Case Study 01 — Jordan: Anger He Doesn't Know He Feels

Chapter 6 Application: Emotion

The Scene

Three months into working with the psychologist he finally agreed to see — at Dev's gentle but persistent suggestion — Jordan said something that surprised them both.

He was talking about his relationship with his VP, Helen. He described a pattern he had noticed: when Helen made decisions he disagreed with, he would develop elaborate mental arguments for why her reasoning was flawed. He would rehearse these arguments in his head for days. He would occasionally share them with trusted colleagues, framing his analysis as objective critique. He would be scrupulous about being professionally agreeable to Helen's face.

"It sounds like you're managing something," the psychologist said.

Jordan paused. "I'm managing my disagreement professionally."

"Maybe. Or maybe you're managing anger."

Jordan considered this. "I don't think I get angry often," he said. "I'm not an angry person."

"When was the last time you told someone you were upset with them?"

A long pause. "I'm not sure."

"When Helen makes decisions you think are wrong, and you develop elaborate critiques — and share them with colleagues but not with her — what's the function of that?"

A longer pause. "Relief," Jordan said. And then: "Oh."

The Psychology

Jordan has a complicated relationship with anger. He does not experience himself as an angry person — he rarely has obvious anger outbursts, rarely raises his voice, is known professionally as measured and calm. This self-perception is not entirely wrong.

What it misses is that anger is present in his psychology but handled in ways that prevent his recognizing it as anger.

Suppression Without Recognition

The standard suppression research tracks what happens when people have an emotion and then try to suppress its expression. Jordan's case is slightly different: he has developed a regulatory style so consistent that he often does not register the initial emotion as anger in the first place.

The emotion of anger has an appraisal core: an injustice or violation has occurred; someone is responsible; I have agency to respond. When Helen makes decisions Jordan thinks are wrong, all three elements are present. But the learned suppression — possibly developed early in a family where anger toward authority was implicitly unsafe — operates quickly enough that the emotion is routed into "intellectual critique" before Jordan consciously experiences it as anger.

This is what emotion research calls substitution: a socially or internally unacceptable emotion is converted into a more acceptable form. Anger at Helen becomes intellectual disagreement. The energy of the anger goes into the critique-building; the interpersonal function of the anger (signaling to Helen that her decision feels wrong to Jordan) is suppressed.

The Costs

The routing of anger into intellectual critique is not neutral:

Relational cost: Helen has no information about Jordan's genuine reactions to her decisions. The relationship is based on managed presentation rather than real exchange. Whatever potential for adjustment Helen might have, she cannot act on it because she doesn't have the signal.

Internal cost: The emotion is present — Jordan needs "relief" from it — but it is not processed. It accumulates in a low-grade way. Jordan carries a set of intellectual critiques about Helen that are really unexpressed emotional responses, and those critiques shape his perception of her (confirmation bias in action) in ways that are not accurate.

Strategic cost: The colleagues Jordan shares his analyses with are developing a picture of Helen through Jordan's filtered perspective. He is inadvertently poisoning the political well in ways that could have professional consequences.

Physiological cost: Suppressed anger that provides "relief" through intellectual rumination is not particularly relaxing. The physiological component of anger (arousal, cortisol) is not resolved by developing a compelling critique; it continues to simmer.

What's Available

The psychologist's question — "what's the function of that?" — is one of the most useful moves in emotion work. Asking the functional question (what is this emotion doing? what would it accomplish if it were expressed?) bypasses the definitional dispute (is it anger?) and goes directly to the emotional process.

Jordan's emerging awareness: the intellectual critique is doing the work of anger — communicating a violation of his sense of fairness and competence — but in a form that is safe, because it is not addressed to the person it is about.

The next question is whether there is a form of that communication that could actually be addressed to the right person — not as an outburst, but as genuine professional feedback. Whether Jordan can develop the capacity to say to Helen, skillfully, "I felt strongly that this decision was wrong and here is why" — rather than either suppressing it or routing it through indirect channels.

That is a more demanding emotional regulation task than either full suppression or unmanaged expression. It requires distinguishing between the anger (which contains genuine information) and the expression of anger (which can be calibrated to context). That distinction is at the heart of emotionally sophisticated communication — a topic we return to in Chapter 16.

Discussion Questions

Jordan did not experience his intellectualized critique as anger. What does this tell us about the limits of emotional self-knowledge? If people can have emotions they do not consciously recognize, how confident can we be in our reports of our emotional lives?
The case describes Jordan's substitution of intellectual critique for anger as possibly rooted in early family experience. How does developmental history shape the emotional regulation strategies available to us in adulthood? (This theme will be developed further in Chapter 19.)
The chapter distinguishes between experiencing an emotion and expressing it. Is it possible to regulate emotional expression without regulating the emotional experience itself? What are the conditions under which each is appropriate?
The case suggests that Jordan's colleagues are receiving a distorted view of Helen through his filtered anger. What ethical responsibilities do we have about the ways we process and share our emotional responses to others — particularly when those others are in authority over us?