Some Notes on Anger and Intolerance

How to accept things even though you don't like them

In this article, I’m going to explain why I think the concept of “intolerance” is so useful in understanding and overcoming anger.

One of the fundamental dilemmas of human life, with which the Stoics among others wrestled, is what I call “squaring the circle of concern.” How do we care enough about the world to live ethically, and avoid indifference, but not so much that we drive ourselves crazy? Where is the via media, the middle way, between apathy and neuroticism? The sweet spot, for example, is to be able to disapprove of injustice, without getting depressed or enraged about it.

Cromwell, accepted himself “warts and all” but not otherwise known for tolerance

In this article, I’ll draw on some ideas from Stoic philosophy and Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). Ellis proposed that most of our emotional problems are rooted in rigid and absolute demands, such as “must”, “have to”, “got to”, and “need to” statements. These sorts of attitudes are usually front and centre in anger, where we may, for instance, become enraged because we feel that “People MUST respect me” — when that inevitably does not happen, frustration and anger follow. REBT challenges these attitudes.

Ellis identified several other types of irrational beliefs that play a role in anger and other emotions. These are awfulizing, or exaggerating how bad something is, self-downing or other-downing, judging yourself or another person to be worthless and rotten through and through, and what Ellis called Low Frustration Tolerance (LFT). LFT originally referred to the belief that it is completely unbearable when our desires, or rigid demands, are not met — the attitude that ensuing feelings of frustration simply cannot be endured. This can be expressed in a variety of ways. When you catch yourself saying that something is “intolerable”, “unbearable”, that it’s “too much”, “overwhelming”, or that you “can’t stand it”, that’s Low Frustration Tolerance. Ellis also liked to call it I-can’t-stand-it-itis.

Over time that concept became slightly broader in scope. Sometimes it’s referred to more generally as Low Discomfort Tolerance. It is related to a family of other concepts that have become increasingly important in modern clinical psychology, such as intolerance of uncertainty, intolerance of anxiety, and so on. I therefore tend to think quite broadly in terms of attitudes of intolerance that maintain emotional problems. You may be intolerant of internal thoughts or feelings, or external people or events. If I firmly believe that I cannot stand something, I will probably also feel that I absolutely must avoid or get rid of it.

Not all beliefs are created equal. Different types of beliefs function differently, in relation to our emotions, and respond to different forms of cognitive disputation in therapy. For that reason, over time, I’ve come to place more emphasis on challenging Low Frustration Tolerance and other attitudes of intolerance. Where these beliefs are hidden, it’s worth seeking them out, as there are potential benefits to attacking the emotional problem from this angle, especially in the case of anger.

Tolerance and Emotional Coping

Let me give some examples. Stress and emotions such as anxiety and anger have, since the 1960s, often been interpreted in terms of dual-factor models of cognitive appraisal, based on the work of a pioneering researcher called Richard Lazarus. Lazarus distinguished between:

• Primary appraisal of threat, the perception that some event has or is about to harm you or your interests

• Secondary appraisal of coping, the sense of your own capacity to deal with the threat, which is further divided into problem-oriented (“How do I fix this?”) and emotion-oriented (“How do I learn to live with this?”) styles of coping

Of course, similar ideas already existed, and Ellis, who developed his approach prior to this research, back in the 1950s, can be viewed as talking about exaggerated threat appraisal as “awfulizing” and negative appraisal of (emotional) coping as Low Frustration Tolerance.

Exaggerated threat appraisal tends to get all of the attention. However, strengthening coping appraisal has many benefits. If I challenge how “awful” some event is, the new attitude will tend to be limited to similar situations. However, when I improve my confidence and flexibility in terms of coping, the change in attitude often generalizes much more, creating improved emotional resilience in a broader sense. If I can cope with this, I can cope with anything! Or at least, I can cope with a bunch of other problems in life. That’s arguably because the threat appraisal usually applies to a specific type of situation, whereas the coping appraisal is about me — it changes my attitude toward myself, my self-image, and I bring that to every future situation.

Building High Frustration Tolerance is the royal road to emotional resilience. You can think of tolerance or acceptance, and related concepts, as forms of emotion-oriented coping. If tolerance is a general strategy for coping we can perhaps break it down into specific tactics, at a more granular level, such as refraining from avoidance or any struggle against our feelings. We may also learn to tolerate discomfort or unpleasant experiences by finding a new perspective on them, perhaps viewing them not as threats but rather as opportunities for personal growth. You may find that physical techniques help you to accept unpleasant feelings, such as breathing deeply through the discomfort. In fact, there are many other ways in which you can help yourself to cultivate greater tolerance or acceptance but, at least in my view, the most important, and most elegant, solution is to change your underlying attitude to one of greater confidence in your willingness and ability to cope. You already have numerous skills and resources, more than you assume, which will help you to endure the things you previously avoided, without getting enraged about them.

Developing more tolerance and acceptance can also contribute to a sense of fulfilment, insofar as it can be directly linked to character strengths and core values. Ask yourself what sort of people you admire and what sort of person you want to be? What sort of character do you value? Do you want to be a wise human being? Someone who exhibits temperance? A good husband or wife, a good parent, a good boss? How does greater tolerance of discomfort or situations and people you dislike potentially shape your character — what virtues does it exemplify?

Again, with all this talk of acceptance, tolerance, bearing things, and accepting things, you may worry that it’s going to turn you into a doormat. That’s the most common objection people have. However, try to distinguish emotional acceptance from moral acceptance. You can accept the reality and even the inevitability that people will sometimes do unjust things, and cope emotionally, without resigning yourself to passivity or inertia.

In fact, the great paradox of acceptance is that it is often only by learning to tolerate the experience that we can actually change the outcome. If you want to fight injustice, in other words, you would be much better to accept that people are fallible, and stop complaining about it and upsetting yourself excessively. Instead, face the facts, disapprove of it without getting worked up about it, and start figuring out what you can actually do to make the world a better place. Think of “This must not happen!” and “I can’t stand it!” as crossing the line from desire into a form of denial — but you will need to adopt a more realistic attitude if you want to solve problems.

Photo by Ruben Christen on Unsplash

Common Irrational Beliefs in Anger

You can often infer intolerant beliefs from other beliefs, such as rigid demands. If you feel that you “must” have something, it arguably implies that you can’t stand not getting it. Here are some common rigid demands that characterize anger with examples of corresponding intolerant beliefs.

• “People must respect me.” > “I can’t stand the idea that someone has disrespected me.”

• “People must do what I want.” > “I can’t stand it when someone doesn’t do what I want.”

• “People must agree with my opinions.” > “I can’t stand it when people disagree with me.”

• “I must vent my feelings to gain relief.” > “I can’t stand experiencing these feelings without expressing them.”

• “I must suppress my feelings and avoid the ideas that upset me.” > “I can’t stand experiencing these feelings or the ideas that upset me.”

• “I must ruminate about my feelings and dwell on the things that upset me.” > “I can’t stand having these feelings without ruminating about them, and leaving problems unresolved.”

• “I must retaliate against the people who upset me.” > “I can’t stand the idea of letting someone who offended me get away with it and go unpunished.”

Disputing Your Intolerance

Settle on one rigid or extreme belief that expresses your intolerance, and begin challenging it systematically. Here are some questions that may help you:

• Define “intolerable”? Do you really mean that it’s impossible to endure or just very difficult and unpleasant to endure?

• Where is the evidence that you literally can’t stand this?

• Haven’t you already managed to endure similar, or even worse, things in the past?

• How does it logically follow, just because you really don’t like it, that you’re completely incapable of tolerating it?

• Do other people, such as wise and rational individuals, believe that similar experiences are intolerable?

• Is it potentially just a self-fulfilling prophecy: whether you believe you “can” or “cannot” tolerate this, either way, won’t you prove yourself right?

• When you say you “can’t stand” this, are you just exaggerating how bad it is?

• Could you be underestimating your ability to cope?

• Is it really all-or-nothing? How intolerable is it on a scale from 0-100%? Why is it not 100% intolerable?

• Would it be tolerable in another context, such as in a different time or place? How can it be inherently intolerable if sometimes it’s tolerable and sometimes it isn’t?

• Does how intolerable it seems not depend on how you choose to cope with it?

• What resources, character strengths, or skills, do you have that would potentially allow you to endure this?

• Where does telling yourself it’s intolerable get you in the long-run?

• What would you potentially gain by tolerating it?

• How is intolerance for this consistent with your core values and the type of person you want to be in life?

As you practice disputing your rigid beliefs, you will naturally begin to formulate more rational and flexible ways of thinking, which exemplify greater tolerance of discomfort, and the events and people who were triggering your anger.

Some Rational Alternatives

Here are some examples of more adaptive beliefs:

• “I don’t like it when people disrespect me but I can endure it and I will survive.”

• “I prefer it when people do what I want but if they don’t, I can live with that.”

• “I like it when people agree with me but if they don’t, I can handle that.”

• “I can accept unpleasant feelings, and endure the discomfort, without having to vent them.”

• “I don’t like these thoughts and feelings but I can experience them without having to try to get rid of them.”

• “I can tolerate having these feelings without ruminating about them.”

• “I don’t like it when people upset me but I can handle accepting the feelings and letting things go, without the need to retaliate.”

Find rational alternatives to the specific forms of intolerance that were contributing to your anger. Practice repeating them as coping statements every day, until they become second nature. Carry out regular “exposure based” behavioural experiments by facing your triggers and rehearsing rational and tolerant ways of thinking, like those above, until you actually begin to feel less angry. For instance, if the news makes you angry, sit down very deliberately at a specified time each day and watch the most annoying broadcasters you can find. (This is easy if you’re an American because the major news channels often seem deliberately designed to rage farm!) Make yourself listen to politicians you “can’t stand” giving speeches. As you do so, just remember, your goal isn’t to rehearse the irrational and extreme thinking we talked about earlier, your old habits, but to rehearse the new flexible way of thinking, and create new habits.

Your goal is neither apathy nor outrage but rational concern and healthy disapproval — the middle way. “I really don’t like what this politician is doing, but I can stand it without getting angry”, “I really strongly object to the injustices around the world, but I can tolerate learning about them without getting highly upset”, and so on. If you want to think about this in terms of modern affective neuroscience, you are training repeatedly yourself, in response to your anger triggers, to get into the habit of shifting dominance from your limbic system, the primitive emotional FEAR system, to your prefrontal cortex, and a rational problem-solving mode of functioning.

Unconditional Acceptance

Later in his career, Ellis increasingly focused on the ideal of unconditional acceptance. He distinguished between self-acceptance, other-acceptance, and life-acceptance. Sometimes, especially if you’ve already made progress on changing your attitudes, and developing high frustration tolerance, in specific situations, it can be helpful to focus on the more general goal of developing an attitude of unconditional acceptance toward yourself and other people. Again, that doesn’t mean doing nothing to prevent unethical or unjust behaviour. On the contrary, it means accepting reality at an emotional level, abandoning denial, and being prepared to make realistic changes.

I sometimes approach this by asking: “What prevents you from just accepting yourself and other people, unconditionally, warts and all?” For example, try disputing these beliefs:

• “I cannot accept myself unconditionally, as an imperfect and fallible human being.”

• “I cannot accept other people unconditionally, as imperfect and fallible human beings.”

Where’s the evidence for those “I can’t” beliefs? Objectively speaking, how true is this in reality 0-100%? Why don’t you believe it 100%? Where do they get you in the long-run? What might you potentially gain by adopting an attitude of unconditional acceptance?

Once you’ve become more skilled and confident at disputing any intolerance of your own or other people’s imperfections, in general, you can practice replacing it with an attitude of rational acceptance. For example:

• “I don’t like it when I make mistakes, or exhibit flaws, but I can nevertheless accept myself unconditionally as an imperfect and fallible human being.”

• “I don’t like it when other people make mistakes, or exhibit flaws, but I can nevertheless accept them unconditionally as imperfect and fallible human beings.”

Often you’ll find that you benefit from going back and forth, occasionally, between rehearsing more specific attitudes toward certain feelings or external triggers, and more general attitudes of unconditional acceptance. It’s not easy. It takes patience and effort. But in this way you’ll transform a lot of anger and frustration into healthy concern, and a mindset more capable of problem-solving.