Understanding Your Anger
Learning how to recognise and understand your anger is the key to coping with your anger differently. Buying yourself time in the moment can circumvent ‘blowing up’ in anger.
Read on to learn more about anger management techniques I use in anger management therapy.
What do you understand about your anger?
Anger is a complicated emotion. It can make us feel extremely out of control when it appears, often unannounced and unexpected.
It is unsettling and it can damage our lives, affecting potentially everything that is important to us, like those we love and our work.
While anger has a bad reputation, when properly expressed, it can bring about positive outcomes. For example, peaceful protests, new legislation etc.
It’s all in the ‘how’.
If we go shouting and screaming at something we feel hurt by, of course it’s going to damage a relationship. If we can recognise our underlying feeling – that we are hurt – and express how we feel in a non-aggressive way, perhaps we can find a path through anger that doesn’t cause damage to a relationship.
How to understand anger
Have you been called an “angry person” at times in your life? Have you agreed? Have you started to think of yourself as an “angry person”?
Calling someone an “angry person”, or identifying as one, is way over-simplified.
Anger is a natural, valid, emotion. Any angry reaction is a unique and subtle mix of factors, such as upbringing, emotional awareness, trauma, feeling threatened, feeling powerless, feeling insecure, feeling vulnerable etc.
Anger is often called a ‘secondary’ emotion. This is because it covers up for underlying, core emotions, such as those mentioned above and a whole range of other negative emotions. Anger is an easy way NOT to feel painful emotions.
Attacking others with anger may hurt them, but at least we’re not feeling the hurt. This is a psychological concept called projection. We ‘project’ onto others the emotions we don’t want to feel. It is a defensive manoeuvre because it helps us continue to feel that we’re ok. However, like a lot of other defensive strategies, others get hurt and our relationships can suffer.
What lies beneath your anger?
How can you tell?
Sometimes this can be difficult, sensitive work and a long process. It may be the type of thing you want to get in touch with a therapist about for more insight and understanding.
If you want to have a think about this for yourself, try writing a list of the things you are angry about. What are those experiences? Who hurt you? When? How long have you been holding on to these feelings of anger? Can you direct some of the anger you feel by expressing it to relevant others?
You’ve heard the phrase, ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’. Anger is the same. We can exist for some time with a low level of anger. That anger can gradually build the more we experience the feeling, creating layer upon layer of unprocessed, unrecognised irritation, frustration, and anger. Eventually, we snap.
That one thing – dropping something, making a mistake, a cancelled train, someone else’s negative comment – can tip our anger level over the edge. We can no longer suppress it or add another layer; it must be released. Often at the time we release anger, it is towards something or someone that doesn’t warrant it. This is how our relationships gradually suffer.
How do you express anger?
Think about the moments that you express your anger. What do you do?
Do you shout? Maybe you give someone the silent treatment? Perhaps you throw something against a wall, or at least feel like it. Do you slam a door? Do you talk a lot? Maybe you cry?
Take a moment to think about how you express your anger. How would you like to do that differently? Can you try something different?
Because anger can be an automatic response, you may feel that it’s out of your control. With greater self-understanding and self-awareness, you can learn to intervene and take hold of your anger and direct it or express it in different ways. You can take control. You just need to buy a bit of time and space between the recognition of anger and the angry response.
How you can buy yourself time
Labelling your feeling as anger is a good start. Recognising you are becoming angry can be extremely helpful. This conscious strategy of having to ‘think’ may slow down the angry response.
However, before you can label it, you need to become aware of what your signs of getting angry are. Does your breathing quicken? Do you sweat? Do you grind your teeth? Do you feel humiliated? Do you feel nervous? Get to know your signs – jot them down.
So, now you’ve noticed your signs of becoming angry, and this tells you you’re angry and you’re consciously aware of feeling anger. This may have bought you a couple of seconds. Then, very crucially, you have a CHOICE.
Can I choose differently?
Yes, you can learn to. It may take time and it may not go right every time, but you can absolutely change your behaviour.
Visualise how you want to be different. Plan (write it down if it helps) some ready-made sentences that you can start with when you’re choosing how to behave. Again, this will buy you more time. For instance, “I’m feeling angry so I’m just going to take a moment to collect my thoughts”, or “Can you give me a minute?”, or “I’d like to come back to you about this when I’ve processed how I feel about it”. Can you imagine yourself saying one of these comments? If not, think about how you would like to phrase it. Practice saying what works for you out loud, many times. Make it seem normal that you would say something like this.
What do you do now? What helps you to stay positive or to feel relaxed? Breathing exercises will help your physiological system return to normal, calming any automatic body response to act. Distracting yourself will also help in the very short term. Reading, walking, cooking, cuddling your pet, calling a friend, yoga, mindfulness… It could be anything!
Then, process what happened. Again, writing notes if this helps. Can you identify the trigger? Did you feel hurt? Did you feel embarrassed? Did you make a mistake? Did you feel offended? Did you feel attacked (and if so, was this unfair? Are you hurt? Do you feel criticised?)?
The outcome
Once you understand what happened for you, you can express it in an assertive way to the person in question. Alternatively, having processed what’s happened, you may have made the choice to let it go.
You have worked hard to understand yourself by practicing self-awareness, learning your signs of anger, and consciously recognising when you are becoming angry. This makes time for you to choose a response that is less damaging not only to others, but to you, too.
You get to learn, through repetition and experience, that you do not ‘blow up’ in anger.