Anger is often misunderstood.
It gets a bad rap as being out of control rage or seeing red.
Today, I want to share a few different perspectives on anger and highlight what this emotion could be sharing with you.
Anger has a role to play in our lives
It’s important to note that I am not advocating what I would call “unaddressed anger”.
If you’re experiencing anger at various colleagues or people in your life on a continuous basis, there is something that needs to be examined to see why these feelings are coming up.
Likewise, any feedback you may have received that your behaviour is hot-headed and/or aggressive is a signal that there is some explorative work to do.
Therein lies the important role anger plays in our lives.
It is a huge source of information for us.
- Do you need to implement a boundary?
I could spend my life talking about the benefits of boundaries. They really are superpowers we can employ to protect ourselves.
Anger is often an indication that someone has overstepped an emotional boundary with us. Is there someone in your life, in a professional or personal setting, who disregards what you say, or constantly criticises you?
If there is, the likelihood is that you would begin to feel angry when engaging with them.
Who wouldn’t?
- An emotional need is not being met
Us humans come with physical and emotional needs.
Anger can rise when one of those needs is not being met. This is especially true when it comes to emotional needs as these are not as easy to see as our physical needs.
We need our emotional needs met to feel a sense of well-being, psychological safety and fulfillment.
These emotional needs can take the form of feeling we are seen,understood, liked, loved, cared for, worthy of respect and important in someone’s life. That’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but it provides some ideas of what we require to function from an emotional point of view.
In my work, I see anger arise at times when my clients feel they are being treated with disrespect, ignored or cast aside.
These can be painful experiences, but because we’re not often taught about our emotional needs (or even that we have them!), it can be difficult to articulate that we feel hurt and/or vulnerable.
Sometimes, it’s “easier” to feel angry.
- It’s scary to show our vulnerable side
Anger brings power with it, among other things.
When we’re experiencing feelings of shame, sadness, hurt, anxiety, insecurity or sad feelings, we can feel the opposite of powerful.
Maybe we feel scared, small or insignificant.
All of our feelings exist on a spectrum.
When we’re confronted with an experience that makes us feel small, the temptation is huge to jump straight to anger to avoid feeling that way.
And to gain some of our power back.
- Is a value being compromised?
We all have core values.
These are things that are important to us and could cover our feelings on justice, love, spirituality, family, career, money and personal growth. Again, this list provides just a small example of all the areas our core values could cover.
Needless to say, our core values are connected deeply to our emotional life.
When one of our core values is compromised, feelings of anger can surface quickly.
In no small way, our core values are “us”. When one is under threat, we’ll feel that we ourselves are being prevented from being the person we envision ourselves as being.
That’s a recipe for anger.
- An old wound is rearing its head
You might not realise that your anger has the ability to time travel, but it does.
Sometimes, in our current lives our feelings of anger might have everything to do with something in our past and nothing happening in our present.
If we suffered abuse in our past, whether of an emotional, physical or sexual nature, these memories will be stored in our minds and bodies.
Then, when something, no matter how unrelated, reminds our emotional brain of the memory, we can be triggered.
This is not always clear cut and can be confusing to experience.
The result is you might be feeling angry, but not sure why.
How to deal with anger
So anger has a lot to tell us.
Anger has another redeeming factor in its favour.
It brings with it momentum.
When we work with our anger to unpack and understand it, anger can help us make many changes for the better.
The key is to figure out how we can do that.
It was Aristotle who said, “Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”
Staying angry, or continuously reacting in anger to stimuli, is not beneficial.
In a professional sense, there are strict codes of how we can behave. These codes are there for good reason, but what do we do with our less than polite feelings?
Our personal life is also governed by ways we can and can’t act in society. Where do we put our unpleasant feelings in this case?
In my practice, my clients and I remove any of the stigma associated with anger to decipher what it is really telling us.
Then we work out how my clients might act on the information their anger is sharing with them.
Are they in an environment they need to remove themselves from?
Is there some issue from the past that needs to be brought into the present day to resolve?
Do we need to create space for vulnerable feelings to surface?
If you’re experiencing feelings of anger that you’d like to explore, please feel free to contact me. I would be delighted to chat with you to see how we could work together.