Anger is a basic human emotion and it is very closely related to our survival as a human species. Anger is related to the fight, flight or freeze response and it is mobilised when we feel the need to protect ourselves in the presence of a threat. But anger does not necessarily translate into physical aggression, in fact anger is also a very powerful force that can motivate us to achieve goals, fight for what is right and drive our sense of justice.
When anger is expressed as verbal or physical aggression, however, it can undermine relationships, put ourselves and others in unsafe situations and, if sustained over a long period of time, it can cause issues to our physical health.
Learning about one’s anger allows us to utilise it in a way that promotes personal growth and establish a deeper connection to our values.
Just like all other human emotions, anger carries information about how we interpret certain situations, or behaviours. Imagine you are driving to work and someone cuts you off in the middle of the morning traffic: you might feel angry because this person did not respect the road rules and are driving recklessly. You can almost create a story in your mind about how entitled they must feel to disrespect you in such a way. However, if we challenge this interpretation and make space for other ways of looking at the situation, we might consider that they were certainly in a hurry, maybe they received a call from the hospital and they need to be there for a family member, or maybe they are the sole income earner of the family and their boss threatened them with dismissal if they don’t get to work on time. Notice how the initial anger may have subsided slightly as we make space for a different interpretation of the same situation. Also, we are not making excuses for bad behaviours, we are allowing ourselves to separate us from our emotions for just a moment so that we can make space for the fact that none of us are perfect, and we all make mistakes.
Like all emotions, anger has a physical, cognitive (what do I tell myself) and behavioural (what do I do about it) component. Much of the way we act when we feel angry depends on how we interpret and make sense of information. However, the interpretation of the event by itself is not the only factor that affects our behaviour.
Anger might range from mere frustration and annoyance all the way into rage.
The intensity and the velocity in which we feel angry is also affected by past life experiences, which get in the way of our capacity to give space to different interpretations of the same event and affect the way in which we mobilize anger. In this case, counselling can be helpful in tracing the origin of intense anger back to when it was first mobilised and help you make a clearer distinction between ‘then’ and ‘now’.
Anger can be also seen as a secondary emotion. This means that when we express anger, we are in fact trying give voice to other emotions. Anger is like an iceberg – all we see is the external outburst, however underneath it, we might find emotions like sadness, fear, helplessness, shame, guilt, jealousy, anxiety or loneliness. When we can connect with our primary emotions, we are then able to address the core of what we are struggling with. If we only addressed the angry behaviour, we would be missing out on learning more about ourselves and our needs.
How do we recognise anger and how can we manage it
Anger has a very physical manifestation, some people feel their hands tightening, others feel their jaw clenching, some report feeling a pressure in their heads, however it is important to remember that for some people anger is not an ‘acceptable’ emotion, and for this group, anger might trigger feelings of shame or fear.
Like a wave, anger builds up, until it reaches its peak and before it starts to come down again. In some people, anger might feel like an automatic response, and they might have more difficulty in seeing the warning signs or watch the emotion rise, and wait until it comes down again, without acting on it.
Rarely, however when we act when anger is at its peak, we make good, rational decisions. Most of the time, acting whilst angry, leads to an escalation of the original conflict.
Riding the wave of our difficult emotions, allows you to ‘cool down’ before addressing a situation, which puts you in a better space to understand what is driving your anger and try and find a solution to the issue at hand.
If however, anger feels too intense, it is worth becoming familiar with how it manifests for us and walk away from conflict situations until we are in a calmer space to deal with the task at hand.
In both cases, we are not dismissing our feelings, we are in fact validating them and we are managing anger in the safest way possible for ourselves and others.
Counselling can help you become familiar with the way anger affects you personally, identify where that behaviour came from and what is its role. Through counselling you can build self-awareness around how anger shows up for you and together we can identify different coping skills that will allow you to safely express your emotions and deal with conflict in a way that allows to ‘act’ instead of ‘react’.
