The Gift of Anger
October 22nd, 2009 |
By Anne Ream, ATR-BC, LPC
Click here to contact Anne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
Like all emotions, anger comes and goes according to whatever is going on within and around us. When we pay attention to our anger and can use it well, it can be a gift that motivates us to do what we need to do. Anger can create powerful energy. Repressed anger can cause depression. Paying attention to a feeling and learning how to use it, are skills anyone can develop.
Unfortunately, many people are taught during their early childhood not to feel anger. Many adults will shame children out of having angry feelings, which is often due to the adult’s fear that a child’s anger will get out of control. Sometimes it does and that is when adults have the opportunity to help children learn how to use their anger. It is important to have respect for everyone’s angry feelings, including a child’s. If adults can recognize and respect a child’s angry feelings, they can teach the child how to use the energy of their anger to change themselves or part of the problem constructively.
As adults, individuals can do this for themselves. The first step involves being open to recognizing and feeling all your feelings. We are always having feelings. If you ignore or repress one feeling, you are more than likely to repress all your feelings. One way to increase awareness of your feelings is to keep a, “Feelings Diary.” This does not have to be a detailed verbal diary. It can be quick illustrations. A simple scribble or doodle to illustrate the feeling will do. Ask yourself, “If this feeling had a color, what color would it be? If this feeling had a shape, what shape would it be, if this feeling had a line, what kind of the line would it be?” Then make a quick drawing of the feeling. What it looks like is not important, it is the process and expression that are important. The process is in thinking about the feeling, visualizing it is a shape with line and color and drawing that. After doing that several times, you will become much more aware of your feelings.
Once you have become more adept at recognizing your feelings, in the moment, it is time to use the energy of the emotion to make changes. Many theories have been written concerning what emotions are primary and what emotions or secondary. Some theorists believe that anger is a secondary emotion and that we often feel fear before we feel anger. That we feel threatened and a need to defend ourselves. That may be possible and that is not the concern of this article. The concern of this article is what to do with the gift of the energy of anger. Anger has been a motivating emotion for many positive changes.
If the anger you feel is overwhelming, the first step would be to find someone to talk to about it. A safe person would be comfortable with your anger and validate you. Injustice is a part of life. If you have been victimized by situations or people who have been unjust, you need to be heard and your feelings need to be validated. Being heard and validated can take the flames out of the fire of anger and reduce it to hot coals, which you can use as energy.
When the anger has become something that you can manage, there are many things you can do to help yourself. A good therapist can help you process and decide if a life change would be helpful. Some people find they need to go back to school, change jobs, leave a hurtful relationship, or move. Others find that getting involved in a cause or making new friends is helpful. The changes you make are up to you, and it is vital to make those changes and use the energy of your anger to see them through.
Then comes forgiveness. This does not mean to change your mind about something that was done to you which was wrong. The word “forgive,” can be perceived as meaning something that comes before or “fore-giving.” It can mean giving to yourself what you had before the wrong was done.
It also means trying not to take a wrongdoing so very personally. When you explore a situation in depth, you will often come to realize that what was done to you was not deliberately done to you. Situations are complex, people crash into one another, psychologically as well as physically, and inadvertently hurt one another.
One of my favorite quotes is “Hurt people, hurt people.” Sensitivity, understanding and empathy are vital to the solution. And the first person any of us must understand and empathize with is ourselves.
©Copyright 2009 by Anne Ream ATR-BC, LPC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Anne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
15 comments so far
We are a repressed culture. You are absolutly right! How many times I heard things like “Shut up or I sill give you something to cry about” or Depressed! Go rake the leaves! We are not taught to cope with our feelings! WE are taught and remember the commercial “This is an ex… number 25 headache take a pill! Pills for this Pills for that. Expecting something outside of ourselves to take the feeling away!
Anger is an emotion and has a purpose. It is part of the flight or fight response! Mother’s against Drunk Drivers did an absolutely terrific job of channeling their anger in a positive direction! John Walsh also is a powerful example of takng a positive means to channel his grief! How many lives have both groups saved!
Great Article!
John Lee LMHC
Thank you Anne. That was a wonderful article. I like to think I’m far more in touch with my feelings now than I was twenty years ago. If I’m unhappy or angry, I’ll voice it, which was unthinkable to me back then. It took me a long time to recognize that I had that right.
I feel scared I’ll be judged as unstable if I show anger. In my childhood home you didn’t dare raise your voice, especially the girls. It was unladylike. “They sound like common fishwives”. That’s what my father would say at the slightest hint of raised voices from women. Getting angry equals being out of control and you should never be out of control. I’ve never learned to do anything other than suppress that.
Anger dissipates much faster when you don’t hold it inside. Better out than in! It’s very hard to feel forgiveness when you can’t let it go and you don’t need to do it all by yourself. Therapy is a fantastic release in that respect. I like the Feelings Diary idea very much.
Wow! I had no idea until now that anger can be used as a form of energy to do better things and even get ourselves out of the situation that actually caused the anger.
I have always been taught, since childhood, that anger is a bad thing and being angry is a sign of cowardice… I didn’t quite understand the logic but had no choice but to accept it.
Thanks to your article, I have quite a bit of understanding of things related to anger now, and can hopefully follow your suggestion of channelizing the energy in anger.
I’m suprised to say the least… anger as a form of energy…had never considered such a thing in my entire life… thank you for the wonderful article and yes, I shall now maintain a Feelings Diary.
Hello, and thank-you for the wonderful feedback! John, your example of Mother’s Against Drunk Drivers is, indeed a wonderful example. Thanks for adding that. Katherine and “themuse,” it sounds as if your parents were not educated on the topic of emotions. That is very sad and we now know so much more about emotional intelligence, I hope you will help yourselves by reading all you can find on that topic. Pearl, the feelings diary idea has grown out of my work using the creative arts, I’m glad you like it. It helps to have something physical to do with that immediate impulse. Then we can slow down and be even more creative with the situation that we were responding to in the first place!
It is natural of us humans to have the ability to turn the same one thing into something either positive or negative, and I believe even anger can be converted into something positive for us.
I agree with you! I love reading an article that embraces ALL of our emotions. While livingin the Bay Area, I participated in and then helped teach full force women’s self defense classes. Our anger is such an importanat tool to keeping us safe! It is an emotion that tells that we have experienced some kind of boudary violation. I believe that ALL of our emotions are gifts given to us humans to help us live healthy lives. I personally experienced much abuse as a child including sexual abuse. I have much repressed anger from those traumas that needs full expression as I heal. I work with therapists who embrace anger expression healing work such as screaming, beating pillows, tearing up phone books, etc. To force me to supress or deny the emotion of anger is to disempower me!
Hi Jacki,
Wow! You have done a lot of excellent work, both personal and helping others! It sounds to me as if you are part of The Solution, which society needs so much! It’s wonderful to hear from you!
When we are not given the ability to deal with things in a constructive manner then that is all going to stay pent up inside. Why is it so wrong to let someone know when we are feeling angry? What good is it going to do for us when we do not even feel like we can express what is going on inside? That seems very unhealthy to me. It is one thing to not know how to deal with your anger, but something else entirely when you try to ignore that it is even there. You have to be able to get those feelings out!
Hi Carson, I agree with you. I believe that all adults who work with children should teach them about their feeling, as they come up, and help them learn how to cope with and express them. When we keep anger inside it leaks out as hyper criticisms and judgements of ourselves and others, or scarcasm. Often people develop physical symptoms from internalized anger. Very unhealthy! My favorite way to express all feelings is through creative activities. Doing this increases the level of fun in my life, thus raising the level of my daily dose of happy feelings!
I dont think its right to stop a person who is venting their frustration. It takes anger to the next level – rage. I hate it when my mother cant understand my anger. Cause of so much friction.
Anger is definitely a base emotion that can become a bad habit to shake off. I think it achieves much less than dialogue. Its better to talk things through than get worked up.
Hi Emma,
I know how it feels to try to communicate with another person who is unable to continue to listen if you begin to express feeling angry. Unfortunately, that inability to listen can often make things worse. If the other person cannot understand and validate our feeling, we tend to become even more angry. That is when our anger can become a “base emotion” as Liam describes it. Anger is actually, often secondary to many other emotions and when the person listening to us is untrained and personally involved, they will often have much difficulty listening to us. A family therapist can help resolve family conflict.