January 29, 2024 • 36 mins
Anger is one of our most primal emotions and yet we have no idea how to manage it. We suppress it, allowing it to rule our lives; we hide from it, we let it explode onto people who don't deserve our rage. In this episode we break down the psychology of anger and why anger is often a secondary emotion, masking our true fear, anxiety and insecurity. We explore how to manage our anger, use it for fuel and motivation, why the anger we experience as children often leads to our inability to full express emotions, where our anger comes from and whether forgiveness truly is the solution. Listen now.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you back for another episode. Today, we're going to
be talking about anger, one of our most primal human
emotions that I think it's neglected a lot in our
conversations around mental health and kind of the spectrum of
(00:48):
feelings that we have every day. Anger is such, I think,
a hidden private experience for a lot of us, something
to be kind of concealed behind politeness and cities, something
to be suppressed. You know. We're told that it's a
very ugly emotion, something that needs to be controlled, and
then it holds us back, and I think, yes, maybe
(01:09):
that is true. But anger is also a really important
emotional cue, and it also shows up in a lot
of our daily interactions. We are angry at a friend
for letting us down, at a coworker for messing something up,
or a partner for a past mistake that we just
can't let go of. There is a lot of invisible
(01:30):
anger inside. I think a lot of us anger that
lives below the surface and probably has done for a
long time. And like I said, we're really good at
accepting our kind of pretty and romanticized emotions like happiness
or even grief, even melancholy, But rage and fury they
seem to be left out. And I think I spent
(01:51):
quite a lot of time, quite a few years in
my early twenties kind of ruled by anger in ways
that I didn't realize. I was angry at the world.
I was angry at people who had overlooked me, or
hurt me, or who had been cruel to me, because
really it was easier to feel anger than admit how
insecure those experiences had made me. And I think I
(02:14):
thought that being angry almost made me tough. And I
let that feeling really make a lot of decisions for me.
I let it be projected onto people who didn't deserve that.
I let it turn to misery. And I wish that
I had known what I know now. So let's share
everything to do with the psychology behind anger and what
psychology has to say about this misguided and misjudged feeling.
(02:38):
I feel like we don't need a definition of anger.
Every human, even every animal, knows the feeling, the hot feeling,
the pressure in the chest, the twitching hands, that kind
of building urge to react and to scream. Anger is
one of our most primal, rudimentary emotions. It is an
emotion that mobilizes the body for action. It mobilizes our
(03:02):
fight or flight response, and that is what means that
it allows us to survive in response to a perceived
threat or a perceived injustice. These kinds of primal emotions
always really fascinate me because we have evolved so much
from being these creatures who are only ruled and driven
by survival and instinct. We're no longer out hunting in
(03:24):
the wilderness or fighting, you know, neighboring tribes. Maybe we
are in some senses, but our society has really evolved
to make sure we are all kind of prim and proper,
and we are suppressing these really raw emotions, and yet
they're still there. They haven't dissolved or disappeared with increased sophistication.
(03:45):
Society is just asking us to hide it. So the
main theory is that anger comes from primarily feeling threatened,
feeling powerless, or that there is some part of who
you are what you stand for that has been trespart.
So this article published in twenty seventeen, called anger is
a basic emotion and its role and personality. It describes
(04:07):
it really well. Our anger serves as an internal sign
that there is an obstacle or aversive situation that has
crossed an emotional or physical boundary that we need to
respond to. And our anger is one of the only
emotions that is strong enough to get us to that
point of acting. And this kind of relates to another
(04:29):
dimension of anger, which is that it can and is
often a secondary emotion. Let me explain that a little
bit further. Our anger often masks a much more vulnerable
feeling that we are not quite ready to confront yet.
It masks our fear, It masks our hurt, It masks
(04:49):
our disappointment, how powerless we feel. If you've ever been
so angry that you've cried, you'll know that, really well,
that is the true emotion, the sadness, the disappointment bubbling up,
and sometimes anger is less complicated than the emotion that
we really want to express. It's less complicated in the
situation we're in, and so we hide behind our rage.
(05:12):
Our anger is what makes us act when fear or
sadness or disappointment can't. And as it wears off, it
reveals what is truly at the root of that wrath,
that we are actually just really fragile, gentle creatures who
have been hurt. Maybe you are not angry as a person,
Maybe you just have a really delicate soul that's been
(05:34):
crossed a few too many times and you've reverted to
what feels easier. And when we see anger in any form,
regardless of its origin, psychologists can kind of broadly categorize
it into three different types. Firstly, we have hasty and
sudden anger, and this is really connected to like the
impulse for self preservation. So it occurs when we feel
(05:58):
really trapped in a situation all life. Something has just
pushed us to the point of explosion. It's very episodic
in nature. It comes from these brief, uncontrollable bursts, but
it doesn't mean that it hasn't been building up for
a while. Maybe this anger has been simmering, just waiting
for the final catalyst, the straw that breaks the Camel's back.
(06:20):
Then we have settled and deliberate anger, and this is
a reaction to a deliberate harm from someone else, something
that is perhaps long term. It's anger that simmers, that settles,
anger that creates actions that are less impulsive like hasty anger,
and more calculated. And then finally we have disposition or anger.
(06:42):
I think we all know people that are just angrier
than others. They have that like fiery gene, and this
dispositional anger is related more to an innate character trait
than to instincts or cognitions. This also brings me to
a really important point. Like I said, there are some
people who are just angrier than others, and there is
(07:02):
actually a disorder for this called intermittent explosive disorder, and
this is really related to our ability to control our impulses.
When we are unable to do that, the behavior that
we might exhibit is these repeated angry outbursts our failure
to control our aggressive impulses. And normally it's not something
(07:24):
that we want to do. It just feels like this
explosion that has come out of nowhere, and normally the
reaction is also very much out of proportion to the event.
That sparked that rage. This is obviously an extreme you know,
it is like a diagnosable disorder, but I think it
(07:45):
does go to show how anger is in one way
an emotion. For others it can become a personality trait,
and then for others it can be a disordered part
of who they are and how the world sees them,
how they see the world. So when we feel any
of these types of anger, though, something really unique happens
(08:05):
in our brain. There are entire regions devoted to processing
this feeling. And the reason that anger feels so fiery
is because firstly, it's almost entirely automatic and out of
our control. And secondly, it activates this part of our
brain known as the amygdala, one of the oldest parts
(08:28):
of our brain, perhaps the most primal. It's nestled deep
in there, right in the middle of our limbic system,
and it is what is responsible for some of our
most instinctual feelings, the ones that are going to ensure
that you survive, and those big ones are fear and anger.
Fear and anger, our ability to detect danger and respond
(08:51):
are intrinsically linked, sometimes hard to distinguish. It almost feels
like anger is fear in a more of like a
hidden form. Instead of wanting to show that we're scared,
we show that we are like dangerous, or we show
that we are angry. I think what's definitely true is
that when this part of the brain takes over, the
(09:13):
unconscious rational part of us tends to switch off. Anger,
as has been shown in a lot of research, causes
a reduction in our cognitive abilities and basically our ability
to accurately process external stimuli. We don't tend to think
straight anymore. We face a bunch of distortions to our
(09:35):
reasoning abilities. For example, like we might see something and overreact,
or we might see something and attribute blame to someone
else when in fact it is not their fault. And
I think this can create a feedback loop where as
our cognitions become more distorted, we're less able to see clearly.
(09:56):
The more blame we place on others, the more angry
that we feel. And I think it's at that point
when we sometimes see people do things that they normally
really wouldn't do that is not within their normal personality traits.
It doesn't mean that they didn't do it. They are
still accountable, but a lot of the time, they are
(10:17):
acting from a point of blind rage, and I think
that brings me to my main point. We don't know
what to do with our anger. We don't know how
to process it, whether we should forgive, how to forgive,
whether we should lash out, who we should tell, how
to get rid of this feeling, And so we suppress
(10:37):
the emotion, we let it show up in less than
ideal ways. It may also be because of how you
have come to see anger in the past, you've come
to see it as an emotion that we should avoid.
This often can be attributed to maybe being raised by
really angry parents or seeing anger from a previous partner.
(11:00):
We can see in those moments how ugly it can be,
especially when it has total control over someone. It may
also be that as a child, you are not given
permission to express emotions like anger or rage in a
safe space. You were punished for being frustrated or rightfully
(11:20):
angry angry in response to your boundaries being crossed. You
are not given access to your full emotional bandwidth. So
anytime you feel anger now as an adult, you associate
it with the shame and the punishment you received as
a child, or we vow not to be like the
person who has let anger control them in our past.
(11:41):
We know how much it hurts, We know how much
it harms those around us, we are told, and we
know that anger is bad and therefore to feel it
would make us bad, and so we push it down.
We begin to believe that to feel anger makes us
purely an angry person and nothing more. When we fear
(12:02):
any kind of emotional reaction, it naturally leads to avoidance,
and that is what causes us to suppress a feeling,
treat it like it's somewhat diseased. However, our body can
really only hold on to an emotion for so long,
you know. Eventually we run out of like cognitive resources
(12:24):
and cognitive strength to hold it down, so we end
up exploding. And the reason we end up exploding is
often totally unrelated to the origin of our anger. This
is what Freud called displacement, and displacement is part of
our unconscious defense mechanisms, in which we project and find
(12:45):
a new object for our anger rather than the original cause.
It is why you may be really angry at your
roommates or really angry at your younger sibling, but then
you end up snapping at someone on the internet, or
you end up like picking a fight with your partner.
This is just your body trying to find a way
to let out your anger in an environment that it seems,
(13:08):
you know, it seizes more appropriate. And really what it
comes from is originally like shame. It comes from shame
at your anger. It comes from conflict version, it comes
from not being able to put it in a place
where it's going to do good. And I think at
that point it's really useful to remember that, like any emotion,
(13:31):
anger is really just here to tell you something. It
is just the messenger. It is trying to communicate with
you that there is something in your life, an important
emotional issue, a sense of dissatisfaction, something that is bothering you,
a sense of injustice that is going against your values,
(13:55):
that is going against your desires, your ambitions. It has
been promised. And if we were to ignore anger or
kind of like try and opt out of it, what
we would actually be ignoring is a lot of important information,
and it would mean that we would never be able
to stand up for ourselves if our boundary were to
be crossed, because we could never allow ourselves to feel
(14:17):
wronged otherwise that would be allowing ourselves to feel angry.
Hopefully that kind of makes sense, right. I think about
this a lot in terms of people who are in situationships,
or if you're in a really fraught relationship and you
just don't let yourself bring up the things that have
bothered you, and you suppress it because to feel angry
(14:39):
might compromise that relationship. You don't want to be angry
in front of this person. Here's the thing, though, Eventually
that is going to boil over. It is going to
give to get to the point where you cannot tolerate
that for much longer. And that is why anger is
so crucial, because it is a really valuable motivator for change.
(15:02):
If we channel that initial impulse for violence and rage correctly,
we can actually really unlock a lot of movement in
our life. We can unlock a lot of creativity. I
know this really really well. You can displace it, that's
your first option. You can let it take over your
entire life and you can let it make you violent
(15:23):
and rageful. Or you can treat it like energy. Why
do you want to divert that energy in? What parts
of your life? Might it be useful? To have access
to that level of passion. Don't you want to kind
of almost really tap into its power rather than wasting
it on like a momentary explosion. You know. I think
(15:46):
the best analogy I've heard about this topic is from
this Ted talk called Anger is Your Ally, and the
speaker explains that anger is very much like a child.
You shouldn't let it drive the car. That is going
to be a terrible problem. But you also shouldn't stuff
it in the trunk either. You need to treat anger
like it's it's a passenger in the vehicle. You know,
(16:09):
you know it's there. It's just cruising along with you.
You're not trying to hide from it, but it's also
not on the front seat. I think this acceptance of
our anger is not to justify holding onto it by
no means. I think we often make the mistake in
believing that raging and seething in silence is somehow going
to hurt the person we're actually furious at, or that
(16:30):
it's productive, when actually when we really like hold on
to this rage, and we hold on to this like
aggressive instinct in this hurt, we are the person that
it does the most damage to, but is the answer
to that that we should forgive. Do we always have
to be the bigger person to let go of our anger? I, personally,
(16:52):
I don't think so. I think forgiveness is a privilege,
and you can, you know, you can still understand the
ways in which someone has hurt you, the way certain
actions have gone against your values, and not need to
subsequently hurt that person as well. To find release. You
can find peace with your anger. And sometimes I think
(17:14):
we really celebrate forgiveness. It's this like really pure and
good thing. You know, there's a lot of religious undertones
to that, and that it's going to make us so
much lighter and such better people. But I also don't
think that it's gonna help us release our rage. I
don't think that forgiveness is something that we should rush.
I think that anger actually needs an outlet, and it
(17:36):
needs to be processed, and it needs to be worked through.
It needs to be treated with respect before we get
to the point that we can be stoics about it.
So in that moment, you kind of have three options.
You can channel your anger through sublimation, you can create
something with it. You can use it as motivation, find it,
(17:57):
like find a positive way to process that feeling. You
can adopt the stoic approach, which is I'm just gonna
let this emotion wash over me without needing to reach
out and touch it. Or you can listen to the
impulse and you can explode. You can inevitably say things
you don't mean. You can lash out, you can burn
(18:17):
the fucking world down, and that might feel great in
the moment, but then you're kind of just left with
the remains there. You're left with a lot of burnt bridges,
and there's not much more to make of it. So
I think option one and two are our best bet,
but sometimes it's hard to get there, especially when anger
has really ruled you unconsciously for so long. So what
I want to talk about next is how we can
(18:41):
honor the emotion whilst also letting it serve us. So
all of that and more after this shortbreak. So the
two ways we've mentioned for dealing with anger so far
as by processing and channeling rather than letting it rule you,
(19:01):
and I want to talk through some specific tips for
doing so. Firstly, once again I want to clarify anger
is not an emotion to be avoided by any means.
It is good that you feel angry sometimes it shows
that you have boundaries, It shows that you have a
sense of injustice, It shows that you are protective of yourself,
and I actually think that's really really important. I also
(19:24):
think when we ignore anger, when we suppress it, obviously
we can explode YadA, YadA, yadda. But it also maybe
indicates that somewhere along the way you were taught that
to experience and show all your emotions was shameful. And
I think that the shame around emotions is one of
those kind of generational patterns and things that we are
(19:46):
taught by our parents that we need to unlearn. So
here's how we're going to go about it instead. Firstly,
when you are feeling this rage for any reason, avoid
what we like to call the catharsis myth. So asis
is this thing that provides release. It is this like
(20:09):
huge explosion of energy that makes us feel a lot better.
When we talk about anger, a lot of people talk
about venting, talk about ranting as a way to kind
of like release their anger effectively. They think about it
as like turning the tap on and just like letting
out some of the pressure. But a psychologist that I
(20:30):
was reading into about this put it very well. When
you vent your anger or blow off steam, when you
are screaming, when you're like really mad, when you're just
having this huge vent to your friend, it actually keeps
our arousal levels really high. Have you ever like had
a moment where someone has done something that has made
(20:51):
you so angry and you've walked away from it, you've
kind of thought about it, and then a few days
later your friend's like, hey, remember when that per and
did that thing, and it just makes you feel angry afterwards,
when you talk about it with them, you think that
it's going to make you feel better. I actually don't
think it really does. It's like using gasoline to put
(21:11):
out a fire. It just doesn't work. And I know
that that advice feels counterintuitive because we feel like when
we're venting, when we're ranting, that we're doing something about
this feeling, and therefore that we're processing it. However, I
think there are more sustainable ways of going about it
that don't keep us in such a state of active anger.
(21:37):
Like there's ways that we can exhaust the feeling. Is
probably a better way of putting it rather than continuing
to exacerbate it or accelerating it. So exercise is great,
particularly something cardiofocused, but I've also found boxing incredibly useful.
I think that although it can still increase arousal in
(21:57):
the moment, it also exhausts me afterwards. And you know,
therapy is great and all, but something really does have
to be said about just hitting a bag for an
hour and leaving being like super sweaty and just feeling
like this, all of this like emotion and feeling that
was buzzing in your body has has a place to land.
(22:17):
There's also this technique I have for processing rage and
actually a bunch of emotions, and I call it crazy dance.
And I've talked about this before on the show, and
it's what it sounds like. I want you to just
put on your headphones and just go absolutely wild, let loose.
I don't want it to look good. I don't want
it to be a cool dance. I want it to
(22:38):
be the most energetic crazy dance you can think of.
Legs moving, arms moving, body twisting. This acts as a
form of somatic therapy where we are able to release damaging,
pent up emotions using our bodies, and that is the
place where they're often stored. Right. So I want you
before and after to notice how your body feels, and
(23:01):
then where you've been holding stress. No, maybe you have
like muscle tension or pain. And afterwards I want you
to notice whether those parts have experienced a sense of relief,
whether there has been some kind of release in those muscles,
in those parts of your body. I think it works
in so many situations. Another way to go about it
(23:23):
is make sure that before you address your anger, you
calm your body by giving it enough oxygen. If you
think about it, when we're really really frustrated and upset,
our breathing gets a lot deeper, a lot faster, sorry,
a lot faster, and when it's really fast, like like this,
you're not taking in that much oxygen. When our brain
(23:46):
is low on oxygen, our thinking becomes a little bit
more like disturbed. It becomes a lot slower, And breathing
exercises are a way to firstly help us calm down,
but also get that oxygen back into our brain to
make a smart, informed decision. I know we hear a
lot about breathing exercises in therapy and in psychology, and
if you go to therapy you might it's like one
(24:07):
of those staples in a therapist toolkit. That and like
meditation and mindfulness. And sometimes when we hear about those
things too much, we discredit it. We think it doesn't work,
But it does. The science says that it does, and
it really helps in these situations. So deliberately practicing like
a relaxed breathing pattern, so breathing in for eight, holding
(24:27):
for four, breathing out for eight, it brings a lot
of our involuntary functions like our breathing under control. And
it shows us that other things we think are out
of our control, like anger, are actually something that we
have a say over, that we can almost operate and
move and have some decision making over. So control breathing
(24:53):
really can cause quite profound physiological changes. It lowers our
blood pressure, lowers our heart rate, it reduces stress levels
and levels of stress hormones in the blood, so all
of which I think is a really good start to
processing anger in whatever form you choose to. My favorite
form though, is through creative channeling. So creative channeling is
(25:13):
where you take your anger and you make something with it.
It helps us place our anger, express our anger, and
make it tangible. It takes us, you know, it takes
that emotion out of our mind and onto the page,
like if we're making a piece of art or a
sculpture or anything of a sort. It really allows us
(25:36):
to see this emotion as something that isn't just held
up in our brain, but has a place in the world,
a recognizable place outside of our body. Additionally, I think
when we're like partaking in something creative, it helps us
enter into a flow state. A flow state is this
kind of state of mind where we aren't so much
focused on what's bothering us, just the task at hand.
(25:57):
We feel really fulfilled by it, we feel really excited
by it, challenged by it, but also just extremely focused.
And it actually is amazing because whilst you're in a
flow state, it's really hard to think about more than
one thing. And so you come back from practicing this
creative exercise, from making something with not only a fresh
(26:18):
set of eyes, but with kind of like a renewed
sense of peace and a renewed sense of calm. This
mainly focuses on how you can manage your anger on
an individual level, but obviously someone has given us a
reason to feel angry, and I'm not just not saying
that in a way like that we should be endorsing blame.
But anger is often environmental, something has triggered it, and
(26:40):
so our reaction is also probably going to be environmental
or external or interpersonal as well. Here are some tips
for managing that, because we know anger does a lot
of damage when we don't have control over it. It
causes us to just do so many things that we
wouldn't normally do, often the expense of the people that
(27:01):
are closest to us. They are the closest to the epicenter,
They get the most kind of heat from this feeling.
So when you are processing your anger, when you feel rage,
avoid projecting, avoid displacing. As frou would say, I think
you need to acknowledge when you have allowed someone else
to be the target of your anger when they are
(27:21):
not the source. For example, you've come home like a
really rough day at work where people have just been
super rude, and you just snap at your partner and
it's not fair because and it's probably not fair to
snap at anyone really, but it's definitely not fair to
snap at this person who probably doesn't know what's going
on and is just wanting to make you happy and
just wanting to see you happy as well. And I
(27:45):
think it's easy to project onto those people because we
know that we kind of know that they're going to
take it in a way the way that we can't
snap at a stranger. But once again, they're not just
having and it will do harm to your relationships. So
in those moments, recognize Itologize to that person and explain why,
talk about why it is that you came into an argue,
(28:07):
that you came into a situation or a room or
an interaction feeling that rage, and make sure they know
what part of it may have been because of them,
or what part of it really wasn't to do with them,
so that they're not sitting there waiting for you to
just blow up, that they're not having an anxious reaction
to your feelings of rage. There's a strategy used in
(28:31):
anger management called the thirty thirty intervention that I think
is a really good and useful strategy for those moments
when you do displace your anger onto someone who doesn't
deserve it, or when you've just had a really rough
day and you know that this passion and this feeling
is really building up, So take thirty seconds to remove
(28:51):
yourself from a situation that maybe frustrating you. Thirty seconds
to do something else, particularly something with your hands, because
it shows our brain that we're doing something about this problem,
this problem emotion that we're having, or something physical to
release that bodily tension, and then thirty seconds to create
a coping strategy. Maybe that coping strategy will be all right.
(29:14):
I need a few more minutes to on a walk,
or I'm going to write down exactly why I'm upset.
I'm going to journal about this, and then I'm going
to come back to this person and we can talk
about it. I also say all the time, let people
make mistakes. Don't let other people always be the source
of your anger because they don't meet your expectations and
(29:37):
because you are lowering your threshold for their behavior. I'm
going to explain that a little bit more. But sometimes
I think we become angry because we have false expectations
about other people, and when they don't meet them, we
blame them rather than blaming ourselves for not being honest
about what we can expect from someone. The same way
that you're allowed to make mistakes and be your own person,
(30:00):
these people are allowed that as well. And I think
that our angest comes from a sense of like reality,
the reality we want not matching up with kind of
what is actually going to happen. And sometimes that's fair
to be angry about, right, Like the reality is you've
expect everyone around you to be really, really nice and
kind and someone isn't. That makes you angry. But if
(30:21):
the reality is, oh, I expect my partner to have
done like every single chore in the household, even though
he also works full time, and you come back and
he's just gotten home before you and he hasn't done that,
and reality doesn't meet you know, blah blah blah. They
don't think it's fair in those times to be angry.
Let other people make mistakes. And also when you're really
(30:43):
frustrated about something, when you really feel like something is
so hard to like go of, you're so filled with
rage that it's not going anywhere, don't say you're over
it when you're not. Don't pretend that you are fine.
That is just another form of suppression, and it is
going to come up later. I think a lot of
(31:06):
the time we really want to be forgiving, and we
want to pretend that the emotion just isn't there because
it is so uncomfortable to feel, and we hear it
all the time. Someone is really upset by something and
they go, it's fine, I'm fine, Like, let's move on,
I don't want to talk about it. No, No, I'm over,
I'm over. I forgive you. It's very easy to say
(31:26):
those words as well if you're a people pleaser and
if you feel like your anger is not justified. But
this is your reminder that really take that closing of
the feeling, that closing of the trigger, that closing or
whatever is caused your anger. Make sure you take the
closing of that chapter seriously. Don't close it too soon,
don't close it prematurely, because it will bubble and it
(31:48):
will fester and it will come up at the worst time. Finally,
if there is a particular person you are upsetter, practice
both assertive communication but also practice calm communication. Have you
ever had those moments where you know that a friend
is mad at you, or you know that you've done
something to upset someone and you go into the conversation
(32:10):
and you're just immediately defensive and you're immediately really upset
and you're immediately angry, or they're immediately angry. It is
so hard to ever resolve something when we come to
the table with this primal emotion at the forefront, rather
than like we said in the passenger seat. So think
(32:31):
through your initial reaction, the first thing you want to do,
and then sleep on it. It will always feel better
in the morning, and maybe you will have thought again
about burning the whole world down. Take a step back
from what you from the first thing that you want
to do in response to your anger, and make sure
you are expressing what you need in an assertive, yet
(32:54):
calm way. I often find this difficult when people are like,
oh my gosh, you're so angry, like you're overreacting, Like
women especially, you're so emotional. You're allowed to have this feeling, right.
I'm not saying that you need to be like calm
about it for them. I'm saying you need to be
(33:15):
calm about it for you, calm about it for you,
because you're able to go in with a really clear
way of addressing what you need, a really clear way
of trying at least to show them why you feel
this way, why you feel like a boundary has been crossed,
why you feel angry. I hate when people have their
reality kind of discredited because they are emotional. When that
(33:37):
is like literally the thing that we've been talking about
this entire episode. This emotion is not shameful, it is
not bad, but it is bad when you let it
do things that hurt others deliberately, that hurt others without
a second thought to it, or that make it so
you can't actually get what you need out of a situation.
So I think it's really important here to have a
(34:00):
healthy relationship with anger and how it is expressed to
other people so that it can I think, be a
tool rather than an obstacle, and that in other situations
it can really help motivate change. It can help motivate
progress towards a better understanding between you and someone else
or a better outcome. So some final reminders, it is
(34:22):
totally okay to feel angry. It's telling you something. It
is just a sign of something you don't always need
to forgive. You don't always need to have an answer
to your anger. But you can't suppress it. You have
to find a way to either process it through communication,
(34:42):
through talking it out, through the thirty thirty intervention, or
channeling it. Finding how you can find a medium or
an outlet for this anger instead of letting it sit
in the body. I think you are not an angry
person just because someone has crossed your boundaries or repeatedly
(35:04):
crossed your boundaries. You're not an angry person because society
and your parents, and your family and everyone around you
has told you to hold onto that anger and not
let it go, has told you to be polite and suppressive.
There are a lot of positive ways that this emotion
can help us. It can help us in our relationships,
in our careers, in our lives in general. So I
(35:26):
hope this episode has helped you, especially if you have
a long term relationship with anger. I hope that it's
at least taught you something new, that you've learned something
about yourself or about the psychology. I found it really
fascinating because I think about anger a lot, and I
think about anger in my life and anger in my
family's life, and you know, sometimes it's like very easy
(35:48):
to just hide from it, and it's very easy to
go off and rant. But I've found that that doesn't
always leave me actually feeling better. So hopefully you've taken
that with you as well as always, if you've been
joy this episode. Please feel free to leave a five
star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening
right now. Make sure you give us a follow on
(36:08):
Instagram at that Psychology podcast, especially if you have an
episode suggestion or something that you want to say about
this episode. I would love to hear from you. We're
always taking ideas and feedback and make sure you're just
having a good time. I don't know where else going
with that, but make sure you're happy. Here's like a
little reminder to just take a second right now, ask yourself,
(36:31):
Am I happy? What could I do about it if
I'm not? That's a beautiful way to end the episode.
Hopefully we will see you back here next week with
another one.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you back for another episode. Today, we're going to
be talking about anger, one of our most primal human
emotions that I think it's neglected a lot in our
conversations around mental health and kind of the spectrum of
(00:48):
feelings that we have every day. Anger is such, I think,
a hidden private experience for a lot of us, something
to be kind of concealed behind politeness and cities, something
to be suppressed. You know. We're told that it's a
very ugly emotion, something that needs to be controlled, and
then it holds us back, and I think, yes, maybe
(01:09):
that is true. But anger is also a really important
emotional cue, and it also shows up in a lot
of our daily interactions. We are angry at a friend
for letting us down, at a coworker for messing something up,
or a partner for a past mistake that we just
can't let go of. There is a lot of invisible
(01:30):
anger inside. I think a lot of us anger that
lives below the surface and probably has done for a
long time. And like I said, we're really good at
accepting our kind of pretty and romanticized emotions like happiness
or even grief, even melancholy, But rage and fury they
seem to be left out. And I think I spent
(01:51):
quite a lot of time, quite a few years in
my early twenties kind of ruled by anger in ways
that I didn't realize. I was angry at the world.
I was angry at people who had overlooked me, or
hurt me, or who had been cruel to me, because
really it was easier to feel anger than admit how
insecure those experiences had made me. And I think I
(02:14):
thought that being angry almost made me tough. And I
let that feeling really make a lot of decisions for me.
I let it be projected onto people who didn't deserve that.
I let it turn to misery. And I wish that
I had known what I know now. So let's share
everything to do with the psychology behind anger and what
psychology has to say about this misguided and misjudged feeling.
(02:38):
I feel like we don't need a definition of anger.
Every human, even every animal, knows the feeling, the hot feeling,
the pressure in the chest, the twitching hands, that kind
of building urge to react and to scream. Anger is
one of our most primal, rudimentary emotions. It is an
emotion that mobilizes the body for action. It mobilizes our
(03:02):
fight or flight response, and that is what means that
it allows us to survive in response to a perceived
threat or a perceived injustice. These kinds of primal emotions
always really fascinate me because we have evolved so much
from being these creatures who are only ruled and driven
by survival and instinct. We're no longer out hunting in
(03:24):
the wilderness or fighting, you know, neighboring tribes. Maybe we
are in some senses, but our society has really evolved
to make sure we are all kind of prim and proper,
and we are suppressing these really raw emotions, and yet
they're still there. They haven't dissolved or disappeared with increased sophistication.
(03:45):
Society is just asking us to hide it. So the
main theory is that anger comes from primarily feeling threatened,
feeling powerless, or that there is some part of who
you are what you stand for that has been trespart.
So this article published in twenty seventeen, called anger is
a basic emotion and its role and personality. It describes
(04:07):
it really well. Our anger serves as an internal sign
that there is an obstacle or aversive situation that has
crossed an emotional or physical boundary that we need to
respond to. And our anger is one of the only
emotions that is strong enough to get us to that
point of acting. And this kind of relates to another
(04:29):
dimension of anger, which is that it can and is
often a secondary emotion. Let me explain that a little
bit further. Our anger often masks a much more vulnerable
feeling that we are not quite ready to confront yet.
It masks our fear, It masks our hurt, It masks
(04:49):
our disappointment, how powerless we feel. If you've ever been
so angry that you've cried, you'll know that, really well,
that is the true emotion, the sadness, the disappointment bubbling up,
and sometimes anger is less complicated than the emotion that
we really want to express. It's less complicated in the
situation we're in, and so we hide behind our rage.
(05:12):
Our anger is what makes us act when fear or
sadness or disappointment can't. And as it wears off, it
reveals what is truly at the root of that wrath,
that we are actually just really fragile, gentle creatures who
have been hurt. Maybe you are not angry as a person,
Maybe you just have a really delicate soul that's been
(05:34):
crossed a few too many times and you've reverted to
what feels easier. And when we see anger in any form,
regardless of its origin, psychologists can kind of broadly categorize
it into three different types. Firstly, we have hasty and
sudden anger, and this is really connected to like the
impulse for self preservation. So it occurs when we feel
(05:58):
really trapped in a situation all life. Something has just
pushed us to the point of explosion. It's very episodic
in nature. It comes from these brief, uncontrollable bursts, but
it doesn't mean that it hasn't been building up for
a while. Maybe this anger has been simmering, just waiting
for the final catalyst, the straw that breaks the Camel's back.
(06:20):
Then we have settled and deliberate anger, and this is
a reaction to a deliberate harm from someone else, something
that is perhaps long term. It's anger that simmers, that settles,
anger that creates actions that are less impulsive like hasty anger,
and more calculated. And then finally we have disposition or anger.
(06:42):
I think we all know people that are just angrier
than others. They have that like fiery gene, and this
dispositional anger is related more to an innate character trait
than to instincts or cognitions. This also brings me to
a really important point. Like I said, there are some
people who are just angrier than others, and there is
(07:02):
actually a disorder for this called intermittent explosive disorder, and
this is really related to our ability to control our impulses.
When we are unable to do that, the behavior that
we might exhibit is these repeated angry outbursts our failure
to control our aggressive impulses. And normally it's not something
(07:24):
that we want to do. It just feels like this
explosion that has come out of nowhere, and normally the
reaction is also very much out of proportion to the event.
That sparked that rage. This is obviously an extreme you know,
it is like a diagnosable disorder, but I think it
(07:45):
does go to show how anger is in one way
an emotion. For others it can become a personality trait,
and then for others it can be a disordered part
of who they are and how the world sees them,
how they see the world. So when we feel any
of these types of anger, though, something really unique happens
(08:05):
in our brain. There are entire regions devoted to processing
this feeling. And the reason that anger feels so fiery
is because firstly, it's almost entirely automatic and out of
our control. And secondly, it activates this part of our
brain known as the amygdala, one of the oldest parts
(08:28):
of our brain, perhaps the most primal. It's nestled deep
in there, right in the middle of our limbic system,
and it is what is responsible for some of our
most instinctual feelings, the ones that are going to ensure
that you survive, and those big ones are fear and anger.
Fear and anger, our ability to detect danger and respond
(08:51):
are intrinsically linked, sometimes hard to distinguish. It almost feels
like anger is fear in a more of like a
hidden form. Instead of wanting to show that we're scared,
we show that we are like dangerous, or we show
that we are angry. I think what's definitely true is
that when this part of the brain takes over, the
(09:13):
unconscious rational part of us tends to switch off. Anger,
as has been shown in a lot of research, causes
a reduction in our cognitive abilities and basically our ability
to accurately process external stimuli. We don't tend to think
straight anymore. We face a bunch of distortions to our
(09:35):
reasoning abilities. For example, like we might see something and overreact,
or we might see something and attribute blame to someone
else when in fact it is not their fault. And
I think this can create a feedback loop where as
our cognitions become more distorted, we're less able to see clearly.
(09:56):
The more blame we place on others, the more angry
that we feel. And I think it's at that point
when we sometimes see people do things that they normally
really wouldn't do that is not within their normal personality traits.
It doesn't mean that they didn't do it. They are
still accountable, but a lot of the time, they are
(10:17):
acting from a point of blind rage, and I think
that brings me to my main point. We don't know
what to do with our anger. We don't know how
to process it, whether we should forgive, how to forgive,
whether we should lash out, who we should tell, how
to get rid of this feeling, And so we suppress
(10:37):
the emotion, we let it show up in less than
ideal ways. It may also be because of how you
have come to see anger in the past, you've come
to see it as an emotion that we should avoid.
This often can be attributed to maybe being raised by
really angry parents or seeing anger from a previous partner.
(11:00):
We can see in those moments how ugly it can be,
especially when it has total control over someone. It may
also be that as a child, you are not given
permission to express emotions like anger or rage in a
safe space. You were punished for being frustrated or rightfully
(11:20):
angry angry in response to your boundaries being crossed. You
are not given access to your full emotional bandwidth. So
anytime you feel anger now as an adult, you associate
it with the shame and the punishment you received as
a child, or we vow not to be like the
person who has let anger control them in our past.
(11:41):
We know how much it hurts, We know how much
it harms those around us, we are told, and we
know that anger is bad and therefore to feel it
would make us bad, and so we push it down.
We begin to believe that to feel anger makes us
purely an angry person and nothing more. When we fear
(12:02):
any kind of emotional reaction, it naturally leads to avoidance,
and that is what causes us to suppress a feeling,
treat it like it's somewhat diseased. However, our body can
really only hold on to an emotion for so long,
you know. Eventually we run out of like cognitive resources
(12:24):
and cognitive strength to hold it down, so we end
up exploding. And the reason we end up exploding is
often totally unrelated to the origin of our anger. This
is what Freud called displacement, and displacement is part of
our unconscious defense mechanisms, in which we project and find
(12:45):
a new object for our anger rather than the original cause.
It is why you may be really angry at your
roommates or really angry at your younger sibling, but then
you end up snapping at someone on the internet, or
you end up like picking a fight with your partner.
This is just your body trying to find a way
to let out your anger in an environment that it seems,
(13:08):
you know, it seizes more appropriate. And really what it
comes from is originally like shame. It comes from shame
at your anger. It comes from conflict version, it comes
from not being able to put it in a place
where it's going to do good. And I think at
that point it's really useful to remember that, like any emotion,
(13:31):
anger is really just here to tell you something. It
is just the messenger. It is trying to communicate with
you that there is something in your life, an important
emotional issue, a sense of dissatisfaction, something that is bothering you,
a sense of injustice that is going against your values,
(13:55):
that is going against your desires, your ambitions. It has
been promised. And if we were to ignore anger or
kind of like try and opt out of it, what
we would actually be ignoring is a lot of important information,
and it would mean that we would never be able
to stand up for ourselves if our boundary were to
be crossed, because we could never allow ourselves to feel
(14:17):
wronged otherwise that would be allowing ourselves to feel angry.
Hopefully that kind of makes sense, right. I think about
this a lot in terms of people who are in situationships,
or if you're in a really fraught relationship and you
just don't let yourself bring up the things that have
bothered you, and you suppress it because to feel angry
(14:39):
might compromise that relationship. You don't want to be angry
in front of this person. Here's the thing, though, Eventually
that is going to boil over. It is going to
give to get to the point where you cannot tolerate
that for much longer. And that is why anger is
so crucial, because it is a really valuable motivator for change.
(15:02):
If we channel that initial impulse for violence and rage correctly,
we can actually really unlock a lot of movement in
our life. We can unlock a lot of creativity. I
know this really really well. You can displace it, that's
your first option. You can let it take over your
entire life and you can let it make you violent
(15:23):
and rageful. Or you can treat it like energy. Why
do you want to divert that energy in? What parts
of your life? Might it be useful? To have access
to that level of passion. Don't you want to kind
of almost really tap into its power rather than wasting
it on like a momentary explosion. You know. I think
(15:46):
the best analogy I've heard about this topic is from
this Ted talk called Anger is Your Ally, and the
speaker explains that anger is very much like a child.
You shouldn't let it drive the car. That is going
to be a terrible problem. But you also shouldn't stuff
it in the trunk either. You need to treat anger
like it's it's a passenger in the vehicle. You know,
(16:09):
you know it's there. It's just cruising along with you.
You're not trying to hide from it, but it's also
not on the front seat. I think this acceptance of
our anger is not to justify holding onto it by
no means. I think we often make the mistake in
believing that raging and seething in silence is somehow going
to hurt the person we're actually furious at, or that
(16:30):
it's productive, when actually when we really like hold on
to this rage, and we hold on to this like
aggressive instinct in this hurt, we are the person that
it does the most damage to, but is the answer
to that that we should forgive. Do we always have
to be the bigger person to let go of our anger? I, personally,
(16:52):
I don't think so. I think forgiveness is a privilege,
and you can, you know, you can still understand the
ways in which someone has hurt you, the way certain
actions have gone against your values, and not need to
subsequently hurt that person as well. To find release. You
can find peace with your anger. And sometimes I think
(17:14):
we really celebrate forgiveness. It's this like really pure and
good thing. You know, there's a lot of religious undertones
to that, and that it's going to make us so
much lighter and such better people. But I also don't
think that it's gonna help us release our rage. I
don't think that forgiveness is something that we should rush.
I think that anger actually needs an outlet, and it
(17:36):
needs to be processed, and it needs to be worked through.
It needs to be treated with respect before we get
to the point that we can be stoics about it.
So in that moment, you kind of have three options.
You can channel your anger through sublimation, you can create
something with it. You can use it as motivation, find it,
(17:57):
like find a positive way to process that feeling. You
can adopt the stoic approach, which is I'm just gonna
let this emotion wash over me without needing to reach
out and touch it. Or you can listen to the
impulse and you can explode. You can inevitably say things
you don't mean. You can lash out, you can burn
(18:17):
the fucking world down, and that might feel great in
the moment, but then you're kind of just left with
the remains there. You're left with a lot of burnt bridges,
and there's not much more to make of it. So
I think option one and two are our best bet,
but sometimes it's hard to get there, especially when anger
has really ruled you unconsciously for so long. So what
I want to talk about next is how we can
(18:41):
honor the emotion whilst also letting it serve us. So
all of that and more after this shortbreak. So the
two ways we've mentioned for dealing with anger so far
as by processing and channeling rather than letting it rule you,
(19:01):
and I want to talk through some specific tips for
doing so. Firstly, once again I want to clarify anger
is not an emotion to be avoided by any means.
It is good that you feel angry sometimes it shows
that you have boundaries, It shows that you have a
sense of injustice, It shows that you are protective of yourself,
and I actually think that's really really important. I also
(19:24):
think when we ignore anger, when we suppress it, obviously
we can explode YadA, YadA, yadda. But it also maybe
indicates that somewhere along the way you were taught that
to experience and show all your emotions was shameful. And
I think that the shame around emotions is one of
those kind of generational patterns and things that we are
(19:46):
taught by our parents that we need to unlearn. So
here's how we're going to go about it instead. Firstly,
when you are feeling this rage for any reason, avoid
what we like to call the catharsis myth. So asis
is this thing that provides release. It is this like
(20:09):
huge explosion of energy that makes us feel a lot better.
When we talk about anger, a lot of people talk
about venting, talk about ranting as a way to kind
of like release their anger effectively. They think about it
as like turning the tap on and just like letting
out some of the pressure. But a psychologist that I
(20:30):
was reading into about this put it very well. When
you vent your anger or blow off steam, when you
are screaming, when you're like really mad, when you're just
having this huge vent to your friend, it actually keeps
our arousal levels really high. Have you ever like had
a moment where someone has done something that has made
(20:51):
you so angry and you've walked away from it, you've
kind of thought about it, and then a few days
later your friend's like, hey, remember when that per and
did that thing, and it just makes you feel angry afterwards,
when you talk about it with them, you think that
it's going to make you feel better. I actually don't
think it really does. It's like using gasoline to put
(21:11):
out a fire. It just doesn't work. And I know
that that advice feels counterintuitive because we feel like when
we're venting, when we're ranting, that we're doing something about
this feeling, and therefore that we're processing it. However, I
think there are more sustainable ways of going about it
that don't keep us in such a state of active anger.
(21:37):
Like there's ways that we can exhaust the feeling. Is
probably a better way of putting it rather than continuing
to exacerbate it or accelerating it. So exercise is great,
particularly something cardiofocused, but I've also found boxing incredibly useful.
I think that although it can still increase arousal in
(21:57):
the moment, it also exhausts me afterwards. And you know,
therapy is great and all, but something really does have
to be said about just hitting a bag for an
hour and leaving being like super sweaty and just feeling
like this, all of this like emotion and feeling that
was buzzing in your body has has a place to land.
(22:17):
There's also this technique I have for processing rage and
actually a bunch of emotions, and I call it crazy dance.
And I've talked about this before on the show, and
it's what it sounds like. I want you to just
put on your headphones and just go absolutely wild, let loose.
I don't want it to look good. I don't want
it to be a cool dance. I want it to
(22:38):
be the most energetic crazy dance you can think of.
Legs moving, arms moving, body twisting. This acts as a
form of somatic therapy where we are able to release damaging,
pent up emotions using our bodies, and that is the
place where they're often stored. Right. So I want you
before and after to notice how your body feels, and
(23:01):
then where you've been holding stress. No, maybe you have
like muscle tension or pain. And afterwards I want you
to notice whether those parts have experienced a sense of relief,
whether there has been some kind of release in those muscles,
in those parts of your body. I think it works
in so many situations. Another way to go about it
(23:23):
is make sure that before you address your anger, you
calm your body by giving it enough oxygen. If you
think about it, when we're really really frustrated and upset,
our breathing gets a lot deeper, a lot faster, sorry,
a lot faster, and when it's really fast, like like this,
you're not taking in that much oxygen. When our brain
(23:46):
is low on oxygen, our thinking becomes a little bit
more like disturbed. It becomes a lot slower, And breathing
exercises are a way to firstly help us calm down,
but also get that oxygen back into our brain to
make a smart, informed decision. I know we hear a
lot about breathing exercises in therapy and in psychology, and
if you go to therapy you might it's like one
(24:07):
of those staples in a therapist toolkit. That and like
meditation and mindfulness. And sometimes when we hear about those
things too much, we discredit it. We think it doesn't work,
But it does. The science says that it does, and
it really helps in these situations. So deliberately practicing like
a relaxed breathing pattern, so breathing in for eight, holding
(24:27):
for four, breathing out for eight, it brings a lot
of our involuntary functions like our breathing under control. And
it shows us that other things we think are out
of our control, like anger, are actually something that we
have a say over, that we can almost operate and
move and have some decision making over. So control breathing
(24:53):
really can cause quite profound physiological changes. It lowers our
blood pressure, lowers our heart rate, it reduces stress levels
and levels of stress hormones in the blood, so all
of which I think is a really good start to
processing anger in whatever form you choose to. My favorite
form though, is through creative channeling. So creative channeling is
(25:13):
where you take your anger and you make something with it.
It helps us place our anger, express our anger, and
make it tangible. It takes us, you know, it takes
that emotion out of our mind and onto the page,
like if we're making a piece of art or a
sculpture or anything of a sort. It really allows us
(25:36):
to see this emotion as something that isn't just held
up in our brain, but has a place in the world,
a recognizable place outside of our body. Additionally, I think
when we're like partaking in something creative, it helps us
enter into a flow state. A flow state is this
kind of state of mind where we aren't so much
focused on what's bothering us, just the task at hand.
(25:57):
We feel really fulfilled by it, we feel really excited
by it, challenged by it, but also just extremely focused.
And it actually is amazing because whilst you're in a
flow state, it's really hard to think about more than
one thing. And so you come back from practicing this
creative exercise, from making something with not only a fresh
(26:18):
set of eyes, but with kind of like a renewed
sense of peace and a renewed sense of calm. This
mainly focuses on how you can manage your anger on
an individual level, but obviously someone has given us a
reason to feel angry, and I'm not just not saying
that in a way like that we should be endorsing blame.
But anger is often environmental, something has triggered it, and
(26:40):
so our reaction is also probably going to be environmental
or external or interpersonal as well. Here are some tips
for managing that, because we know anger does a lot
of damage when we don't have control over it. It
causes us to just do so many things that we
wouldn't normally do, often the expense of the people that
(27:01):
are closest to us. They are the closest to the epicenter,
They get the most kind of heat from this feeling.
So when you are processing your anger, when you feel rage,
avoid projecting, avoid displacing. As frou would say, I think
you need to acknowledge when you have allowed someone else
to be the target of your anger when they are
(27:21):
not the source. For example, you've come home like a
really rough day at work where people have just been
super rude, and you just snap at your partner and
it's not fair because and it's probably not fair to
snap at anyone really, but it's definitely not fair to
snap at this person who probably doesn't know what's going
on and is just wanting to make you happy and
just wanting to see you happy as well. And I
(27:45):
think it's easy to project onto those people because we
know that we kind of know that they're going to
take it in a way the way that we can't
snap at a stranger. But once again, they're not just
having and it will do harm to your relationships. So
in those moments, recognize Itologize to that person and explain why,
talk about why it is that you came into an argue,
(28:07):
that you came into a situation or a room or
an interaction feeling that rage, and make sure they know
what part of it may have been because of them,
or what part of it really wasn't to do with them,
so that they're not sitting there waiting for you to
just blow up, that they're not having an anxious reaction
to your feelings of rage. There's a strategy used in
(28:31):
anger management called the thirty thirty intervention that I think
is a really good and useful strategy for those moments
when you do displace your anger onto someone who doesn't
deserve it, or when you've just had a really rough
day and you know that this passion and this feeling
is really building up, So take thirty seconds to remove
(28:51):
yourself from a situation that maybe frustrating you. Thirty seconds
to do something else, particularly something with your hands, because
it shows our brain that we're doing something about this problem,
this problem emotion that we're having, or something physical to
release that bodily tension, and then thirty seconds to create
a coping strategy. Maybe that coping strategy will be all right.
(29:14):
I need a few more minutes to on a walk,
or I'm going to write down exactly why I'm upset.
I'm going to journal about this, and then I'm going
to come back to this person and we can talk
about it. I also say all the time, let people
make mistakes. Don't let other people always be the source
of your anger because they don't meet your expectations and
(29:37):
because you are lowering your threshold for their behavior. I'm
going to explain that a little bit more. But sometimes
I think we become angry because we have false expectations
about other people, and when they don't meet them, we
blame them rather than blaming ourselves for not being honest
about what we can expect from someone. The same way
that you're allowed to make mistakes and be your own person,
(30:00):
these people are allowed that as well. And I think
that our angest comes from a sense of like reality,
the reality we want not matching up with kind of
what is actually going to happen. And sometimes that's fair
to be angry about, right, Like the reality is you've
expect everyone around you to be really, really nice and
kind and someone isn't. That makes you angry. But if
(30:21):
the reality is, oh, I expect my partner to have
done like every single chore in the household, even though
he also works full time, and you come back and
he's just gotten home before you and he hasn't done that,
and reality doesn't meet you know, blah blah blah. They
don't think it's fair in those times to be angry.
Let other people make mistakes. And also when you're really
(30:43):
frustrated about something, when you really feel like something is
so hard to like go of, you're so filled with
rage that it's not going anywhere, don't say you're over
it when you're not. Don't pretend that you are fine.
That is just another form of suppression, and it is
going to come up later. I think a lot of
(31:06):
the time we really want to be forgiving, and we
want to pretend that the emotion just isn't there because
it is so uncomfortable to feel, and we hear it
all the time. Someone is really upset by something and
they go, it's fine, I'm fine, Like, let's move on,
I don't want to talk about it. No, No, I'm over,
I'm over. I forgive you. It's very easy to say
(31:26):
those words as well if you're a people pleaser and
if you feel like your anger is not justified. But
this is your reminder that really take that closing of
the feeling, that closing of the trigger, that closing or
whatever is caused your anger. Make sure you take the
closing of that chapter seriously. Don't close it too soon,
don't close it prematurely, because it will bubble and it
(31:48):
will fester and it will come up at the worst time. Finally,
if there is a particular person you are upsetter, practice
both assertive communication but also practice calm communication. Have you
ever had those moments where you know that a friend
is mad at you, or you know that you've done
something to upset someone and you go into the conversation
(32:10):
and you're just immediately defensive and you're immediately really upset
and you're immediately angry, or they're immediately angry. It is
so hard to ever resolve something when we come to
the table with this primal emotion at the forefront, rather
than like we said in the passenger seat. So think
(32:31):
through your initial reaction, the first thing you want to do,
and then sleep on it. It will always feel better
in the morning, and maybe you will have thought again
about burning the whole world down. Take a step back
from what you from the first thing that you want
to do in response to your anger, and make sure
you are expressing what you need in an assertive, yet
(32:54):
calm way. I often find this difficult when people are like,
oh my gosh, you're so angry, like you're overreacting, Like
women especially, you're so emotional. You're allowed to have this feeling, right.
I'm not saying that you need to be like calm
about it for them. I'm saying you need to be
(33:15):
calm about it for you, calm about it for you,
because you're able to go in with a really clear
way of addressing what you need, a really clear way
of trying at least to show them why you feel
this way, why you feel like a boundary has been crossed,
why you feel angry. I hate when people have their
reality kind of discredited because they are emotional. When that
(33:37):
is like literally the thing that we've been talking about
this entire episode. This emotion is not shameful, it is
not bad, but it is bad when you let it
do things that hurt others deliberately, that hurt others without
a second thought to it, or that make it so
you can't actually get what you need out of a situation.
So I think it's really important here to have a
(34:00):
healthy relationship with anger and how it is expressed to
other people so that it can I think, be a
tool rather than an obstacle, and that in other situations
it can really help motivate change. It can help motivate
progress towards a better understanding between you and someone else
or a better outcome. So some final reminders, it is
(34:22):
totally okay to feel angry. It's telling you something. It
is just a sign of something you don't always need
to forgive. You don't always need to have an answer
to your anger. But you can't suppress it. You have
to find a way to either process it through communication,
(34:42):
through talking it out, through the thirty thirty intervention, or
channeling it. Finding how you can find a medium or
an outlet for this anger instead of letting it sit
in the body. I think you are not an angry
person just because someone has crossed your boundaries or repeatedly
(35:04):
crossed your boundaries. You're not an angry person because society
and your parents, and your family and everyone around you
has told you to hold onto that anger and not
let it go, has told you to be polite and suppressive.
There are a lot of positive ways that this emotion
can help us. It can help us in our relationships,
in our careers, in our lives in general. So I
(35:26):
hope this episode has helped you, especially if you have
a long term relationship with anger. I hope that it's
at least taught you something new, that you've learned something
about yourself or about the psychology. I found it really
fascinating because I think about anger a lot, and I
think about anger in my life and anger in my
family's life, and you know, sometimes it's like very easy
(35:48):
to just hide from it, and it's very easy to
go off and rant. But I've found that that doesn't
always leave me actually feeling better. So hopefully you've taken
that with you as well as always, if you've been
joy this episode. Please feel free to leave a five
star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening
right now. Make sure you give us a follow on
(36:08):
Instagram at that Psychology podcast, especially if you have an
episode suggestion or something that you want to say about
this episode. I would love to hear from you. We're
always taking ideas and feedback and make sure you're just
having a good time. I don't know where else going
with that, but make sure you're happy. Here's like a
little reminder to just take a second right now, ask yourself,
(36:31):
Am I happy? What could I do about it if
I'm not? That's a beautiful way to end the episode.
Hopefully we will see you back here next week with
another one.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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