The Anger Map in Romantic Dynamics is also envisioned as a "treasure map" borrowing from the laws of thermodynamics, to transform the stress called "hurt" coming in at us, into the type of self-esteem called, "well-being," instead. This occurs through making the mature (higher-brained) decision to use the energy in a process called, "assertiveness."
It is a simplified construct that makes use of the Triune Brain Model, with each of the three "softwares" of this evolutionary psychology model, forming a pathway that we typically use to deal with anger.
Walking Though the Anger Map, Step By Step
Anger ➳
Your starting point. Anger is negative energy in you, caused by either hurt or your needs not getting met.
Hurt ➳
When someone stresses you in a way that is harmful, can be blocked by the personal boundary, but if that fails, makes you angry. It lowers an exactly equal amount of well-being in you, a type of self esteem.
Well-being ➳
The type of self-esteem called, "well-being," causes you to feel "mothered" or "maternal" toward others. It is a sense of having all your needs met. When you needs are not met, you have a lower amount of well-being, and so you feel an equal amount of anger to the lowered amount of well-being.
Depression ➳
Once you are angry, either through being hurt, or having some of your well-being taken away, or being low on your needs getting met in the first place, then you have a choice. If you do nothing with your anger, then it metabolizes to sadness, or "depression." Depression is "anger turned inward," and is the passive response to being angry (which is making no decision about it.) Eventually your sadness will boil up to the brim of your capacity and spill over into aggression.
Aggression ➳
An active choice for using anger, along with assertiveness. Aggression is the pathological narcissism choice, the destructive, "win/lose" choice for behavior in treating others, socially. In the case of anger, that choice is called aggression, which gets you a quick fix improvement in happiness by getting rid of the anger, quickly. However, society is quick to come down on you in response - anger and hurt of their own, which hurts you back and makes you even more angry.
Assertiveness ➳
The only way out of aggression and depression, assertiveness is relatively free of pathological narcissism. It is constructive and "win/win" in behavior toward others, and is a high character virtue. It can only be executed with other virtues such as patience, and good boundaries, with boundary doors in them.
Assertiveness is one of the many forms of anger, the others being sadness, depression, aggression, and its temporal derivatives, revenge, jealousy, and hate, or vengeful or envious shaming behaviors. When we engage in this kind of "emotional alchemy," we are literally turning negative emotional energy (stress) into positive emotional energy (well-being.) In the process, we actually use negative energy as a "fuel" with which to go get our needs met, emotionally. (Which is what well-being is: a sense of your needs being met, like feeling treated in a motherly fashion.)
Therefore, this map is like a way of "discovering treasure" from among your many hurts and stresses, by taking your negative energy that comes from the outside, and actually using it to constructively build your life and your resources.
The concept of destructive versus constructive decisions weighs heavy in this model, because the distinction comes from proven models of economics, such as the "win/win" constructive choice in behavior and "win/lose" destructive choice in behavior seen in Game Theory of Economics, as in the Nobel Prize winning theory set forth by John Nash in the "Nash Equilibrium."
There are numerous chapters in Romantic Dynamics illuminating this Anger Map, and simplifying our understanding of how the "three brains" of the human mind interact, as well as how all three work together in the process of human courtship. The emotions are at the center of the state of being we call, "Love," because love amounts to a feeling of happiness by way of the connection to another person. This bond is both an "imprinting" phenomenon between parent and child in our youth, but then is revivified in adult life within a romance, happiness, and the elevated self-esteem at its core.
As a result, we all need to contend with the effects of destructive anger (revenge, jealousy, shaming, hatred, depression, and aggression) effectively, and the pathological narcissism which drives them, in order to also defeat the external forces of stress - in this case, "hurt" - which comes into our relationships and harms our sense of friendship and love. Being mature (with our higher brain) and therefore, constructive and "win/win" in our relationship decisions, causes us to choose assertiveness in response to our own hurt and anger, and promotes love and friendship with our potential partner.
Here we are in step five of courtship - "Finding Stress in Each Other." This is essential to move on to "best friendship" in step six of courtship, ready to fully become partners in the third and final phase of courtship - intellectual attraction and a committed relationship. The other "map" needed to master all negative emotion, and to complement the Anger Map, is the Anxiety Map, a kind of "rescue map" from stress.
Emotional Attraction ➳
The Anxiety Map most pertains to topics and skills built for the emotional attraction phase of courtship, or the friendship and love phase (phase II.) There is much more material on emotional attraction and friendship, HERE.
