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Cleaning out my father's old desk recently, I found a long letter of complaint he wrote to the president of a country club in 1959. In it he lamented the aloof and rude treatment we had received from employees at the club. My father concluded with the admonition, "I hope you knock some heads together in your kindly and gentle way."

His urge to "vent" was clearly very strong, which makes sense to a lot of people. Many mental health professionals believe holding back anger is harmful. According to the "ventilationist" theories of the past century, we store anger, and, unless unleashed, it grows and intensifies until we explode like Mount Vesuvius.

Carol Tavris debunked this notion nearly two decades ago in her Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion (Touchstone Books, 1984). We don't store anger, Tavris points out, any more than we store positive emotions. Who would claim that we'll explode if we don't express joy or gratitude?

Moreover, expressing anger—far from relieving it—often nurtures it. By focusing on our angry feelings we intensify them, according to Tavris. Expressing anger frequently sets up a chain of events that worsens the situation.

Relieving anger, Tavris insists, comes not from expressing it, but from resolving the problem that provoked it.

Imagine, for instance, that a coworker informs you she overheard your boss say you're going to be fired. You've served the company diligently for years, and you've had a cordial relationship with your boss, who recently commended you highly. You're outraged, not only that he'd think of asking you to leave, but also that he's been so duplicitous in indicating he's pleased with your work.

For two weeks your resentment grows, and you barely sleep. Then comes the dreaded invitation to your boss's office. You sit stunned as he explains that he intends to promote you. Later, your coworker admits she must have been mistaken in what she overheard.

What happens to your burning anger when you learn you had things completely wrong? It vanishes. You haven't let it out at all, but it's gone anyway. Each of us has experiences in which anger we've never expressed disappears as soon as the upsetting situation is resolved.

Sometimes venting does help to resolve the problem. The person we confront grows contrite, makes a sincere effort at redress, and we feel validated for being assertive. Our anger dissolves.

But usually we're mistaken when we believe that someone will benefit from our criticism or imagine that we'll experience catharsis by "getting it off our chest." Rather than catharsis, we experience dejection over the worsened situation. The confrontation triggers the other person's defenses, and he becomes more entrenched in the position we hoped to correct. We despair at caving in to the urge to vent, as expression has only magnified our anger.

When anger compels us to confront someone, the most redemptive thing we can do is consider the likely results. Are we confident that speaking our mind will help heal the situation? Then we should do so—in a fair and respectful way, of course. If we're less than certain about the outcome, we should hold our peace.

Then again, we may assume that withholding criticism when someone deserves it is cowardly and sends the wrong message. We think we need to be frank to stay properly assertive.

Yet a vital part of being assertive is owning our lives. We don't fully own our lives if our well-being depends on how others think about us or respond to us. If I feel it necessary to tell someone off in order to save my pride, I'm letting that person have too much control over my life. In this case, the higher form of assertiveness means holding my tongue, especially if I know that speaking my mind likely will further undermine things.

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February 2003, Vol. 47, No. 2