There are probably some hidden wounds stirring it up. I'm going to show you how to analyze your anger. Our emotions are the way we express ourselves and affect how we feel about ourselves, the decisions that we make, what we believe about the world, and how we interact with others. Others. Renowned psychologist Dr. Paul Ekman identified six basic emotions that we all experience: fear, surprise, happiness, sadness, disgust, and anger. From this group of emotions, the most destructive to a relationship is anger. Yet it's a normal emotion that we all have. How you express your anger has a lot to do with your personality and your upbringing. If feeling angry makes you feel vulnerable and exposed, you may suppress your anger and not express it because you fear losing control. Suppressed anger is a form of avoidance and can lead to anxiety and feelings of depression. On the other hand, some people don't filter their anger at all, and as soon as something triggers them, they express their anger with aggression, either by yelling or using sharp words or actions.
An action may be as simple as deleting you from my contacts or blocking your messages because you say things that make me angry or hurt my feelings, I could insult you back, but because that's not my personality, I wouldn't know what to say. So rather than invite an argument with you, which I'll probably lose and make me feel worse, I just delete you. Sometimes the immediate expression of anger is a good thing and allows you to purge the negative feelings and move on. But it can be a bad thing when your response is too aggressive, like blowing up at people or having a reaction that's out of proportion to the trigger, like feeling heat in your chest from anger when someone interrupts you too many times and the person doesn't even realize how much their interruptions bother you. Another sign of pathological anger is chronic anger, when you're always angry or annoyed about something. So, anger can be adaptive if it helps you prune away negative situations or experiences, like deleting people who upset you. Or it can be maladaptive when its expression does more harm than good. When dealing with maladaptive anger, it's helpful to look at what lies underneath the anger.
And one way to examine your anger is to think of it as an iceberg that has a visible part above the surface of the water, but a much larger part lying beneath the surface that you can't see. The visible part is the situation that triggers your angry response. In the middle, just below the surface are your hurt feelings and unmet needs. Then that the deepest layer is fear. Let's look at an example of how to analyze this together. Think of a situation that triggered your anger and caused you to blow up at someone in a way that seemed excessive, or maybe you didn't blow up, but you felt very angry, as if someone poked a sore spot on you, and now you're aggravated, distracted, and just in an overall bad headspace. Here's a hypothetical example. My sister Jane asked to borrow $500 from me to start a new business. She quit her job because the company no longer allows her to work from home, and she didn't want to have to drive to an office anymore and wanted to be her own boss. I know Jane, and I know that although she was being paid for an eight-hour day, she probably only worked a couple of hours each day.
She doesn't have a whole lot of ambition, and I can't see her making enough money to replace her old job. When I tell her this, she says.
Why can't you just be on my side this one time?
Implying that I don't trust her, which I don't. So, to be supportive, I give her the money. Months pass, and I don't really get many details about how Jane's new business is going. Whenever I ask, she just says, oh, it's fine. We get together at a family dinner, and my mom asks Jane how she likes her new job. I say, you mean her new business, right. Jane, a matter of facility, says, oh, no.
That didn't work out. I had to get a real job.
I then ask about my $500, and she says, oh, sorry, that went into.
The business, and I had to close it down.
I ask, when were you going to let me know I still want my money?
My mother then says, oh, don't be that way. At least she tried something on her own. Now, why are you so mad? You can afford $500, or you wouldn't have given it to her.
Now I'm enraged. I blow up at my mom and sister, and I leave the dinner. I get even more angry when my father later calls me and tells me that I need to be the bigger person in this situation and let it go, because we all know how Jane is. Now I'm livid. I can't bring myself to curse my dad out, so I burst into tears and hung up on him. Here's my iceberg analysis. And this is hypothetical because I don't have a sister. Did I have a right to be angry at Jane for telling me that she blew my money, moved on, and had no intention of paying me? Sure, but that's not really what infuriated me, causing a scene at the family dinner and on the phone with my father. So, thinking about the top of the iceberg, the first blow up came from my mother saying that I don't need the money moving just below the surface. Why was that statement so hurtful? Because it's a recurring theme that, as a successful child, I don't need much. Jane was always needy and failing at something. So, she got extra attention and help from my parents.
So deep down, I feel like my self-sufficiency made it easy for them to let me grow up on autopilot without much support, because I didn't need it. The second dagger came from my father with his statement that I needed to be the bigger person again. That triggered a long-standing hurt, and I must be the mature one who lets things go and not show upset. So that's the hurt behind that anger. What was the unmet need in this specific situation? I needed my parents to empathize with me for being angry at my sister for her inconsiderate behavior. I needed them to acknowledge that I had a right to be upset instead of treating me as if I were a bully. Now, looking even deeper, what's the fear? I fear that they, my family, will never let me be imperfect, and if I am, they won't love me. I fear the dynamic of me being the unflawed person without any needs will never go away. And because of that, I'll never feel close to them. And if I really let my mind think about this fear, I may realize and then admit to myself that I hate them.
And I fear that they'll eventually figure that out. Now, that conclusion sounds harsh, but the reality is that often fears that trigger anger have an ugly, primitive core to them. And they're primitive thoughts that we don't want to accept on a conscious level. Usually, it takes a trained professional to help you recognize some of these unpleasant thoughts. But it's not impossible for you to become self-aware with lots of reflection. The positive that can come from uncovering unpleasant thoughts like this is to give you a chance to address the hurt and fear directly instead of only reacting to it. So, in this case, after pondering how I got here with so much anger about this $500, I conclude that I need to give my family a chance to respond to my feelings of being emotionally neglected over the years and using my success against me. Sure, I have an axe to grind with my sister for acting so entitled and insensitive, but it's really my parents who cause the hurt. Having a conversation with my parents can help them understand what's really bothering me. It's so much more than money and gives them a chance to make amends.
Now, yes, there are parents who intentionally harm their children. That happens, and it's a terrible thing. But there are a lot more parents who are flawed individuals and unintentionally make mistakes that they don't realize have the long-standing effects that they do. And I've seen this kind of situation many times, and I've seen a parent confronted about this who had no idea that their child was harboring these feelings. The mom says, I was just so.
Thankful that I didn't have to worry about you like I did, Jane.
But mom doesn't realize that focusing on the special needs child made the self-sufficient one feel unloved. And those dynamics show up again and again in various situations until it finally gets addressed. Another way this iceberg analogy can help is giving you more empathy toward others who blow up all the time or seem easily angered or irritated. We all have these icebergs, and although it's not okay to attack people because of deeper hurts, understanding that the angry, volatile person may have some unresolved needs may make it easier to overlook their reactions. It doesn't mean they should get a pass every time they get angry and lash out. But at least you can avoid engaging with them, because if their reaction is based on some deeper hurt, you're fighting a battle that has little to do with the surface issue that started it. Furthermore, having an understanding is not always about us, rather, it is self-soothing oneself from hurt and unjust behaviors.
In closing
Setting and maintaining boundaries are more important than ever in any relationship. Learning to implement our effective communication skills, mindful of our pitch tone and volume will decrease any type of conflict. Learning to self-soothe oneself, due to our childhood will help our present and future relationships with self and others. I leave this last thought, you can’t see the picture if you are in the frame, learning to step outside and reframe it will give you a sense of accomplishment. Also, learning to tune out the outside critic and the inside critic will make all the difference in the world. Keep fighting the good fight.
Chris Packham, LAADC, M-RAS, MSW, CCDS, MATC, CS
For more information please contact me at 408-915-1321 or dcpackhams@gmail.com
