Anger is inevitable, natural, part of being human! So why is our relationship with our anger such a complicated one? Anger is often viewed as something toxic to be avoided, as though it were the same thing as aggression. It is not. The truth is that when we can acknowledge our anger, even just to ourselves, it can become something that is just as comfortable to notice and think about as any other emotion. This actually leads to less aggression, less hostility and more space to choose how to deal with these feelings. To choose how we want to address them. To realize that fleeting feelings of anger occur daily – sometimes hourly! – and are no more dangerous or ominous than any other feeling.
Sometimes we are uncomfortable acknowledging anger unless we can fully justify it. Other times we might try to overlook it to “keep the peace,” worried about exploding or causing an explosion in someone else. There are so many conflicted feelings around this heated emotion that unhealthy patterns of dealing with it often emerge.
To find healthy ways to cope with anger, we must change our relationship with it. Experiencing anger as an acceptable and human experience can help us to feel better emotionally and physically. Here are some helpful principles to adopt that can transform how we look at and deal with angry feelings.
- Don’t ignore it.
Despite our best efforts to deny or gloss over an uncomfortable emotion, it still affects us. The only difference is that we drift further from being able to make sense of it, which leads to more confusion around how we feel in general. Being honest with ourselves about what we are feeling keeps us from emotional pitfalls such as passive aggression, cynicism, irritability or just having a vague feeling of guilt or discomfort at the end of the day.
- Remember, anger doesn’t have to be rational.
Taking a nonjudgmental approach toward our anger reminds us that feelings and actions are very separate things. Our feelings do not determine the kind of person we are. We can take what Dr. Daniel Siegel calls a “COAL” approach to our anger, which means we’re Curious, Open, Accepting and Loving toward ourselves and what we’re experiencing, even when it feels unacceptable to us. As relationship expert and educator Dr. Pat Love puts it, we can always “feel the feeling but do the right thing.”
- Avoid building a case.
An angry feeling doesn’t have to make perfect sense to us in the moment we’re experiencing it. There is no need to try to rationalize what we are feeling or to justify it by ruminating over the details. It is simply a natural, instinctive response, and we can be curious about it rather than let it hijack our thoughts. We are less likely to hurt ourselves or to others if we simply feel the anger and acknowledge it to ourselves, rather than trying to build a case for why the feeling is “right.”
- Distinguish adaptive from maladaptive anger.
Any emotion can offer us clues into who we are and what affects us. “Another controversial idea is that anger can be adaptive and healthy,” said Emotion-focused therapist and founder Dr. Les Greenberg. “Many people think that anger is always dysfunctional, that it’s maladaptive, but – handled well – anger can be a very healthy emotion.”
Greenberg distinguishes primary emotions, which are a person’s “most fundamental, direct initial reactions to a situation,” such as anger at a loss, from their secondary emotions which are responses to one’s thoughts or feelings rather than to the situation itself.
Greenberg explains that when one experiences anger as a maladaptive secondary emotion, it’s helpful to dig deeper to that core or primary trigger to get through the feeling. Big emotions often have to do with our past. For example, a person might feel angry that their partner came home late. They may then be compelled to punish their partner by stonewalling them. However, if they look at that first, immediate emotional reaction they had before they felt angry and punishing, they may realize the primary emotion they felt was actually shame. Perhaps, they hold core sadness around feeling rejected or let down. When they surface this primary emotion, they can feel compassion for themselves and communicate their wants and needs more directly with their partner.
- Pay attention to your critical inner voice.
When exploring our anger, one thing to be mindful of is excessively critical thoughts coming up around that anger. Every one of us has an inner critic that is shaped by our early experiences and takes the form of destructive thoughts that turn us against ourselves and others.
When anger comes up, this critical inner voice might say, “You should be angry! You should be furious! He always thinks everything is your fault!” Or, it might say something like, “You’re always so angry. If you were a caring person, you would just be nice and let it go.” Neither of these kinds of extremes are reasonable and neither are in our interest.
A good way to tell when this “voice” is drowning out our real point of view is if we start to feel increasingly agitated or upset. Are we having lots of thoughts around our anger? Building a case? Bombarding ourselves with all kinds of defining statements? Are we assuming what another person thinks or feels? These can all be signs that our critical inner voice has taken the wheel and that it is time to reset and rethink this path.
- Give yourself what you need to calm down.
The best way to deal with anger is cleanly and truthfully. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to explore where our anger comes from and what it triggers in us. It’s okay to let any feeling wash over us, and it’s okay to be kind to ourselves when we do.
By giving ourselves the time and space to get through intense emotions, we can feel more at ease with them and more in control of what we want to do in relation to them. In our webinar on How to Deal with Anger, Dr. Lisa Firestone spends a good amount of time going over a toolkit of techniques to help us regain our calm in heated moments. These include practices like Name it to Tame It and 4-7-8 Breathing. Whether our anger is being triggered by something painful from our past or something frightening in the present, there are healing ways to get through it.
This post was originally published on April 29, 2022, by Dr. Lisa Firestone and has been updated to include new insights.