Anger is a topic that comes up all the time in my practice. People usually fall into one of two categories: they get angry and confront someone and then feel horrible or they can’t get angry – they either go straight to tears, helplessness or depression. A third group swears they never feel angry. They go straight to the positive thoughts, the fix, or forgetting about it. For all three groups, anger is a problem.
Anger is a fight response. We don’t do this very well in this society. It’s a very big topic and I’d like to keep returning to it.
Let’s start the conversation here.
First, it is important for all of us to have access to a healthy fight response. It’s not to say you have to act out your anger. When we stop our fight response, the sympathetic arousal in our nervous system can get held. Dr. Gabor Mate writes about this in his book “When the Body Says No.” Holding on to anger can lead to health problems later in life, such as high blood pressure.
Some of us need increased regulation to let our bodies have the physiological response without the potentially relationship harming reactions like yelling, throwing things, etc.
Some of us need to help our systems feel safe enough to feel a fight response without needing to shut it down, suppress it with “positive thoughts”, or collapse into tears.
It is possible to process anger without turning into a monster.
Here are 4 steps to getting to a better place with anger, no matter how it shows up for you:
- Learn about the physiological experience of anger. Remember all of those window of tolerance videos I’ve done? If you can remember you’re having a physiological experience that needs to complete, you can learn (with time and practice) to stay with that process until it passes. Practicing on small things like getting cut off in traffic or when your computer acts up is easier than practicing on things that are more intense.
- Get to know your personal history with anger. What was anger like in your house growing up? There may be trauma to process or you may discover there were rules about anger that no longer apply. What is your pattern with anger now?
After you’ve worked with steps 1 & 2, you will probably benefit from having relationship tools that will help mitigate some of the causes of our anger or give us tools when we become angry.
3. Work on your boundaries. If people are crossing your boundaries, a fight response is in order. If you have a history of people crossing your boundaries and not having success at defending them, your anger will probably be very big (or tears/helplessness). With practice, holding boundaries can get much easier and as you gain confidence, there may not be as much anger when a boundary is crossed – in part because you know you can deal with it. “Hey, there’s a fence here, you’re on my lawn.” “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t know.”
4. Bolster your communication skills. As you learn to regulate the big feelings that come up when someone tromps over your boundaries or says or does something you don’t like, you’ll want to have words to use to express what you’re feeling, wanting and needing without rupturing the relationship. I draw a lot from Nonviolent Communication, a method developed by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. Having tools to express what’s happening for you will help you increase your success in having a positive response from the person you’re interacting with and make you feel less helpless in the face of big emotions.
Remember, getting angry doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. We need anger to fight injustice and to protect ourselves and our children from harm. We DON’T have to act out our anger inappropriately.
It is possible to build a healthy anger response.
More coming soon…
