Are you aware that expressing anger can bring a relationship to a new level of closeness? A helpful way to understand anger is: I want something I am not getting (whatever that may be – co-operation, money, a caring response) and I assert myself to get what I desire.
Have you ever considered that it is a waste of energy to pretend things are okay when they are not? Doesn’t it take a lot of effort to appear pleasant when you feel angry, afraid to be emotionally honest? You disempower yourself when you are fearful of communicating about issues that upset you.
Anger is a complex emotion that is misunderstood and feared. When you connect with the feeling of anger it’s a sign that your relationship still matters. Most people who are afraid of expressing anger wrongly believe that it will generate feelings of ill-will, hostility or retaliation.
Not expressing anger generates distressing internal conflict. If I lack the freedom to express myself, if I believe I have to conceal how I feel, insecurity will lurk in the background. If I fear that giving expression to my anger will damage the relationship, trust has broken down.
When I communicate honestly about what makes me angry, I can clear the air. Then a logical and rational discussion can take place and contentious issues can be addressed. If I fail to address the problem, I will feel inhibited. If it’s a chronic issue, I’m likely to feel impotent, disempowered, and less capable than I know I am.
Explosive outburst of rage
Unexpressed emotions don’t go away. They remain alive and active, hidden behind the mask of conventional self-control. For some people, hiding emotions is like putting the lid on a pressure cooker. Over time the pressure builds up and may finally burst through in an explosive outburst of rage.
Anger will often combine with other emotions such as powerlessness, fear, frustration or guilt. Suppressed anger can fester, sour into hatred, and become toxic and corrode relationships. A person with suppressed anger feels the emotion rising but blocks the feeling.
When anger is suppressed over a very long period of time, the capacity to feel the emotion becomes repressed. We’ve all been with someone who protests, “I’m not angry” when it’s obvious to everyone that the person is livid with repressed rage.
Many of us who are parents fail to see that the desire to get a child to control anger has its roots in what we learned in childhood, from parents who had a limited understanding of the healthy expression of anger. Almost by osmosis we picked up a belief that it’s wrong to express anger. We learned that it was safer to suppress our emotions than to get into trouble for expressing them.
As long as you believe that someone or something made you angry, you can do very little except blame or complain. When you recognise that the source of much of your anger is in you, in how you view the situation, you can connect what you are thinking with how you are feeling. You can recognise that you have choices about how you respond.
Even when someone behaves badly towards you, you can decide how you will react. Say someone steps on your toe. The intensity of your pain will be affected by what you believe. You can choose to believe that your foot was in the way, the person was careless, it was deliberate or perhaps it was an accident. You can do nothing about the physical pain but how you think about what the other intended will affect how angry you feel.
Vulnerable
Vulnerability is an integral part of healthy anger. Whenever people are together their actions or inactions affect each other. In this sense control always exists in a relationship. Some people who are fearful of conflict are so vulnerable that they are afraid to ask directly for what they want.
A person whose internal dialogue is, “I’m afraid to ask” feels disempowered, controlled by the fear of taking action. Change the words to “I’d like to ask”. This allows you to see the situation from a very different perspective. Even though you feel vulnerable, you have connected with what you want. Healthy anger gives you the energy to assert yourself to ask for what you want.
Psychologist Richard McHugh said, “The only control of anger is to become aware of it and learn how to channel it in a healthy way.”
Healthy anger is a positive, connecting, necessary emotion that can bring relationships to a new level of closeness.
Carmel Wynne is a life coach and cross professional supervisor who works in Dublin. For more information, go to carmelwynne.org