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Emotions are an important part that make up humans. Humans are not complete without the existence of an emotional side along with a humane logical side. Based on Shahsavarani & Noohi (2014), it is said that emotion is not something that is felt absolutely the same for everyone, emotion is something that appears in a certain direction and is a natural social phenomenon to occur. Of the many types of emotions that humans can feel, anger is one of the fundamental emotions. Feelings of anger are one of the expressions that usually arise because of certain triggers and conflicts that encourage the human desire to show the negative feelings they feel. Usually feelings of anger are accompanied by aggression. Aggression is an emotional outburst that aims to find an outlet for anger, channeled through activities that hurt others. This can happen verbally or physically. "The factors that cause the emergence of aggression behavior such as provocation, diverted aggression, media violence, increased stimulus, influence of alcohol and as well as the results of the study of the environment" (Anderson & Bushman, 2002 as cited in Utami & Elfina, 2019).
Often the problem is when humans have issues in controlling their anger. There is a thing called anger management. It is an ability to control how a person chooses to feel and express anger. Person with good anger management will be able to identify their own anger and choose how they are going to solve it. Poor anger management is a sign of anger issues. This is a condition when a person cannot regulate negative feelings, emotions, sensitivity, thoughts, and actions when angry. Unfortunately, anger issues are more common in society than one might think. Anger, which is a feeling with fairly easy and varied activation, is the reason why anger often appears. Anger issues are even conditions that can start at a young age. The condition of anger issues, which can start very early, is believed to worsen over time. Anger issues are like a ticking time bomb, which gets worse the more time passes. This can be seen from how adults have more difficulty managing anger even toward those closest to them. Bosses who are often angry at employees, parents who yell at their children, teachers who are too angry in class etc., show how anger issues develop as they age. But of course this increasement has their own varied reasons to happen in the very first place.
When discussing the factors of anger issues that get worse with age, of course, first it must be highlighting about the explanation of the causes of anger issues. Anger is closely related to depression as well as the level of stress experienced by humans in their lives. A high level of stress certainly means that anger will be more prone to occur. According to Serin, N.B. and Serin, O. (2011) Individuals who experience anger more often than others, or have a more severe form of anger than most people, are usually people with high internal conflict and inner stress. This can be seen as a link between anger issues and aging. As a person grows older, he or she will be exposed to greater levels of stress, causing greater internal conflict that triggers anger. Meaning that the reason of anger issues get worse as human age is because of the level of stress.
Adults take full responsibility for themselves, and also begin to take responsibility for the lives of others. This is certainly different from the situation when someone still has a guardian to protect them. Someone who has grown up can not just focus on one thing, they have to focus on many things at once. Adulthood requires the ability to multitask in managing life from an economic, social and political perspective. Obviously, this does not go smoothly for everyone. Problems such as difficulty in finding a job, less time to do personal quality-time, loss of old friends etc, contribute to the increasing stress levels of adults, causing them to become more sensitive, and yet this is still one of the reason for their stress.
In addition to the problem of adulthood, there is also the problem of mentality. The longer an individual spends living, the more things they are aware about. In life, children are often treated harshly, unfairly, and even traumatically. However, several factors cause children to forget this incident, including the fact that the kid himself might does not realize that he is treated unfairly, or because the incident was so traumatic that forgetting the incident is a form of the brain's cope mechanism to survive. In this case, it is not uncommon for these painful moments to be realized or recalled over time. Human can realize that he has been wronged, long after the incident has been missed. Of course, this delay will cause its own internal conflict. Starting from how this awareness arises when the people involved are no longer there, or how the incident will be considered no longer relevant because it happened years ago, as well as other complicated problems. This late realization add to another reason for internal conflict that will increase as human age.
Therefore, from the explanation of anger and age above, a conclusion can be drawn. First, anger is more likely to occur when a person is filled with distress and internal conflict. Second, humans who get older will also face more diverse problems, causing them to be exposed to high stress. This means that anger and age are in the same straight line, where increasing age can greatly increase anger issues.
References:
Shahsavarani A.M. and Noohi, S. (2014). Explaining the Bases and Fundamentals of Anger: A literature Review. International Journal of Medical Reviews, 1(4), 143-149.
Serin, N.B. and Serin, O. (2011). An Examination of Anger Level of University Students. E-Journal of New World Sciences Academy Education Sciences, 1C0359, 6(1), 1142-1151.
Utami, R.R. and Elfina, M.L. (2019). The Influence of Anger Management on Aggression Behavior and Peer Acceptance as a Mediation Variable. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), vol.304, 174-179.
