[Gem]

Not sure, but lets say that's one side of the story, like 'you're mad, that's understandable, it's OK'. Sorry my quip doesn't encapsulate the depth of your post, but I wanted to distill it into an everyday context.

However, temper and the host of negative reactions are very problematic, so even though 'it's understandable', it's no good if such distress is given a free reign.

The people who read psychology should like this because I figured something when I was meditating on retreat. You have to understand that a retreat is continuous meditation and I'm not taking about a meditation session as such, but during the period I became aware of deep seated rage, but it belonged to some version of me from long ago. I could feel it as rage, but at the same time, I was perfectly calm.

I realised from that. There are two kinds of anger. There's the reaction you are having now, and the type which is still latent from a long time ago. The latter type can be felt as rage but you aren't generating it now.

I think it's easy to get wrong impression from what I just said about expressing emotions, catharsis and what have you. It would be rational to think if I expressed the anger long ago at the time it happened, it wouldn't have got caught up in the first place, but in almost all cases, it's not a good idea to express your anger without restraint, and fortunately, emotions do not require expression.

I hope you aren't jumping to conclusions because this only gets more sublime. Even though it is better in almost all circumstances to not express negative reactions in behaviour (or at least have command over how you express them), not expressing or commanding expression of them isn't the same as repressing them. Repressing is trying to avoid the emotion by hiding it somewhere and pretending it's all fine. Then the thing sits in a dark cupboard and that bit of you is shut away, then you forget it's there.

We can't realistically just take 'it's understandable' as if no worries, it's all fine. We wouldn't encourage 'express it' in a DV situation, for example. We have to show restraint, and restraint is a wonderful attribute, but it's not to be confused with repression. They're not the same thing.