Emotions: Thwarted Needs

Anger & sadness are both reactions to having our needs thwarted or being threatened with punishment.

Anger arises when an organism’s reward seeking behavior (seeking) is blocked or threatened, or when an organism’s ability to avoid punishment (fear) is threatened. Anger motivates action to reverse or rectify the threatening situation, which often requires aggression, domination or violence towards the source of threat.

Sadness is similar to, and in many ways the opposite to, anger. Sadness occurs when something rewarding – something you care about, value or need – is blocked, threatened or lost, just like with anger. However, while anger motivates action to counteract this threat, sadness motivates acceptance of loss. It motivates slowing down and learning: updating our model of the world based on this loss.

Anger and sadness are not in themselves good or bad. They are appropriate responses at different times. In the case where action can prevent a loss, sadness would lead to “giving up too soon”. In the case where a loss has already occurred and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, rage often means that the person hasn’t fully accepted reality and is still operating in a prior model of the world, deluded that there’s still something in their power they can do to prevent the loss. This is why the stages of grief start from a position of shock (e.g. surprise – my model is wrong!) to denial, anger, and bargaining – all of which involve a rejection of the new model and attempts through one's own heroic actions to reclaim a prior reality – to depression, testing and acceptance, which are stages through which an individual updates their model of the world in light of the new reality they live in.

While we often think about the stages of grief in the context of the loss of a loved one, they can be applied more broadly to almost any unwanted or challenging change in one’s life, where a major “update” to one’s model of the world needs to occur.

We’re reminded of the serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Acceptance is sadness and is appropriate where we don’t have control over outcomes; courage is anger and is appropriate where we do have control. Wisdom, of course, allows us to apply both appropriately, to know when we do and don’t have control over our environment – that’s the key.