does in the psyche (HERE). The psyche is the psychological unconscious, which we define as the physical body (O’Brien, 2024c). We invite the reader to consider what rational beliefs are based on irrational logic (O’Brien, 2024c; HERE; HERE).
Our work highlights that trauma, dissociation, and addiction are transdiagnostic and underpin all diagnoses (O’Brien, 2023a). Since anger is not a diagnosis and there is no treatment for batterers, abusers, and offenders, WHI is now offering an addiction recovery-based program for that, based on our meta-analysis on batterer programs (O’Brien, 2024a) and our work on perfectionism, altruism, and ambitious addictions (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024e). While we can appreciate what the field of psychology has done for society and culture, we believe that the time has come to recognize what psychology really is by understanding that the physical body is the psychological unconscious and that the psychological conscious is the physical body (O’Brien, 2024c).
As we have argued elsewhere (O’Brien, 2024c; HERE), what now needs to be resolved in psychology is the debate about whether or not people should reprocess their emotions/traumas or not? Colloquiallym or in everyday terms, we can reframe this as “should we open Pandora’s box or not?” In prose, “to be or not to be.” Or, “what is necessary to achieve the desired results of care?” What lengths do we have to go to through to get our sanity back? How would we know that we have achieved our goals? To entice readers, what we can say now is that our answers are non-clinically clinical, common sensical, sensibly spiritual, and cosmically mysterious.
Data
The recent meta-analysis concludes that using arousal-decreasing activities is more effective than arousal-increasing activities for anger management is. This observation is also a hot topic in the trauma resolution field, which is debating whether activating the trauma is a necessary requirement to activate the mechanism of action for memory reconsolidation to happen (e.g., what defines memory healing (O’Brien, 2023a)). We find, this debate to be philosophically immature because they are all is based on meditation. Since meditation is already evidence based, it did not need to be studied and is a waste of time; it offers nothing new to the field other than validating what people on the frontlines of healthcare already know. However, this all changed several about forty years ago with the advent of EMDR, and seven years ago with the flash technique, which demonstrated that you can heal trauma without reactivating it. We have since translated this into Bulk Blink and Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA) (O’Brien, 2023c). We are also supportive of Thomas Zimmerman’s “4 Blinks”, but we can recognize that other faiths, religions, and walks of life already “discovered” this (HERE).
The clinical decision is also whether or not we should (e.g., joint decision with unconscious informed consent) be reprocessing trauma at all when people are “not able” to regulate their emotions effectively. Being prepared and regulated is necessary to gain neuroregulation and adaptive dissociation. Our definition of neuroregulation with qEEG analysis offers the field a new evidence-based standard, but ironically is not accepted in the professional population because of societal blocking beliefs (HERE), poor educational outcomes (HERE), and professional gatekeeping (HERE). These are really another way of saying denial; we know denial is dissociative and dissociation is transdiagnostic (O’Brien, 2023a).
We often have to ask ourselves as healers, whether our clients are prepared enough to be able to understand what this means and what will happen as a result of healing. Our professional experience with Neurofeedback and qEEG analysis suggests that most people are not healing due to environmental and societal stresses, but they think they are because society gives them the illusion that everything is fine; there is because you have a sense of collective security and that do not need healing because they have said security. They do not cognitively believe that accessing emotions is the solution because our dominant professional culture doesn’t believe this due to the group think that that letting things go without reprocessing them with anyone is agreeable or healthy. We see that their logic is educating and enabling a cognitive truth that has not stood the test of time (O’Brien, 2024c) which the meta-analysis above implies. People need to know that they are not living dissociated and are able to prove that they are “sane,” even if they are not. Sanity is socially prescribed, not the same for everyone, and people may require legal representation, but even there, sanity and morality is not understood (HERE; HERE).
We know that people looking to do healing work need to be able activate themselves in order to heal at some point. Conversely, those who can only feel their feelings, need to learn how to attach to states of calm, neutrality, and safety or detach (adaptive dissociation) from the emotional content of their existence. To put it another way, people have to know where they are on the map, what the map details, and what opportunities present. However, both sides may be addicted to not meeting their own needs and are dependent on the other to exist. This is what our research is suggesting because a broader definition of addiction (e.g., perfectionism, altruism, and ambition addictions) offers more support for those how need it as well (O’Brien, 2023a). Because of this, a different approach is needed (O’Brien, 2024a). One that cannot co-exist with the other and has a moral value system that is innate, common, and agreeable (O’Brien, 2024c).
The other hot topic in trauma care is whether or not someone has to activate a memory system to heal or reprocess it. This got particularly interesting when new trauma resolution technique of the “flash technique” was “discovered” (or rediscovered (O’Brien, 2023b)). Historically, before the trauma resolution method of EMDR came on the professional scene in 1988 (with too much skepticism from cognitive professionals and rationalists), direct healing was not something that psychology could put its finger on (O’Brien, 2023a). Activating the unresolved trauma was believed to be what helped people heal from traumatic experiences like dissociative intrusions. This is what people in different cultures have been qualitatively doing for centuries when they undertake activities like running, psychedelics, and meditation (O’Brien, 2023b).
Discussion
The story that people have gotten better from letting “it out” may be subjective to the observer, but to those who have been there and come back, the cost of not “letting it out” is not known because letting it out is what people have always done to self-heal. This “tear and repair” is necessary to heal (O’Brien, 2023a). To have to reinforce with a meta-analysis that meditation works better then activating anger is a waste of effort because meditation is already evidence-based (O’Brien, 2023b). Combining meditation with any form of group interaction is going to create the conditions of healing (O’Brien, 2023a). Therefore, these findings and conclusions are obvious, do not offer useful clinical information, and appear to be needed to self-validate or confirm their own existence.
What these types of analysis overlook is that the act of running creates the mental state that allows for the reprocessing of memories the because it involves states of dual attention, bilateral stimulation, and creates the conditions for memory reconsolidation (O’Brien, 2023b). If psychology could understand the importance of memory reconsolidation in therapeutic work, then no one would feel compelled to write a paper stating how important it is (HERE; HERE).
The reasons for knowledge being disregarded may be due to the fact that anger becomes God to resolve the unresolved emotional, attachment, and because developmental traumas that are causing a heightened level of response/reaction (More on this topic HERE). This means that if, when we become angry, we can all become God in the situation through dissociative means (O’Brien, 2024a; HERE). In that moment, we feel like we can or have to take something or everything/everyone on, particularly if it is in reaction to something caused by someone else, who could do something about the situation but chooses not to because it would negatively affect them. This is not the moral level of development one would expect, but that is what is psychologically questionable is at this point. Whether or not people are healing or are “healed” needs to be tangibly honored by the professionals who claim to perform this service, or they should not perform this service.
Implications
Evolutionarily speaking, all emotions are needed, but in polite society they are not accepted. The meta-analysis is implying that programs that used meditation practices to help decrease stress and potentially resolve trauma are the ones with better outcomes. Brillant. But can they confirm that people are healing the source of their anger? As we know that anger is a primary and secondary emotion, it would be difficult for the authors to say that without unconscious confirmation from those involved.
With the advances of trauma resolution methods, qEEG analysis, and memory healing (O’Brien, 2023a), symptom management would be much easier and more humane if proper clinical knowledge on addiction and trauma healing was applied. With legal consequences often occurring as a result of having strong, conflicting, or big emotions, time is of the essence. In a society that implicitly calls emotions the problem and actively suppresses them, without proper screening and assessment for dissociation and addiction, we are concerned about what other programs are reinforcing (HERE). We are also concerned about the professions that depend on the emotions and survival decisions of others, which they benefit exponentially from (HERE; HERE; HERE), and they label as pseudoscience when theirs isn’t holding up any more (HERE).
Conclusion
The wisdom of stopping something before it grows is common sense enough, but what if this is applied to citizens and society? Emotions are not the issue – not having, not knowing where, not knowing when, not knowing what they are, not knowing why, or what to do with them is the problem. The consciousness that does not know would see problems as the problem.
The answers can be observed in the questions our clients ask. The reasons they implicitly (HERE) demonstrates their level of need. By asking questions, people are implying that they do not have the answers or want to hear yours. For professionals and professions who are supposed to have the answers (e.g., governing bodies, medical and psychological sciences, and legal authorities) and who use terminology that they have not operationally defined, this seems less like a profession and more of a function of societal order that can wield power and control over its citizens and charge them for it.
This “letting it out” is the premise of psychoanalytic talk-therapy or Freud’s “talking cure”. But, based on the meta-analysis we have discussed here, “running it out” is no longer seen as scientifically relevant. How this is done is actually pretty relevant and when we have researchers who may or may not be active clinicians who do healing work and who may be cognitive through-and-through, then avoiding the direct way of reprocessing trauma is not necessarily an issue, but a strategy for survival. However, it does not mean or can be guaranteed that the healing work was done because only action and application of learning can measure that (O’Brien, 2024d).
Solutions
This work pairs well with betrayal trauma, moral-ethics, and justice in the legal system. We can measure whether or not one is here or not, if there are others involved, if it was an inside job, or if the person is sane or not. Our enhanced certified anger management program (O’Brien, 2024e) is rolling on in 2025. Our dissociative-informed, recovery-infused, and healing-focused programming can involve working cannabis as a psychedelic, Neurofeedback, and evidence-based meditation healing techniques to help heal the hurt rage that unresolved traumas cause. The question is still “under what conditions does most trauma occur?” To miss that addiction is the dissociative solution to trauma, is to not understand the “tearing and repairing” process of healing (O’Brien, 2023a; HERE). If we are not preparing all parts of people for their eventual death, then we are not doing our job as clinicians. This is a key difference between a therapist and a healer.
To respond to Noam’s Chomsky’s opening quote, the source of this “willful and dedicated ignorance” is what is addicted to dissociation. Soul or Ego? This is the reader’s choice for defining which one they are. The difference is between how we have survived on this planet and the cost of thriving, and we will soon pay the price for this. We think that it is pretty concerning when a profession that does not have its own terms defined is policing what others can and cannot do. Out of its own ignorance, it implies everything else that they must not understand or see. If they did, they would not have created this kind of cognitive logic to begin with and what it has become. What anger has become is God, yet again.
References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer andhealing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
