This healthy anger can become unhealthy when we get so upset that we lose sight of what we are angry about. We might need someone to give us space or more independence, or we might need someone to help and support us. Healthy anger tells us that we are not getting what we need, and the action tendency is to do something in order to make our needs known and to satisfy them. They are early warning signs that our body is using to communicate an important message to us. They turn on to tell us something that we need to know to survive. We would have died out long, long ago if we didn’t feel.Įmotions are like lights on a dashboard. As human-beings, we have spent billions of years evolving so as to survive, and our emotions are vital to our survival. There are few among us who haven’t known the raised voice, the furrowed eyebrows, and the fear that follows as we instinctively move to defend ourselves, to remove ourselves, to get away, to stay safe.Īnger, like every emotion, can be good and bad – it isn’t always ugly, destructive, or unhealthy.Īnger, again like any emotion, serves a purpose. It breaks the tender cords that bind us to one another – husband to wife, parent to child, sibling to sibling. The little boy is alone on the floor with a tumbled pile of tiny multi-colored bricks and his favorite truck, cracked open from bumper to bumper. He doesn’t hear the noise he’s absorbed in play.Ī large foot lands heavily on the floor beside him, then another step, and the foot hits the treasured truck, lifting it high in the air and sending it flying against the wall and falling, cracked and broken, on the floor boards. He’s caught up in his imagination, focused on the complex task of balancing multi-colored bricks on the back of the truck. He fills the truck with small items, to ferry to, and from, the sofa to the shelf. He has a favorite it’s blue, bright blue, like kids’ toys often are. He’s sitting on the floor playing with his trucks. He’s not much more than 2, or 3-years-old. I’m not sure I agree with the adage, ‘time heals all wounds’, but I do agree that giving some time to understand your anger before responding will definitely prevent wounds to yourself and others.There’s a little boy. If it was, is responding in anger helpful? Did that agent seem unnecessarily defensive? Perhaps, but won’t responding in anger merely serve to justify that defensiveness? Did that revision request feel personal? Maybe it was, but probably not. Before you comment, pause and ask yourself if it is really helpful.Īs an appraiser, I’ve had to practice this many times,… and I’ve also failed to practice this many times. This is particularly helpful in the world of social media. Give yourself permission to wait and choose your response carefully. Anger is good and valuable when understood and channeled appropriately. What you are afraid will happen might give you valuable insight into what lies below the surface. If responding feels urgent, ask yourself what you are afraid will happen if you don’t respond right now. Before responding, stop and ask yourself if there is something else going on. When you notice anger rising, slow down…breathe…reflect. The good news is that those more vulnerable emotions are often accessible with a little time and space. Then you likely feel the added emotion of shame for your lack of grace in the situation. If you react in anger and shout at the waiter, you likely draw more attention to yourself, worsening your embarrassment. The danger is that anger as a protector often serves to inadvertently worsen the primary emotion.įor instance, if a waiter spills a dish in your lap, you might feel embarrassed. The IFS therapy model would view anger as trying to protect you, or more specifically, trying to protect you from experiencing those more vulnerable emotions. It somehow feels safer to let the anger surface for others to see. Often those emotions are not just below the surface relative to the world around us, they are hidden to ourselves, hidden just beneath our own conscious awareness. While the world experiences us as angry, under the surface we might be feeling disappointed,overwhelmed, scared, embarrassed, helpless, anxious, lonely, or a myriad of other emotions. Those other things that you are feeling are often more vulnerable feelings that we prefer to keep hidden under the surface. It’s often considered a secondary emotion because before you feel anger, you are probably feeling something else first. ![]() The iceberg is a great analogy for how we experience anger as a secondary emotion. The Gottman Institute coined some interesting imagery around anger…the iceberg. You may have noticed in yourself the tendency for anger to surface more easily or quickly than expected. Unless you have been living under a rock, you have noticed by now that a lot of people are angry.
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