THERAPIST THURSDAY: How is Anger Handled in Your Home?

Anger often gets a bad rap. When we think of anger, we often think of someone raging or being inappropriate. So, the first thing I’d like to point out is that anger is nothing more than an emotion, as are sadness and happiness. It is perfectly normal, and even healthy, to feel anger.

It is also important to understand that anger not synonymous with bad behavior. However, for some people, anger is their first emotion when something does not go their way. These people may feel anger several times (or more) a day. Their behavior may be extreme for the situation and may be an overreaction. In these situations, an anger response is not healthy or appropriate.

A person who feels anger has many choices in how to express it, yelling or raging are not the only options. Shutting down and pouting is not necessary either. When examining the role anger plays in a person’s life, we must look at all of these issues.

People often come to me due to believing that they or someone in their family “is always angry.” They wish to change this, as it is usually damaging their relationships. To create change in one’s relationship with anger, several issues must be addressed.

First, you must ask yourself what other emotion anger may be masking. Anger is what we call a secondary emotion. This means that there is always another emotion under the anger, called a primary emotion. Primary emotions are vulnerable and we often are not aware that we are feeling them, as our bodies and brain jump immediately to the more prominent and less vulnerable emotion of anger. This provides us with a sense of protection and feels less emotionally threatening. Therefore, it often feels safer to express anger than the other emotion. To determine what your primary emotions are, you have to take some time to slow down the process and notice what your body is telling you. Notice how your body responds; maybe it is a tightening in your chest or heaviness in your stomach. Ask yourself what is happening under the anger. Once you figure out those primary emotions, allow yourself to feel and express those. As you work on this over time, you will start to NEED the anger less and are likely to begin to feel it less.

Next you should ask yourself, is anger the only option for responding to this situation? Often times, people who express a lot of anger had this modeled in their homes as they were growing up. To them, anger is the only logical response to whatever it is that occurred. If this is what you grew up seeing, you likely see it as not only an acceptable response, even to a mistake or an accident, but really the only response that makes sense. But if you start to observe how other people handle mistakes or things that don’t go their way, you will see that there are actually many options for how we choose to respond to such issues. You can begin to train yourself to see those things differently, and to respond in another way, possibly with patience, with humor, or with problem solving. Once you start to understand that anger does not HAVE to be the response, you can begin to change that pattern of dealing with anger that has likely been in your family for generations. Sometimes these cycles in families stem from an underlying issue, such as anxiety. Click here if you would like to read more about this.

Another important question to consider, is there an underlying emotional issue you have not dealt with? It may be that anger is your go-to emotion because there are issues from your past that have not been resolved. You may have anger about your upbringing, a trauma you experienced, or family dynamics. If you have not dealt with something from your past, even if you are not consciously thinking about that issue, when you feel frustration it can often trigger the anger that has not been resolved and make your response much more intense than it otherwise would be.

Finally, you must learn how to slow down your anger response and begin to change it. To do this, you must first slow down the whole arousal process that occurs within your body. It is sometimes helpful to develop a code word with a trusted family member that they can use when they notice you becoming agitated. This may help you remember to pay attention to your response before it escalates. Once you notice yourself becoming agitated, take some deep breaths, tell yourself “it’s not that big of a deal”, do some jumping jacks or burpees to burn off the energy, or take a time out by yourself to get away from what is agitating you and to work on these self soothing techniques.

Changing automatic anger responses is not an easy task. It will not come naturally at first. You will have to be very committed to it and very self-aware. But if anger is interfering with your relationships with the ones you love, it is certainly worth the investment of your time and energy. Also, if you are a parent, changing these responses is imperative, or your reactions will soon be reflected in your child’s behavior and the pattern will be passed down to another generation.

If you have a topic you would like address on Therapist Thursday, please email Rochelle at meetme4therapy@gmail.com.

Rochelle Whitson is a psychotherapist in private practice in Temecula, CA. She is also author of the blog meetme4therapy.com.