A common question I get during therapy is, “why am I so furious?”. If you find yourself asking this question, this article is for you. You are not the only one to find themselves asking this question.
First of all, your anger is likely 100% valid and justified. You are likely angry because you are addressing the hard emotions that are truly bothering you with anger. Anger is usually the emotion that is most accessible/safest to people. It is also a secondary emotion, which means that there are always a lot of emotions under the surface. Anger is sometimes used to stay away from those gross feeling emotions that are under the surface, but by avoiding these emotions, that anger can get worse and control us.
By the end of this article, my goal is for you to have a little better understanding of the anger you are carrying with you. After you have a better understanding of what you are experiencing, I will also explain how you can begin to work on it. But first, we need to start here.
Your Anger Is Valid
Before I even start into this topic, I want to take a second to say that whatever your situation is, your anger is likely 100% valid. We have all had some genuinely frustrating and hurtful things happen to us. Others have seen the consequences of unlikely or heinous circumstances.
Whatever the case, if you have experienced theses things, that anger you are feeling inside is 100% valid and justified. I am not here to tell you that your anger is wrong and you need to be happier. That just isn’t realistic!
However, being angry takes a lot of energy and can take control of our lives. I am here to tell you that yes, your anger is valid and justified, but it is also exhausting. If you are ready to make a change, there are things we can do. I will get more into it later, but there are ways to work on this anger, so it does not take control of your life.
What Do People Mean When They Say Anger Is A Secondary Emotion?
If I had to guess, you have probably been told by a friend or heard that “anger is a secondary emotion.” I would also imagine that your reaction to this may have been something like, “What the hell is that supposed to mean, no, it’s not, I am just furious.” I have no doubt this is true. But part of my job as a therapist is to help my clients look deeper. They are looking through the binoculars, but we are both collaborating to figure out where to point them.
What people mean when they say anger is a secondary emotion is that yes, it is what we are experiencing, but there is always something else that is causing it. No one is furious just for the sake of being angry, right?
A common way to think of anger (and the way I think of anger) is as an iceberg. Whatever you see of an iceberg above the water, you can bet there is much more below the water. The completely unscientific statistic I usually throw out is that we can often only see 20% of an iceberg above the water.
The same goes for anger. That anger we see is only 20% of what is going on. Disclaimer, this is another completely unscientific statistic. I find that I like to see things to understand them, so if you are like that too, check out this handout.
As you can see, all we can see is that anger, but there is a lot of different emotions going on underneath the surface. After you have done the work to control/manage your anger, the next steps to working with it are exploring what is underneath the water’s surface of your iceberg. I have found that it can be helpful to have a therapist like myself to help you navigate these waters and help point those binoculars in the right direction.
Why Do People Get Angry?
There are all kinds of reasons why people get angry. I can’t go over all of them, but I can talk about a few of the reasons I see most often. Again, the point here is not to make you feel bad if you do these things, but to let you know you are not alone, and it is possible to make changes in your life to stop anger from controlling it.
Some Use Anger To Protect Themselves
By far, the most common reason people go to anger is that it is safer. When we let people in, it can leave us feeling vulnerable, right? If we go to anger first, we don’t really need to worry about feeling vulnerable, because people will be too nervous around us to ever really ask.
This is great at achieving your goal of safety. However, I have seen it over and over, the problem is that we can sometimes be too good at keeping ourselves safe. When we do that, then we end up pushing everyone away and keeping those we care about at an arm’s length. Like I have mentioned in another article, I believe one of the most important pieces of staying mentally healthy is a genuine connection. That’s pretty hard to do if we push people away and keep them at a distance with anger.
Anger As A Coping Tool
Another reason people may go to anger is that it has been their go-to learned coping skill. I have talked a lot about coping skills on this website, but basically, a coping skill is something that makes you feel better at the moment. There are absolutely healthy AND unhealthy coping skills. So, just because I say anger is a coping skill does not exactly mean it is a healthy one.
In some ways, using anger as a coping skill allows us to avoid the things that are really bothering us. When we avoid something, it tends to get worse. So if you find this is you, you may find that your anger has gotten worse and worse, and consumed more and more of your life.
If that is where you are now, that is okay. You are where you need to be, and if you are here, you are starting to take the steps towards reducing the control that anger has on your life. It probably feels an intimidating journey to begin. But from the perspective of someone who has seen many embark on this journey, it can be a worthwhile one.
What Are The First Steps To Working On Anger?
Beginning to work on your anger is not as intimidating as it might sound. The full process of working on your anger can take some time, but I hope these suggestions where to start will begin you down your path of working on your anger.
The place I usually suggest people start is increasing their awareness of anger. Sometimes, we have used anger for so long, we don’t really notice how often we are doing it.
An excellent place to start is to begin noticing when you get angry. Pay attention to when you get angry, what preceded it, and how angry you are. This may be hard at first but stick with it. The whole point of this is to start to be more aware when we are going to anger.
If you feel that this isn’t enough for you, reach out to a mental health professional. Sometimes it can be beneficial to have another person holding you accountable or helping you explore the parts of that iceberg that are underwater. Us therapists have a lot of tools and techniques that can help you increase your awareness of anger, and decrease its control over you.
Final Thoughts
Anger can be something that slowly starts to take over our lives. Being always angry takes a lot of energy, and can also cause us to push the people away from that we care about the most.
My hope is that this article helped you understand how anger can be addressed, and start to make a plan for how you want to work on it. Like I said earlier in this article, it can help to have a professional that can help you point those binoculars, so you can start to explore what is understand the surface of your anger iceberg. Starting your journey of working on anger can feel daunting, but after some work, it will feel liberating.
Until next time,
