Anger is perhaps the one human emotion that we cannot wrap our minds around completely. Since anger is an emotion that is vital to survival, you would think that we would have learned how to express it constructively by now. But, we still treat it like a foreign military invasion and an irregularity of behavior that has no place in our daily lives.
But, anger does have a place in our lives and in our coping repertoire. Even if you try, you can’t deny or suppress this powerful emotion for long, as it is wired into you as a response to threat. And, anger is unbiased. It favors no person, culture, race, education or social status. Because anger is an emotion that is necessary to your protection and safety and affirmation of identity. Anger is here to stay, as long as we have a reason to defend ourselves.
But, indeed, some people feel a greater pressure to defend themselves than others, because they are so emotionally invested in a belief or way of being. Take for example, the Illinois lawmaker’s recent anger outburst. “Screaming, swearing, throwing papers on the floor, and asking Democrat lawmakers to set his people (Republican) free, a red-faced Illinois Rep. Mike Bost “lambasted” the state’s powerful House speaker for messing around with the state’s pension plan.” (Huffington Post: Mike Bost Meltdown). If any of you saw this rant, I’d say that lambasted doesn’t quite sum up Bost’s emotional unhinging. It was more like he popped a cork, blew out a few veins, and temporarily went berserk. No matter how justified one’s anger is—in the end, anger hurts the body, mind, and public image of the initiator more than it does the receiver.
Thus, you have to learn how to express anger constructively. But, first, you have to know what your anger is really all about, what it may be hiding. Your anger may mask fears and vulnerabilities that are hitching a ride on events slightly related, if at all to the ax of anger that you really wish to grind. Take for example, Sharon, a 29-year old sales representative. Like many people, she carried her personal issues to work each day as faithfully as she did her cell phone. Sharon believed her parents admired, loved, and valued her younger sibling more than her. She let this issue hitch a ride on every stressful event that took place at work. Everyone was treating her unfairly and with disrespect, according to her. Even when things had nothing to do with Sharon, she was apt to feel slighted and angry about it. This took a toll on her work team and her public image. She became known as fragile and easily angered, and as you can guess, she was passed up time and again for promotions.
Thus, if you really want to manage your anger, you have to know what it may be hiding, so you keep it from getting expressed at the wrong place and time. This is what my post is about today.
What Is Anger All About?
There is a strong relationship between anger and fear. Anger is the fight part of the age-old fight-or-flight response to threat. Most animals respond to threat by either fighting or fleeing. But, we don’t always have the option to fight what threatens us. Instead, we have anger. Words are the civilized way that we get to fight threat. And, some words, as you know, are meant to sting as deeply as a stab wound. Anger is one of the ways that we help our body to prepare for potential danger. Anger stimulates adrenaline to rouse the brain and body to fight or flee a threatening situation. Of course, in more primitive days, the things that angered us centered solely on threats to our survival (a basic need for food, shelter, water, or land). Today, we are civilized; we’ve formed identities of preferences and values of living that make us complex and psychologically defensive. Assaults to your principles, beliefs, and needs and wishes are the basis for your anger, now. And, you will protect your identity as strongly as if you were defending your right to food, shelter, water or land.
Oh, we human beings do weave a tangled web, because of our defensive nature. We learn to conceal our fears from others and to protect ourselves from feeling weak, ashamed, and embarrassed. We are so good at this that sometimes, we even deceive ourselves as to what is provoking us.
Thus, what we say is the reason for our anger may not actually be true. In some ways, cave men had it easier. They knew what they were fighting over. But, you may not know why a coworker, lover, family member or friend is angry with you~ or you with them. Because:
“Behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motivations and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.” ~ Abraham Maslow quotes (American Philosopher and Psychologists, 1908-1970).
Hence, you can attribute your anger to something outside of you, rather than to your fears and vulnerabilities. Then, your denial, justification, or lie becomes a mask for what is really bothering you. But, there are still signs in the behavior that say: there’s something else going on here. Perhaps, the intensity of the anger doesn’t justify the situation? Or, for example, you may confront the angry person, as to the reason(s) for his anger, but you won’t get a straight answer, even if you do get an apology. You may think he is being difficult. But, really, he’s protecting himself from the shame and embarrassment of being exposed, as if you are a thief trying to rob him of his last dollar.
Protecting one’s Achilles’ heel is a life-and-death matter to the angered person. Seasoned therapists understand well what fear means to their patients. They never take their patients’ defenses away and expose their fears prematurely, without first giving them adequate experience of feeling vulnerable in front of them. If therapists do not do this well, they better be ready to get some pretty hefty anger directed their ways.
Six Fears or Vulnerabilities That Anger Can Mask
Know the truth, and it will set you free. This is certainly true of anger. Know the fears that your anger may be defending against, so that you can learn to get ahead of it. Let’s start now.
Mask One: Anger can be a mask to cover up hurt. To some people, it’s less threatening to show anger than to show that they are hurt. Hurt means they are weak, ineffective, and out of control. This can be hard on intimate relating, because hurt always turns into an angry argument. Feeling ignored, devalued, underestimated, and unlovable are core hurts that stem from our childhood, but can reappear in the relationships that we have today. When our self-esteem is endangered through criticism or rejection, it revives self-doubts. If you see yourself here, you have to work on loving yourself more, so that people and situations do not rock how you feel about yourself. If you feel deficient in some way, you may unconsciously look for situations to express this deficiency as anger toward others, that ends up hurting you and loved ones.
Mask Two: Anger can be a mask to self-soothe inner tension. Some people get angry to relieve themselves of inner tension. These persons’ nervous systems make them especially sensitive to threat, real or imagined, so that they live with a high level of inner discomfort. For them, anger is a psychological salve, especially if they are prone to violence. The excitatory nerve chemical, norepinephrine, gets secreted during the arousal of the anger, which acts as an analgesic for inner tension. That’s why the release of anger can make us feel better, at least temporarily. Internal anger and upset activates the release of norepinephrine that simultaneously numbs physical discomfort. This mask of anger is very harmful to relationships, but nonetheless crucial in enabling many vulnerable people to emotionally survive in them. Hopefully, this is only until they learn better coping mechanisms or get medically treated for this problem.
Mask Three: Anger can be a mask for fears of emotional intimacy. Strangely enough, anger is the safest way for some people to attach to others, especially with regard romantic involvement. People who have difficulty asserting and negotiating their wants and needs often feel unsafe relating to their romantic partners. They are particularly vulnerable to using anger as their main expression of relating. Truly, it’s fascinating to observe couples who primarily relate to each other through anger. In therapy, just when the arguing stops and communication begins, one or both partners move toward anger, once again. It’s all that they know. No one has ever taught them how to express anger constructively, or even more importantly, how to express more intimate, loving feelings. Getting angry is a way they know that they are attached. When I address what their anger is really all about and ask them to express their emotions with “I need and want…”, they feel silly. They verbalize, perhaps for the first time, how uncomfortable intimate dialogue makes them. Intimate relating makes them feel especially vulnerable to relationships in which they feel easily controlled by others, and having to negotiate needs and wants with their lover makes them feel weak and vulnerable.
Mask Four: Anger can be a smokescreen for self-consciousness. I recall a time when my eldest sister was reading to a group of children that included my brother, at the local library. She began by asking the children their names. When she asked my 6-year old brother what his name was, he became so self-conscious that he jumped up and started hitting her. Her question surprised him and made him feel self-conscious. Some people never learn how to deal with their self-conscious feelings without feeling angry. Do you know people who always get irritated in a work meeting or to have to ask confrontational questions? Some of them may actually be combative or oppositional characters. But, some are really just more self-conscious.
Mask Five: Anger can be a mask for self-empowerment, for people who are unassertive. If you find yourself here, you need to learn how to express your needs comfortably and assertively, so they do not explode in an untimely and unhealthy way.
Mask Six: Anger can also be a mask for sadness and grief. Did you ever disclose something painful to a parent, and have him or her yell rather than empathize with you? Hopefully, you realized over time that it was his or her way of dealing with sadness and grief. Anger helps them to feel they can go to battle for you and help you to do battle for yourself, if need be. Unfortunately, what they don’t realize is that all you really needed was a kind word and a hug.
The more comfortable you get with your fears, the less apt you will be to express them through anger. Many people respond to fear with anger, because human beings don’t like being exposed or open to being harmed and shamed. You’ll have healthier more satisfying relationships, if you start working on these fears today.
There’s nothing more I enjoy than helping you to understand your inner workings and to help you to live the best life possible. If you like my post today, please let me know, by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. I welcome your comments and thoughts. Warm regards to you, Deborah.
This was so interesting! I have trouble with blowing up at my mother and then I am so sorry. She is always giving advise to her friends and yet she has a terrible track record herself. I know I should mind my own business but it just eats at me that she is such a smart-ass. She was a terrible mother who paid little attention to her kids and is now living with me. She has little education and gave us no encouragement to succeed, yet she advises women who have degrees and have raised children who are successful in this world and far better off than any of us will ever be. She is just arrogant to me and she pushed humility on me while I was growing up. It makes my teeth hurt!!! Sometimes I just lose it in the most ridiculous ways! I know I am hiding something, but I don’t know what. Which mask am I wearing? What should I do to get beyond this terrible anger I have towards the mother that I otherwise adore? I need to be over this seething anger for her sake AND mine. Love you, Jody
Hi Jody, I’m so glad the article spoke to you. Although I know the topic is a challenge for you and many people. Jody, I think your anger is a mask for hurt. If you didn’t love her, your problem would be easily solved; you wouldn’t care. But, it’s your ambivalence toward her that makes your “teeth hurt” as you say well. You most likely have voiced some of the things that you say here to her. But, you don’t get relief, because you express your hurt at moments when you feel very angry. This makes makes you feel badly about yourself and takes a toll on you and I’m sure on her, as well. There are a couple of things I’d recommend to you.
If you haven’t already, you need to voice your hurt toward her at a time when you are not riled up. Feeling vulnerable in front of your mom, crying and letting her know what you missed and needed from her that is not said during a heated argument will make you feel uncomfortable, as it does for most of us. You see this conversation is intimate, rather than angry, and about your deep hurt rather than her unforgivable flaws. If this is too hard to do, write her a letter. Letters prevent both parties from turning a well-intended conversation into a shouting match. You also get to say what you want, without your mom interrupting you. Of course, in describing your pain and hurt, you will most likely use examples of what she did to hurt you. But, when it’s approached through your hurt, your words are more apt to reach her. There’s nothing wrong with saying you are also angry, as long as you keep focused on “I was hurt when you did…, I was in pain, I needed you, rather than “You are this or that”. Saying it this way also gives you an experience in which you can feel good about yourself. Of course, we hate hurting our parents, no matter what they did to us, especially if they are elderly now.
Okay, the next recommendation is the most challenging for any of us Jody, but very healing for you and your mother, if you can do it. You may even cringe when you read the words that I’m about to say. Jody, on some level, your mom knows her flaw and deficits as a mother, even if she’s denying what she did to you and your siblings. Her attempt to be helpful to her friends is an attempt to see herself as a better caretaker to people than she was able to be you. It’s a way to bolster her self-esteem. Even if she did not walk her own talk, so to speak, as a mother to you, she’s trying to exercise the caring, supportive part of her that she would not or could not do was when she was raising you. Of course, it’s hard to step back and to see that perhaps her current helping behavior is motivated by something other than trying to look good in front of other people. But, nonetheless, this is what you have to do, to get over the pain from the past. You have to try to see your mother as a woman doing the best she can, even though it wasn’t very good. If you evaluate her actions today out of your childhood hurt, of course, your interpretations of her will not be good. There’s a wisdom that I like much; most problems are changed by changing ourselves. And, of course, this is why you ask me this question today. I admire your desire to get beyond your hurt and pain, so you and your mother can start to have a less stressful, more loving relationship. In this, you are not denying your hurt and pain, you are rather making a decision to stay present. Jody, when all is said and done, as you know, all we really have is the moment. She can’t give you back the past, no matter how angry you get at her.
I’d have a talk with her or write her a letter first describing my hurt in the past. Then, I’d work on myself to stop describing all of her current actions through the eyes of a hurt child. Much love to you Jody. What you are trying to accomplish here is one of the hardest things any of us can do. Deborah.
Thanks. Great article. It’s an important reminder to think about why others react with anger sometimes. Even if this understanding does not justify their behavior, if it stirs just a little compassion in the person on the receiving end of the tirade, then it might help to prevent a full-scale blow up. I’ll try and keep all this in mind!
Dear Doctor Khoshaba,
When you sincerely and honestly advise your loved ones the ethics and manners and they knowingly ignore them. When your children are very conscious about their rights and expect every facility from you,(take for granted every facility) but do not share the due responsibility they owe to their elders; adopt the policy of avoidance and drift their due responsibilities then if elders comment nothing and instead of grumbling keep quite I think this is the right option instead of creating fuss.
Hello Anwer, thank you for stopping by. First, you have a problem that is quite common today, unfortunately. Many people feel entitled to everything and committed to very little. This is a sad situation. And, you are right, is a problem of responsibility, ethics, and commitment to people other than oneself. I have a couple thoughts with regard to your question. No matter who your loved ones are, children, spouse, siblings, you can relieve yourself by not giving as much of yourself. Anwer, many people, sadly, do not respond to our words, but they do respond to actions. There may be things you can do to protect yourself from feeling used or worn down by them. I do not know the details of your life, so I can’t say what you should do, but I am sure you can find some things to hold back, so you don’t get hurt.
Also, I understand, you can complain directly to them, and if they do nothing, your complaining only hurts you. But, keeping quiet is also very bad for you physically and mentally. Yes, you are right, making a fuss all the time, with out resolution is not good. But, saying what you want is not the same as making a fuss. Perhaps, voicing your upset feels to you like you are making a fuss, instead of standing up for what you believe. Know the difference, so that you can say what you mean and want. Then, if your loved ones do not show they care to respond to your needs and wishes, you can take action. Again, find ways to not give as much of yourself, so you don’t feel taken advantage of.
Anwer, I’m glad you read this article. Mask of hurt may be something that is happening for you. Also, if you say what upsets you, you are less apt to be overly angry over time. Expressing your needs and wishes is not the same as inappropriate anger. Don’t let upset and anger eat away at you. It may be good for them, but not for you. I just posted a photo on my Facebook page for Psychology in Everyday Life that says–what may be good for them, may not be good for you. Remember this and take this wisdom to heart.
Thank you again for writing me and do not hesitate to write me again. Warmly, Deborah.
i have a question regarding myself i get angry when i expect alot from just a single person i dont know whether it means i like him or not but still i get angry when he dont talk to me but is talking to everyother person around except me..can you help please??
Hello Milli, I’m happy to respond to your question. If this person is someone whom you have romantic interest, then I would say you are hurt or feeling rejected if he doesn’t talk with you. You feel anger, but it is most likely because you are feeling hurt.
I like what you say about expecting a lot from a single person. You’re right; expectations can make us hurt is they are not met, which can make us angry. You need to check to see how reasonable your expectations are. If they are unreasonable, then, you will want to work on them, so that you don’t set yourself up for feeling hurt.
Milli thank you so much for sharing with me. You asked a very good question. Warmly Deborah.
This is so interesting. Now I can understand y people treat me with anger, y I get anger with others with whom I really don’t want. I’ll definitely try to find the masks of my anger n then I’ll control it. Thanks for sharing it.
Hello Amina, good to say hello to you today. thank you for your comment. I’m so glad that this article helped you to understand anger better. This pleases me very much. The more you know about yourself and what motivates other people, the more you can control your response (as you say well, here). Be well Amina. Warmly Deborah.
v nice article…….but how can wecope with these circumstances????? anger make feel like am in hell…….
Thank you Sana. Understanding is the first step in coping with an anger problem. If you have a tendency to react quickly to stress, rejection and hurt with anger, then you want to specify the themes of the communications and situations that tend to make you angry. The more you understand what drives your anger, the more able you will be to think through what you are expecting from the situation that makes you angry and then change it. Also, Sana, you want to see if you have a high level of body tension that may lead to quick, angry reactions. Often people who have anger problems have a lot of body tension (high body arousal). The more relaxed the body is the more calm the mind and better able you will be to control your actions. I hope this helps for now. Warmly Deborah.
hi.
i have a completely different question.. i m afraid of a girl but infact she is afraid of me.. i look for her every where but i can not go in front of her. how i know she is afraid of me, my friend is one of her friends …….
i have never been afraid of anything …. nothing… not a single person.. i have like .. many ….
i just want to know… what is that feeling…..
plz help me
Hello Bille, it sounds like you like her a lot Bille. Perhaps, you are more shy because you like her so much. This is what it sounds like to me. That you don’t fear her as much as you have anxiety because you like her so much. This is understandable Bille. Many, many people act the same way when they have romantic interest in a person. Warm regards to you, Deborah.