You won’t like me when I’m angry…
Why anger doesn’t have to be scary…
What is your relationship with anger? Do you find yourself getting angry regularly? And do you fear the consequences when you do so? Or do you pride yourself on your ability to not get angry? Do you even know how to access anger, it’s so hidden away as something you “don’t feel”? Anger can feel uncomfortable, but it really is just another human emotion. Emotions are there to evoke motion – to give us information so that we can act accordingly. It’s just that sometimes the way we express our anger or try to hide it means that we don’t give ourselves time to work out WHY we are angry (or could be)…
"Seeing red" is natural - it's what we do with this emotion that matters @Jules Lowe Counselling
Sometimes it can appear as a response to feeling under threat, perhaps because we feel a boundary has been crossed and we no longer feel safe. Our primitive, animal brain sees a threat and just like an animal that is scared we lash out. Anger is often seen as energy for change, and the energy that anger provides us with allows us to act – by roaring like a lion that wants to intimidate. The issue comes when the other person becomes intimidated or scared by this response and either gets upset, or has the exact same response – they bite back or roar louder. This can then continue to escalate until nobody even knows where the anger started in the first place, or somebody gets hurt. And this is part of why we fear anger too – what if we hurt someone? We didn’t mean to lash out, we just saw red and couldn’t calm down. You won’t like me when I’m angry becomes I don’t like me when I’m angry.
Some of us have learnt that it’s not ok to get angry. We pride ourselves on not being an “angry person”. As if any of us are defined by our emotions. Sometimes feeling frustrated feels more acceptable. Sometimes it comes with tears of frustration. A lot of the time I wonder whether frustration is our way of blaming ourselves. So often I hear “I’m just so frustrated with myself.” We’ve learned that getting angry at (or near!) somebody else isn’t safe, because we don’t know how they’ll react – it might put us in danger. It seems far safer to blame ourselves, to direct the energy towards something that we can control and predict. You won’t like me when I’m angry so I won’t get angry, so you still like me.
And yet we’re still left with this energy; we still haven’t changed anything. I don’t get angry is more often I only get angry at myself. Which can lead to you feeling miserable, downtrodden and in a vicious cycle of self-blame. And yet often when we feel angry, it is because something feels unfair. Anger gives us the energy to change whatever feels unfair. Except sometimes we can’t change it. Like someone dying, for instance. We can’t go back and change our person dying, so we’re left with this feeling of unfairness, and there’s nothing we can do about it. However, sometimes, just by letting it out and feeling it heard, this can help put this energy somewhere. By stomping our feet like a toddler and airing/ shouting “it’s not fair!”, and feeling like we’ve been heard, we can do something with this energy. It may not be exactly what we want (we want our loved one back), it may feel like we’re behaving like a child (especially if as a child we were told not to stomp our feet and complain about things being unfair), but sometimes that child needs to feel that they’ve been heard and understood, and for a nurturing parent to witness it and show empathy.
Stormy weather doesn't last - acknowledging the emotion can help it to pass over you @Jules Lowe Counselling
What’s underneath this anger? There’s a saying amongst therapists that if a client comes to you with anger, look for the sadness, and if the client comes to you with sadness, look for the anger. So often if our go-to emotion is anger, what emotions is this hiding? What would our sad self say? Our scared self? And if we’ve learnt to absolutely on no account show our anger, what would we say if we felt we were “allowed” to, if it felt safe to? Part of therapy is often realising that all emotions are welcome and useful, even the ones that feel scary to express, and it’s safe to express them. Some emotions may feel uncomfortable, because they don’t feel great or because they feel unfamiliar, but all of them give us information, and it can take up so much less energy to let them out rather than to try to control them at all times. Even just naming them can help reduce the intensity – acknowledging them for what they really are in a safe space. And then asks what it needs. It might simply need witnessing, it might need reassuring.
Finally, let’s throw a whole heap of compassion on all of this. We’ve all developed a way of responding to anger depending on what has served us best up until now or because we haven’t known any different, however unhelpful it may feel. Once we stop giving ourselves a hard time about this (and reminded ourselves that we are only human), we can start to become more aware of what we’re doing, and gently start making changes. And I’m here to help you learn how to do this.
