Anger Is Your Fault. It's From Your Belief System.

Written 5/19/2025.

If the title doesn’t get you angry, then you are a better person than me.

The truth of the matter is that we have events. These events have no intrinsic meaning other than they happen. It’s the meaning we attribute to them that causes our emotions.

Here’s an example from my own life. I was driving myself and a colleague to a meeting on I94 in Michigan. A pickup truck with a long flatbed trailer cut in front of me causing me to brake. I slowed, then went around them. Not even thinking about what happened.

My colleague started asking me questions:

“How did you do that?”

“What,” I responded?

“Not get upset over that truck swerving in front of you?”

“I don’t know, it just happened, I slowed and then went around.”

“But you didn’t get angry or make any comments about it.”

“No reason to, it was just a truck/flatbed trailer.”

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Here are several general examples.

You step on a twig and break it. Did you get upset or angry at the stick? Did it cause a cascade of emotions? Probably not.

How about a pen running out of ink? Nope.

How about your boss yelling at you? Probably some emotions involved.

How about your spouse beating you? Yup. Lots of emotions.

The reality is that they are all activating events leading to a consequence (how we feel). In the middle is your belief system and how you interpret the event.

This was developed by Albert Ellis (I met him in the 90s), a famous American Psychologist who came up with ABC cognitive model, a cornerstone of his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.

Activating event (A) leads to Belief (B) which leads to Consequence (C).

If your belief system interprets A as negative, then you will have a negative reaction to it. If your belief system interprets A as positive, then you will have a positive reaction to it. If your belief system is neutral, then no reaction is forthcoming.

Anger is a result of B, your beliefs.

Gurus who don’t get upset tend to not have any belief about an activating event. Therefore, they can stay calm and controlled regardless of what’s going on around themselves.

Marriages can fail because spouses have very different beliefs surrounding common things such as sex, housework, fairness, etc. If you are married to a person who grew up in a toxic household and hasn’t worked through those issues, God help you. What’s normal for you may not be for them.

The reality is that an activating event is just that, an event with no meaning. How you place meaning on that event leads you to your emotional state.

The goal of ABC therapy is to change the beliefs surrounding A such that you have a healthier C.

Remember that only you can make yourself become angry because it’s your belief system that’s causing it. NOBODY CAUSES YOU TO BE ANGRY. Change your belief, change your life.

Let me know your thoughts or whether you want me to go into more depth.

I love you,

Robert