Chapter 3- what lies beneath?
What's Lurking Under Your Anger?
“Holding on to anger is like grabbing a hot coal with the intent throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Buddha
We briefly touched on the emotion of anger in Chapter 2, with the promise to revisit the topic later in the book. Some of you may be dreading a focus on anger, while others are ready to dive in. Regardless of your apprehension level, it is an important emotion to examine.
What I can offer is one viewpoint about this emotion, and the possibility of giving you some insight as to what is driving your anger. In my practice I’ve had clients tell me that they are unable to control their anger, as it comes on so suddenly. I understand how this can feel.
This chapter on anger is not meant to be the “be-all and ends-all” of this topic. It is meant to spotlight the choices you have regarding your feelings and how to present these feelings to your partner and out in the world. It is possible that some of you may want or need to seek individual therapy to gain further insight as to what drives your anger and how to control it.
Understanding surface emotions, such as anger, needs to initially be worked on by yourself. After gaining insight you may share your insights with your partner. Your ability to understand the information and practice the exercises described in this chapter will evolve over time. As a starting point, I recommend that you recall one or two relatively small situations that invoked an anger reaction from you. You will use these “anger producing” situations to practice the exercises described later in this chapter that are designed to help you understand your anger reaction. Successfully understanding the anger reaction and then applying coping techniques to small situations will help you to eventually understand larger issues that typically drove you to an anger reaction.
“Feeling States”: (a term used to describe the linkage between feelings and behavior) how you explain and justify them to yourself are learned over time from many sources: your childhood, your parent’s upbringing, society’s beliefs, beliefs of peers, books you have read, movies seen, and even the actions and choices of your personal heroes. Young children often display their feeling state of anger in the form of a quick flaring temper tantrum due to their inability to use words to express their anger. As a child grows from their childhood reactions it becomes important for them to understand the source of their feeling states and the emotions that lay underneath for them to consciously choose whether or not to continue to react as they have in the past.
Being angry is not the problem. What you do with your anger, and where you aim it determines how complicated your communication is with everyone in your life. Yes, I truly said everyone.
Even when anger is not expressed in an outward way, verbally or in action, those around you will sense your anger feelings and have their own personal feeling state reaction.
All emotion is okay. All your feelings are okay.
“A fundamental difference between feelings and emotions is that feelings are experienced consciously, while emotions manifest either consciously or subconsciously. Some people may spend years, or even a lifetime, not understanding the depths of their emotions.”
Psychology Today
You are not communicating clearly if your anger is aimed at your partner. Instead, you are demonstrating that your emotions and feelings are out of control. Anger is often used as a tool to intimidate, control, shame, overpower, frighten, or hurt. Anger expressed in any of these forms is intended to exert “power over” another person or situation. You do not win when your anger is aimed at another person. You are not controlling the situation. You are not communicating clearly. All you are creating in response to your anger is fear and hiding. Your anger changes nothing except what your partner shows outside themselves. Your presentation of this strong emotion needs to change for you to change the relationship with your partner.
Most people are not taught how to express their feelings in effective ways. At times, strong emotions of anger, grief, fear, and love overpower a person to the degree that they lose control of their ability to think clearly, and they react in ways that are inconsistent with whom they choose to be. The expression of subtle emotions, such as disappointment or embarrassment, can evoke great confusion to others when they are not clearly expressed by the one feeling the emotion
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Learning how to speak clearly by practicing the exercises in this book will help you to improve communication, resulting in improved relationships. Your physical body will become less stressed, and you will understand your emotional states in more accurate ways.
I would like to share a simplified overview of what happens physiologically in the brain when you experience a strong emotion such as anger. This information is powerful because knowledge and understanding empowers you to take responsibility for change.
The brain has many sensory inputs: sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Humans observe the world through these sensory inputs. When your senses perceive a danger or threat, one of several physiological changes automatically occur. The hypothalamus sends danger signals (CRH) to the pituitary, a small gland located below the hypothalamus. The pituitary releases ATCH which then acts on the adrenal glands to produce cortisol (the stress hormone). The main job of the adrenal glands is to sound the alarm to the rest of your body of the perceived danger or threat (think submarine captains shouting “We’re under attack! DIVE, DIVE!” As the horn blares AHOOGA AHOOGA). Your body is then flooded with cortisol and turns off some bodily functions while enhancing others (imagine people running frantically around the rapidly descending sub, turning off any excess lights, alarms, stoves, fans etc.). Your physical body sends high alert signals to your extremities, and functions that are not necessary for your survival are turned off. Digestion stops in the gut and stomach, and your mouth stops salivating (the submarine goes silent and deep).
In response to the perceived threat your body goes into a state called “fight, flight, faint, or freeze” unless you can consciously decide whether or not the threat is real.
The fight, flight, faint, or freeze shut down process happens automatically; all systems are on red alert. The frontal lobe, the part of your brain that controls your emotions and provides the ability for long range thinking, planning, and observing is shut off, and your thoughts are now being controlled by the reptilian brain and the amygdala, the part of the brain primarily associated with emotional processes.
The reptilian brain (the brain stem, cerebellum, and basal ganglia) is exactly what it sounds like; it’s primitive. It is responsible for your survival, and for keeping you alive by using your oldest and most primitive reactions. It is not the intelligent, thoughtful, insightful aspect of your brain. The cortisol released from the adrenal glands continue to course through your body for many hours after the event that sent your brain into the fight, flight, faint, or freeze response.
I explain this physical process to point out that while you are angry, and expressing your anger, you are using the least intelligent part of your brain, the reptilian brain. This is not the aspect of yourself that creates close relationships. Despite whatever you may imagine, in the fight, flight, faint, or freeze state you are not in control of yourself, except to survive. No one intentionally chooses the reptilian brain to be the primary communicator in a relationship.
We discussed the many ways some people express anger in the previous chapter such as: blaming, shaming, intimidating, and scaring. By using any of these techniques to express anger, your body has switched into high alert, and you are not thinking with the more intelligent part of your brain. In this state you are unable to resolve the anger within you. You will only have the illusion of control in that moment. What you are unconsciously showing those around you is that you are feeling an emotion that you are unable to control. The people around you will find ways to avoid you and they will not attempt to understand you
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I have taught my clients over the past 30 years, there is always a deeper emotion pushing behind the anger. Anger is the expression of energy. Anger feels powerful. Anger feels like action. Many things may be pushing underneath your angry surface, such as sadness, fear, isolation, inadequacy, anxiety, shame, or powerlessness. Only when you can dig down under your anger and find out what is driving it can you resolve that deeper emotion. Then the anger will dissipate. When you understand and express the real emotion that is driving your anger, you will once again be in charge of how you present yourself. You will now have the opportunity to examine whether or not you agree with the beliefs that have driven your anger, and you can change your mind if you no longer want to only express this defensive emotion.
The first step in understanding your anger is to observe and then interrupt your patterns. You can choose to change your patterns when you are able to observe them. The reptilian brain does not observe. It reacts. To regain and engage your observance skills, you must first slow down.
Techniques for slowing down can vary, depending on the immediacy of the perceived threat and the danger associated with that threat. Let me describe a small perceived “threat” to explain the process of interrupting your pattern.
Imagine you are in the process of putting together a small table you had ordered online. Screws, various wood sections, and a hex key are spread across the floor. You are in the process of reading the directions to understand the next step in the table construction. At that moment, your partner comes in and says something like “move over, I’ll do this.” Your immediate response is ANGER. Maybe your reaction included you saying something like “hey, don’t do that! I was doing fine without your help!” but your partner continues to take over and puts the table together without you. You may be so angry that you hurl a few choice names at them, and then storm out of the room. Unless you do something to interrupt it, your anger will continue to fester, grow, and boil. It is possible if you do nothing in the moment your anger will eventually go silent, but it will continue to fester under the surface. With repeated future prodding, your anger will become the lion that roars at the smallest provocation.
How do you interrupt your anger? How do you slow down your anger enough to observe and then interrupt your patterns? One proven method is to use a technique initially created in the Yogic tradition, and is now used by many, including the United States military (specifically the Navy Seals), called Box Breathing. It is called Box Breathing because people using this method typically visualize a box as they follow the four breathing steps described below:
1.If possible, leave the immediate situation and go to a neutral location. Acknowledge the anger emotion to yourself by saying out loud, “I feel angry.” Note please do not say, “I am angry.” That would be inaccurate because you are much more than simply your anger. You are feeling anger. Be accurate.
Begin to slow your breathing down. Taking charge of how you are breathing is the fastest way to interrupt runaway emotion. Take a deep breath in, then exhale loudly through your mouth. It is not important whether or not you breath in through your nose. Simply taking longer and slower breaths will begin to interrupt your uncontrolled bodily reaction.
2.Stop the repeated chatter in your mind that is attempting to justify your anger. It is not useful. It is only fueling your anger. It is not going to allow you to observe what is really happening.
Switch your thoughts to counting your breaths. As many times as necessary, return your focus to only on your breathing.
3.Elongate your breathing to the count of four: breathe in and count: one, two, three, four, then breathe out and count: one, two, three, four. Repeat this breathing style for four or five breaths. If it helps, visualize drawing a side of a box with each count of four.
Stop listening to the chatter, just breathe. Observe how your physical body feels while breathing deeply. Your thoughts in this moment are not relevant. Ignore them no matter how loud they are.
4.Further elongate your breathing by pausing between the in breath and the out breath. Breathe in and count: one, two, three, four. Pause and hold your breath for one, two, three, four. Breathe out and count: one, two, three, four.
If you are able, pause after exhaling for the count of four. Repeat this breathing style another five times.
By this time, your pulse should have slowed down considerably, and you are out of the extreme reaction frame of mind.
Box Breathing works!
If the anger provoking moment was small, you may be able to observe yourself after taking only a few deep breaths. Yet, if you are still riled up, you may need to continue Box Breathing until you have calmed your body.
For those needing more time, keep in mind that it is important to calm your mind by purposefully changing your thoughts. Remember that you are not expressing your real emotion when you are stuck in an anger loop. When in the anger loop, you are simply attempting to control your environment.
A good relationship and good communication between partners mean that we do not remain stuck in the anger and that we speak truth of what really triggered the anger response.
Follow the steps below to further calm your brain and body:
1. First reassure your brain and your body that you are not going to die by saying, “it’s okay body, we aren’t going to die.” Yes, really do this. Either verbally speak it out loud or think it clearly to yourself if you are around other people. Then say something like “false alarm, no need to do anything more.” Followed by “I’ve got this.” Believe it or not, your body hears every word you say, and it will respond.
2. Continue to slow your breathing, using the Box Breathing technique and repeating to yourself that you are not going to die.
3. Find something to distract your mind for a few minutes. This can be anything from picking up a magazine and looking through it or something more physical like doing a few push-ups. What is important is that for now, you stop thinking about whatever caused your anger reaction.
4. Once you have distracted your runaway thoughts from your anger, and your breathing is back to a normal calm, you are now able to examine what the heck happened to trigger the emotional state of anger.
Using the table construction example described above, you may in a detached kind of way, observe that scene as if you were watching a movie and then try to answer the following questions:
• What was I feeling when my partner began putting together that table I was working on?
• What did I think / imagine it meant about me?
• What did I think my partner intended by taking over the table construction?
In this example it may have been many things that provoked an anger reaction within you. You may have imagined that he/she/they were thinking of you as incompetent, or you were doing it wrong and are therefore dumb, or simply that they can do it better. These types of thoughts may hurt your feelings, or make you feel ashamed. These feelings may be the ones driving your anger.
The next thing to consider is if your assumption of what they were thinking when taking over the table assembly is correct. Maybe yes, maybe no. Ask yourself the following questions and answer them as honestly as you can:
• If I believe my interpretation of their actions, what do I think it means about how they feel about me?
• Do they think I’m dumb?
• Does it mean they don’t love me?
• Have they never been proud of me?
• Am I a total loser?
If your honest answers continue to swirl in your head as negative thoughts, you are falling down the “out of control” rabbit hole.
It is logically possible you are wrong.
Even if you have experienced these feelings in the past, even if your interpretation of their meaning was correct then, you cannot know with certainty that you are correct now.
To stop being stuck in your anger reaction, you need to address the deeper questions. While there may be people who think they are smarter than their partner, if you are in a loving relationship, it probably does not mean that your partner thinks you are dumb. Most likely what happened is that they did not use their words to properly convey their thoughts to you about assembling the table, and you jumped to conclusions about what they meant by taking over. It’s equally probable that they simply wanted to help you, and they had no further agenda.
How do we know for sure what their intention was? We simply ask. We talk about it as kindly as possible.
After you have searched within your own thoughts and believe you have uncovered the source feeling that was driving your anger reaction can you talk about what happened with your partner.
The conversation needs to come from a place of curiosity, assuming the best of their intentions rather than thinking the worst. Your partner also needs to be in a good frame of mind to have this conversation. It is possible that in the moment you also hurt their feelings if you called them a name and left the room in a huff. Anger fuels anger.
The conversation to repair the tangled mess may begin something like this:
“I felt angry when I left the room, and I’ve given this a lot of thought since then. I really would like to ask you a couple questions about what may have been going on when you began putting the table together. Is this a good time for us to talk?”
Notice that there are no hostile words, no blaming, and no assumptions in this style of speaking.
If your partner agrees that it is a good time for them to talk, you may proceed by making a statement then asking a question. It is very important that you first make a statement about how you felt. If you jump directly to a blunt question with no context, your partner will feel cornered. The statement has two parts, naming the situation and then expressing how it made you feel:
“When you did (X...) I felt (Y..).”
The statement is followed by asking your partner to describe their intent:
“Is that what you meant to do?”
Or
“Is that what you were thinking?”
Using the table assembly example, the conversation may go something like:
“When you came in and said ‘move over, I’ll do this’ I felt ashamed, and I felt like you thought I was too dumb to do it right. Is that what you meant?”
Or,
“When you came in and said, ‘move over I’ll do this’ I felt hurt because I felt rejected.”
Then pause to hear what your partner says in response. You will most likely be surprised. They may say something along the lines of:
“Well, no, I just wanted to help.”
Or
“I thought you were struggling, or I thought you may rather be doing other things since I know you don’t really enjoy mechanical stuff like that.”
Your next response in this conversation is crucial to the healing process of this moment. Please accept what your partner is telling you is their truth. Do not attempt to “be right” in this moment, despite imagining the worst possible thing is true. Allow their truth to come forward. Reply with something like:
“Oh, I’m glad that is what you meant, that is very different than what I thought.”
Then have a short conversation about how they may be clearer in the future to avoid the hurt. The solution may be as simple as them agreeing to first ask the question “Do you want any help?”
If, for some reason, your partner tells you that it was their intention to convey they felt you were incompetent, you have another decision to make. You may choose to leave the conversation quietly or you may softly say something like: “well, you got what you wanted, I felt dumb.” This possibility will lead you to much deeper things to consider, such as whether you want to remain in a partnership with someone like this. Whether to stay or to go is a discussion we will examine in a future chapter.
The important lesson learned from this table assembly example is that if you had remained stuck in your angry frame of mind, calling your partner rude names in your head, and storming from the room, the tangled mess would only last longer and potentially get worse. Instead, when you search underneath your anger to locate the real emotion you are feeling, you are better positioned to have the conversation needed to repair the confusion.
Having these kinds of conversations takes practice. It would be perfectly acceptable to let your partner know how awkward this initially feels to you, but you are attempting to learn these skills anyway.
ACTION STEP
You will be doing this Action Step on your own. Its purpose is to increase your awareness of yourself, and to steer you away from any sudden anger moments.
Think of a recent situation when you had a knee jerk reaction of anger. It could be anything from something small like your partner not putting their dirty glass in the dishwasher to something more extreme such as you surge into road rage when a driver cut you off as you were changing lanes.
Get a piece of paper and write down the details of the situation.
As you are observing what happened in your mind’s eye, imagine you are watching a movie replay without the sound.
Let’s further examine the road rage situation. Tell yourself the truth regarding your observations about your anger reaction by asking yourself:
• How did this make you and possibly others around you feel?
• Were you yelling out loud or silently raging within yourself?
• Were others in the car with you frightened?
• How did being angry in that moment feel? Did you feel righteous? nauseated? out of control? distracted? snappy?
Observe what you did with your anger:
• Did you flip off the other driver?
• Did you speed up and tailgate them while yelling nasty words?
• Did you slow down and allow them to go ahead?
Write your actual reactions down here.
Next, to a small degree in your mind, allow yourself to feel the emotional connection to the anger reaction Be aware of how your body feels in that moment. To keep yourself a bit distant to avoid another huge anger reaction, you could imagine you are watching a short movie clip with no sound.
Now take charge of your body and calm your physical body by using the slow Box Breathing technique that you learned earlier in this chapter.
Repeat to yourself that you are safe, and there is no danger of dying. All will be well. Calm your physical body and quiet your mind from the racing thoughts. Continue the Box Breathing technique until your anger has dissipated. It will take as long as it takes, and there is no hurry. Elite operators under intense, deadly conditions use this technique to stop their racing thoughts and calm their bodies. It will help you too.
Take a moment now to be curious about the other person’s possible motives when they cut you off while you were changing lanes. Ask yourself if there may have been something else going on for them. Ask yourself what you imagined it meant about you that the other person took this action. Write down these answers.
If you are thinking about a situation that involved a friend, child, or partner you may have the opportunity to ask them the questions outlined above. But if you are thinking about a situation that involved just yourself and a person who was somewhat removed, such as the road rage situation described above, you will have to ask yourself the questions about what the other person’s actions may have meant.
Read over the observations you have just made. What different choices could you have made to allow you to be more accurate in how you presented yourself?
Self-observation questions to ask yourself about something like road rage are questions such as:
• Do I like how I feel and act when I go into a road rage?
• Am I putting myself or others in any danger?
• Does it help in any way to feel road rage?
Your answers can help you change your mind and your reactions.
Anger like that in road rage only burns you up inside. It does absolutely nothing to the other driver who is long gone. You gain nothing from allowing yourself to be swept up in anger. You are the only person who can choose to be less affected by another person’s actions. You can choose to function using your intelligent brain instead of your reptilian brain.
In the case of the road rage situation had you explained the other driver’s actions in a way that had nothing to do with you, your reaction and then your feelings about the situation would have been different. You may still be annoyed, but you would not be caught in the anger explosion. Rather than participating in active road rage, you may say something to yourself like:
• “Wow, that was scary when they cut me off. They must have an injured pet in the backseat that they are rushing to the vet.”
• “They are simply a young, careless driver who didn’t even notice I was there.”
Instead of road rage feel empathy or even boredom. You have the power to choose what to believe about the meaning behind every situation in your life.
The takeaway from this chapter is that you will never be understood nor come to resolution with anyone when you are angry. Anger is not an emotion that needs to be experienced nor discussed. Instead, what needs to be examined and comprehended is what is the driving force that moves your anger forward.
It may be that resolving your anger does not need to be discussed with your partner. It may be that your anger is resolved when you change your own inner beliefs about what the actions and words from someone else really mean. It is quite possible that the other person’s words and actions have nothing to do with you. There will be times when you choose to share insights about your anger with your partner. Gaining an understanding of when a level of sharing is needed or not needed will work wonders to increase your emotional understanding of each other and foster a closer relationship.
If your anger is still baffling to you, and you are still tied to the burning rocket that is your anger, you may benefit from speaking with a therapist or counselor. Some anger reactions are born from deep seated harm and fear from our past and are best sorted out with a professional. Rest assured that when properly addressed, unconscious anger can be resolved.
This week’s practice of stepping out of situations that invoke your anger reaction, observing what is driving it on an unconscious level, then choosing what to do about that buried emotion is a powerful step towards improving all your relationships.
While it may take a bit of time to honestly observe yourself and search under your anger, it is a very worthwhile search. You can stop being launched into an angry orbit by unconscious emotions. This is a worthy goal. You can then be seen authentically. You can start communicating clearly. You can be heard and be understood.
“Do not allow your anger to control your reason, but rather your reason to control your anger.”
Nelson Mandela