Emotional Intellingence Series: 1. Origins of Anger!

Dear friends

I wish you a very healthy, peaceful and prosperous new year 2026! I believe that Cafe Philo Eindhoven has grown and matured tremendously as a community during the year 2025. I am very happy that we are progressing and connecting more with authentic expressions of ourselves. I would like to thank you for all the contributions, thinking and doing activities together last year!

Last year two main topics we have discussed were about musculinity and femininity and about introvert-extrovert personalities. Thinking on such differences and varieties in the society, a natural question comes to mind is that how do we percieve and deal with such differences. How do we try to understand them?

Humans are also masters in emotional expressions through which we communicate in the society. A big mistake that happens during emotional expressions or 'non-expressions' is that we often fail to percieve the underlying message. I realise emotional intelligence is a key skill in understanding ourselves and others through which we can make bridges between our internal nature with external nature.

As a first topic in the series of discussion on emotional intelligence we pick the topic of origins of anger. As a secondary emotion we express anger with varying degrees but fail to express the message. Similarly as a perceiver of such anger, we often fail to see the message behind it.

By taking Anger as an example emotion for our though experiments
this time,

Lets think deeply about Anger and its origins
Is anger is a useful emotion?
How to utilize anger constructively?
How to understand ourselves through our own anger?
How can we express anger but also express the message?
how can we percieve anger and also see the message behind it?
How do we express anger in different cultures and in age groups?

And all the questions on this very interesting but triggering :) emotion.

I welcome all you for a wonderful, thought-provoking, enlightening conversation circle!
Welcome!!