Anger in the Age of Entitlement

Cleaning up emotional pollution

Steven Stosny, Ph.D.

Changing Emotional Habits

Habits are processed thousands of times faster than intentional behavior; the only way to change an entrenched one is to develop an incompatible one.

How We Affect Each Other

The principle of emotion contagion holds that emotions of two or more people converge and are passed from person to person in larger groups.

Anger at Our Children

Most of our anger at our children is an impulse to punish them for reminding us that we're failing as parents.

Emotional Abuse: How Your Couples Counseling Made it Worse

Couples counseling presupposes that both parties have self-regulation skills, the ability to hold onto self-value when partners don't like each other's behavior.

Healing, Growth, and Empowerment

All behavior that is not habit has one of three usually unconscious motivations.

Heal, Grow, Empower

What we focus on becomes more important than what we don’t focus on.

Soar Above Racism

Dominated by the Toddler brain, we latch onto any ideology and desperately seek reinforcement of it through the most superficial bonding: common enemy.

Soar Above Blame, Denial, Avoidance

Habits rule under stress and when the regulatory processes of the prefrontal cortex (the Adult brain) are overtaxed from physical or mental exhaustion.

The Curse of “Emotional Needs”

Once the mind becomes convinced that it needs something, its pursuit can easily become obsessive, compulsive, or addictive.

Relationship Repair: Strategy vs. Tactics

Unless there is agreement on a strategy to repair the relationship, any tactic either party employs will seem like manipulation.

Anxiety, the Endless Alarm

In small doses, anxiety is a vital emotion. Without it, we could be killed crossing the street and would find ourselves ill-prepared for many of the important tasks of life.

The Resentful Life

Resentment is the persistent feeling that we're being treated unfairly—not getting due respect, appreciation, affection, help, apology, consideration, praise, or reward.

A Resentment-Free Life

Ultimately, the choice between valuing and devaluing is a choice between empowerment and powerlessness.

Intimacy and Communication

If you feel that something your partner does is “stupid,” describing the behavior in the kindest language will not hide your true feelings.

The Lost Wisdom of Well-Being

Due to the vast contagion of emotions, even our most subtle interactions with other people help determine whether they treat their loved ones well, ignore them, or hurt them.

Are You Emotionally Abusive?

If you're resentful, then you’ve probably devalued, demeaned, sought to control, manipulate, or deliberately hurt the feelings of loved ones.

Healing from Betrayal and Forgiving It

If you make forgiveness a goal, it remains elusive—just when you think you’ve got it, it’s out of reach again.

Is Sarcasm in Love Emotional Abuse?

The measure of a behavior in love relationships should not be whether or not it’s abusive or sarcastic. That sets the bar way too low.

Common Misunderstandings in Committed Relationships

Avoid the attitude of “Connect when and where I want—or not at all.”

The Struggle to Be Human

We have to struggle to maintain a sense of humanity.

Building Immunity to "Emotional Pollution"

Environmental polluters spread waste in the environment without regard of its effects on others. Emotional polluters spread hostility in the environment, disregarding others.

Anger in the Age of Entitlement

The entitlement culture has all but equated the virtue of humility with the symptom of low self-esteem—with dire consequences.

The Culture of Toddlerhood

Intolerance of disagreement rises from the dread of uncertainty, a dread that severely limits growth and accomplishment. Uncertainty drives us to learn more and connect to others.

Suffering and Transcendence

Those who condemn others are the least likely to know they’re suffering.

Power Struggles in Love?

In love relationships, power struggles are not really about power – who gets to rule. They’re about value, specifically, attempts to compensate for precipitous drops in self-value.

The Function of Anger and Resentment

Resentful people often get into trouble in intimate relationships, without doing anything wrong; their bodies and expressions devalue and express hostility.

Questions about Emotional Abuse

Abuse is at heart a misuse of power. Power and responsibility are morally inseparable: The more power we have, the more responsibility we must assume.

Why Your Couples’ Therapy Didn’t Last

By the time we’re adults, emotion regulation habits are almost completely habituated.

3 Toxic Routines of Emotional Abusers

Whenever abusers feel uncomfortable, disappointed, guilty, ashamed, or sad, partners and children are likely to be blamed.

The Difference Between Complaints and Contempt

When you frame the problem as the character of your partner, rather than the way you interact, change requires one or both of you to sell out the sense of self.

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