Catharsis is a load of crap
Venting your repressed anger doesn't actually eliminate it. In fact, venting your repressed anger makes you more likely to keeping acting on that emotion.
I held a grudge against my stepfather for a solid 20 years.
Over the course of all this stewing, I became convinced that it would have been easier for me to get over it if, at some point along the way, I had been able to express to my stepfather some of this anger I harbored toward him.
You know, read him the riot act after discovering he’d been unfaithful to my mom …
Or told him he had a lot of nerve expecting me to hug him after she’d finally divorced him …
Or if, just once, I had shouted, “You’re not my real father!” when he grounded me as a teenager before stomping up to my room and refusing to speak to him for a couple of weeks …
I never did any of that. Instead, I kept those feelings bottled up. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to make things more difficult for my mom. I feared it was because I lacked the strength to stand up to him.
Whatever the underlying reason, I became convinced I would have felt better if I had gotten some of this off my chest at some point.
There’s a term for this idea: catharsis.
Aristotle believed in it. So did Sigmund Freud.
Catharsis is defined as the process of releasing a strong, often pent-up emotion, thereby creating a sense of relief.
The premise is that acting on a repressed emotion, expressing it, reduces the pressure that is building up, thereby preventing a more potent eruption later.
This concept has become baked into our language from the expression "blowing off steam” to the belief that you’re better off “getting something out of your system.”
There’s just one problem: For years, social scientists have been showing that this isn’t how anger actually works in human beings.
🧪 Testing, Testing 🥼
In 1959, the psychologist R.H. Hornberger ran an experiment in which subjects had their writing insulted by someone considered to be a peer.
All the subjects were then asked how they felt about the person who criticized what they had written.
Half the subjects were then given a hammer and instructed to pound nails for 10 minutes. The other half were not given a hammer and did no physical activity.
After 10 minutes had passed, the subjects were given the opportunity to insult the person who had criticized their writing.
If catharsis theory were true, the subjects who’d spent 10 minutes hammering would show decreased levels of aggression. In fact, the hammerers showed more aggression.
Another, more nuanced study was conducted in 2002.
Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame?
Brad Bushman, 2002 | Iowa State
The experiment consisted of 600 subjects, each of whom was asked to write a one-paragraph essay on abortion.
The subjects were then told their essay was being swapped with a partner. They were asked rate their partner’s essay on a scale of -10 to +10 and to provide feedback.
The subjects then received their original essay back with marks they assumed were from their partner. The subject’s essay was graded harshly, given a score between -10 and -8. It also included the handwritten comment, “This is one of the worst essays I have read!” The author of the study dryly noted, “Previous research has shown that this procedure makes people quite angry.”
The 600 subjects were then given a series of questions to determine their mood.
They were then split into three groups:
The rumination group
This group was given a punching bag and boxing gloves and shown a picture of their ostensible partner on a computer screen. These subjects were instructed to hit the punching bag while imagining it was the partner who they believed had criticized the essay. The exercise lasted 2 minutes.
The distraction group
This group was also given a punching bag and boxing gloves, but these subjects were not shown a picture of their ostensible partner. These subjects were instructed to hit the punching bag, but were told to imagine they were getting in shape. The exercise lasted 2 minutes.
The control group
This group was given neither a punching bag nor boxing gloves. Instead, these subjects sat quietly for the 2 minutes.
After the test, the three groups were asked additional questions to assess their mood.
In the last stage of the experiment, the participants were told they would be competing against their partner in a test of reaction time. The winner of the challenge would be able to administer an electric shock to the other participant (i.e. the person they believed had criticized their essay).
The experimenters measured the length of “shock” that was administered by the subjects.
Conclusions
The members of the control group — the ones who did no punching — were less angry and less aggressive, meaning they administered less intense shocks in the final stage of the experiment.
The members of the distraction group — the ones who were told to punch for exercise — were not angrier than the control group, but they were more aggressive in the administration of shocks.
The members of the rumination group — the ones told to punch the bag while thinking about their critic — were angrier than the control and more aggressive in terms of shock administration.
The rumination group and distraction group were not significantly different in levels of aggression.
The author of the study concluded that doing an aggressive activity did not lessen the level of anger, nor did it decrease the desire to punish the object of your antagonism. It would appear that instead of getting it out of your system, it created a behavioral trend.
No health benefits from venting anger
Baseline of Health Foundation
Closure doesn't require catharsis
I never did yell at my stepfather.
Not even when I flew across the country to interview him in December 2023.
We talked quite a bit over the two days I spent in the Northern California town where he lived. I told him that I had been very angry with him for a number of years. I also took him through the timeline of his marriage to my mom as I understood and gave him a chance to provide his recollection.
He answered every question I asked. He was not, in my opinion, always truthful, but I didn’t confront him on what I believed were lies. I gave him a chance to provide his perspective, and when we were done I thanked him for his time. He never apologized to me.
There was a time when this lack of accountability would have infuriated me. When I first started writing about my relationship with him back in 2019, a part of me wanted to hold him accountable by spelling out exactly what he did.
Back then, I thought if I put the anger I was feeling on the page, it would decrease the space it occupied in my life.
This didn't work any better than hammering nails or punching a bag.
What did work was practicing radical acceptance.
My mother'ssecond marriage was difficult, and it ended in a way that was tremendously painful for everyone involved. I believe that if my stepfather had been honest about what happened, it would have made it easier for me, my mom and my younger siblings. That isn't what happened, though. That was his choice, and nothing I reveal now is going to change what happened.
I can’t force him to show any accountability, and while this lack of personal responsibility can still make me angry, I don’t think about it nearly as much as I used to.
I think that’s because I’ve given up the idea that I would feel better if I just stood up to him.
You don’t deal with your anger by getting rid of it.
You get rid of your anger by dealing with it.
Namaste fools.
Begrudgingly yours,
- dannyo