We dislike being angry
I believe anger is like pain--unpleasant but important. We don’t enjoy pain (unless suffering from a mental illness). We don’t enjoy feeling angry (unless we are addicted to the adrenaline it produces... more on this later).
There is a difference between telling ourselves that we dislike something and telling ourselves that it’s “bad.” Learning to manage anger begins with recognizing that as a human emotion anger is part of our human experience, just like fear and sadness. Our anger reveals something important to us.
We are not bad people for feeling angry. But feeling and acting are two very different things.
Next: Principle 2: Anger is often punished