My discomfort and judgment came from a deep fear of anger–in myself and in others. This came from being a sensitive kid who felt things deeply, both my own emotions and those of people around me. Growing up, I had two models of anger, as did most of us. Mom and Dad.
My dad is like many men of his generation. He was taught to be tough, not too “soft,” to man up and get things done. Don’t think too much, and certainly don’t sit around feeling your feelings. This leads to a limited capacity to identify and express emotion, especially tender or vulnerable feelings. As a result, fear, inferiority, hurt, resentment, and other emotions stay inside until the pressure reaches a critical level and the valve breaks, and out pours anger. Hot, loud, and intense.
My dad’s loud, booming voice scared me as a kid. Whether he was yelling at me or my mom or brother, I felt a terrible, scared, sick feeling in my stomach. This taught me that anger is no good. It hurts people, it’s out of control, it’s unproductive, it’s bad.
My mom tended to be more passive. She absorbed anger and didn’t fight back. She was very patient with us and only occasionally lost it and chased us, threatening us with some nearby item, be it a hairbrush, belt, or shoe. I smile as I write this though, because I don’t ever remember being scared of her anger.
What did your parents teach you about anger? What did they model for you? What conclusions did you come to? Pause for a moment and reflect. Let yourself think about this over the next day or two as you go about your life. These insights are important in helping you see how you relate to anger now.
You also may have received direct messages and training from your parents. In my house growing up, we didn’t spend much time talking about feelings. Each member of the family was left to navigate those on their own. Hence, I learned that to talk about feelings was strange, abnormal, and generally not something you did with others. In some households, parents directly tell their children not to be angry, or to “be nice.” They may criticize them for feeling angry or punish them for acting angry.
All of these experiences come together to condition us to have a certain relationship with anger, which is usually not an optimal one. For most nice people, anger is suppressed, viewed as bad, and avoided at all costs. In a sense, we have a phobia of anger. A phobia is an extreme irrational fear or aversion to something.
What are your fears about feeling angry or expressing anger? Once we clear away all the judgments about how anger is bad and shows you are inflexible, unevolved, and weak, and we look at the fear underneath, I find there are three major ones lurking in the shadows:
Fear of Hurting Others
One fear is that because anger is “bad,” it only hurts people and makes things worse. Anger is harsh, mean, critical, and hateful. It is the opposite of love, acceptance, patience and kindness. Hence, if I’m angry with someone, especially if I express that anger, I’m going to do nothing but hurt their feelings. They are going to feel sad, guilty, uncomfortable, crushed, or hurt. This makes me a bad person and I will then feel guilty.
Fear of Retaliation
The next fear we have of anger is that people will fight back. If I’m angry with someone and I show it in any direct way, they’re going to come back twice as strong. They’re going to dismiss my grievances or complaints and counter attack. They will criticize or belittle me and become harsh or angry with me.
Alternatively, we fear they will retaliate in a more passive, sneaky way. They may pretend as if everything is fine and even apologize. Then they will go behind my back and do something to thwart me. They’ll criticize me to others, or grow more distant from me, or perform poorly in our work together and cause problems.
Fear of Loss
One major fear of anger is that it will lead to the loss of a relationship. For many, anger is the opposite of connection, and thus means the end. This one can be particularly convincing because in the heat of anger we might have strong thoughts such as: That’s it! I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to break up with him! (Or fire her, or leave this group, or whatever the case may be.)
We fear that feeling and expressing anger only tears things down and breaks things apart. We don’t see it as having any positive or productive quality in relationships, so we fear it is the scary signal of the beginning of the end.
Feeling Versus Doing
One interesting distinction that I see many clients miss, and that I didn’t understand for years, is the difference between feeling and doing. When it comes to anger, for many people the two are fused together. That means feeling angry means you act angry by saying mean things, becoming cold or distant, or yelling at someone. But in reality, there is a big difference between feeling angry and acting angry.
In a recent session, I was exploring the challenges a client was facing at work. She had a boss who interrupted her, shot her ideas down, and generally made it difficult for her to speak up confidently in meetings and other group discussions. She felt demoralized and insecure about her performance. She also felt anxious before meetings, and generally became quiet.
As we discussed the situation and I heard examples of what her boss would say to her, I said, “Wow, that sounds really annoying. I would be pissed if someone talked to me that way.” I made sure I sounded pissed as I said that sentence. This subtly gave her permission to feel angry, which I could see she was not allowing. She was just aware of feeling anxious and inferior.
“Yeah,” she replied, laughing.
I find when I speak to clients’ anger directly, they often laugh. I think it’s the laugh of relief. It’s OK to feel angry here, whew.
“Do you feel angry about being interrupted and shot down?” I asked.
“I do.” She said quickly. “I hate it. And I get so angry at her for doing it. Inside I want to scream and tell her to shut up. But I could never do anything like that, obviously. In fact, I can’t say anything critical to her at all. She’s so sensitive.”
Notice what just happened there. My client acknowledged her anger, which is actually a great step forward out of the nice cage into the more authentic, powerful version of herself. But she limited her ability to feel it. She started to move towards it, then immediately jumped to, “but I could never say anything about it.”
There is a big difference between feeling and doing. We can feel whatever we want. In fact, I believe it’s optimal and extremely healthy to feel everything inside ourselves. This includes all emotions, especially the ones that are uncomfortable that we call “negative,” including anger, sadness, fear, hurt, loneliness, emptiness, rage, and many others. The more we can give ourselves complete permission to feel anything, and know that it doesn’t mean anything about us, the freer we become. In addition, it doesn’t mean we necessarily have to do anything either. We’re just feeling.
So, in the example with this client, it would be beneficial for her to feel her anger towards her boss. I mean really feel it. In fact, later in that session we did a role-play where she expressed all her anger towards her boss, as if she were speaking directly to her. The more she got into it, the more expressive and heated it became.
This is good. This is huge. When you stop suppressing anger and let yourself feel it, knowing it won’t automatically make you do something, you become much more confident and powerful. My client is not going to go say all these things to her boss. That would be ineffective. But she needs to feel her anger in order to release it. By doing so she not only feels relief, she also reconnects to her power and her sense of agency. She is back in the driver’s seat of her life; she is a creator rather than a victim.
Now we can discuss how to communicate assertively with her boss and others at work. She can use her anger as fuel to speak up. The anger is like a hot fire that releases energy and heat. It is raw, wild, and intense. But we can run this energy through an internal machine that refines it and turns it into something productive—assertiveness. You’ll learn much more about how to use this energy and speak up for yourself consistently and powerfully in Part II of this book.