Health Preventing an alcohol problem

[Will_V]

interesting view on it. Do agree that it's possible to turn anger/aggression into a protective shield to avoid depression and anxiety short-term (matches my experience too). BUT eventually to function you need to get all 4 of those things out of your system.

I don't think of it so much as a shield. It's more of an opposing force. Depression and anxiety is a force that pulls inward and away from a challenge, and aggression is a force that pushes outward toward it.

A lot of what is commonly thought of as aggression is in fact anxiety and desperation combined with violence, but that's not what I'm talking about. Aggression can be relatively tranquil, subtle, it can be experienced with joy and a profound sense of uninhibition and satisfaction, and it does not need to be generally destructive to its environment when it is well controlled. It protects the mind not by defending it as such, but by providing it with the fuel and the impulse to achieve some kind of effect on a target, and thereby diverting its attention from its fears.

As a man the ideal mode is to move through your environment unimpeded, achieving your goals and having the effect you want with a minimum of interference. When that interference comes from within in the form of anxiety, confusion, profound helplessness, unwarranted guilt, etc, you have to counteract it by force, not by castigating yourself, or by covering it with an addictive behavior, but by generating outward-projecting energy and impulse. Perhaps there is a better term for it than 'aggression' but that's the only one I know of.