Anger Can Come Out Sideways

Suppressing anger doesn't do anything to lessen it. In fact, because anger is energy, suppressing it is almost certain to intensify it. You may be unable or unwilling to express how you actually feel in a given situation. Instead, you become angry at the first person you see -- perhaps your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend or kids. This displaced anger is anger that "comes out sideways." If you consistently suppress your anger and never deal directly with its source, you will develop the habit of shifting it to another target. When you misdirect your anger and allow it to come out indirectly at the innocent bystanders around you, you will undoubtedly hurt and anger them. Now both of you are angry at the same time. This is fertile ground for a situation to grow out of proportion to the circumstances.

Emotions Follow Thoughts II

When you become angry, it's because your thoughts have triggered your anger. Everyone has their own set of personal trigger thoughts that can easily set them off. Notice the dominant role played by your trigger thoughts, regardless of which of the following cycles is engaged:

One cycle begins when either an event occurs or a stressor develops. The event or stressor leads to a trigger thought. The trigger thought makes you angry. You get another trigger thought. You get angrier. You might have another trigger thought, and you get still angrier. The cycle feeds on itself, and your thoughts continue to fuel your anger. Suppose you've made a date to meet a friend for lunch, and your friend doesn't show up. You sit in the restaurant thinking about how this isn't the first time this friend has stood you up. This triggers your anger. You remember another time when this friend had let you down. You get angrier. How will you respond if your friend arrives or calls at this point?

The other cycle begins when you're minding your own business and suddenly a trigger thought pops into your head. The thought makes you angry. You get another trigger thought that makes you angrier...and so on. In this cycle, nothing in particular has happened to trigger your thought, but it's there nonetheless. Here's an example: Evening is approaching and you wonder whether your significant other will have to work late again. You think about how you've spent the past two evenings watching TV alone. You blame your partner for your loneliness. Your thoughts make you angry. You have the further thought that your partner doesn't really care about being at home with you. You get angier. How might you react when your partner finally walks through the door?

If you recognize that you are going around and around in either of these cycles, imagine yourself stepping out of the cycle and looking at the situation with an objective eye. You'll probably realize that in fact your friend has been there for you many times in the past, or that actually your partner has no choice but to finish that project at work.

Five Tips for Expressing Your Anger

OK, so you've heard that anger is a natural emotion, and that it's good to express it in a healthy way. Here are some tips to ensure that your expressions of anger are healthy ones:

1. Allow yourself to feel angry, but before you utter a word or take any action observe how you are feeling in your body, what you are feeling emotionally (that is, what feelings are under your anger) and what you are thinking.
2. Take responsibility for your contribution to the situation. Don't blame it all on the other person.
3. Avoid venting unproductively or ruminating about what triggered your anger. Doing either of these will only fuel your anger, causing it to intensify.
4. See if you can figure out a healthy resolution to the issue at hand. Ask yourself what needs to change in order for you to feel better. What specifically can you ask of the other person(s)? Remember, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
5. When you arrive at a chosen response, consider the impact it may have on others and on your ongoing relationships with them.

If you believe that your response will be more helpful than harmful, then you're ready to speak or act. If not, you've got some more thinking to do before you respond!

Emotions Follow Thoughts

Whatever uncomfortable feeling you may be experiencing -- anger, sadness, disappointment, hurt, rejection -- telling yourself not to feel that way won't help at all. Tell yourself not to feel hurt, and you'll continue to feel hurt. Tell yourself not to feel rejected, and you'll continue to feel rejected.

The key to changing your feelings is to change your thoughts about a particular situation. When your thoughts change, your feelings will shift. For example, suppose a friend declines an invitation to go somewhere with you, and you feel hurt and rejected. Take a look at the thoughts that are causing you to feel that way. Perhaps you're telling yourself, "If she were really my friend, she'd go with me no matter what" or "I guess she thinks that doing things with other people is more important than spending time with me." These are irrational thoughts that you've concocted in your mind. If you challenge these irrational thoughts with thoughts like, "Next time I'll give her more notice when I want her to go somewhere with me," your hurt and rejection will most likely fade. You'll feel more confident and in control because you've developed a plan of action for the future.

Fear of Anger

Both men and women can be equally fearful of expressing angry feelings. If you are hesitant to express your anger, you may be afraid of what may happen if these feelings somehow get out. You may fear that the other person will criticize or disapprove of your anger. If you don't know how to ask for what you want, it can be frightening even to try. You wind up feeling confused, because anger and fear are incompatible. Why? Because the purpose of fear is to alert you to danger. Fear of anger would send the alert that anger is dangerous. There are two responses to fear: fight or flight. Therefore, if anger is perceived as dangerous, you would either fight it (by resisting it) or flee it (by avoiding it).

Anger is a tool that signals that something needs to change. It helps you to rally the strength needed to take action. If you are fighting or fleeing the tool that is supposed to be helping yuou, you lose the ability to use the tool effectively and derive benefit from its use. Fearing anger, or believing that it has no place in a work or personal relationship, sabotages that relationship. When people work hard to maintain "niceness," they never learn how to communicate their uncomfortable feelings. To avoid confrontation they stop talking and withdraw physically and emotionally from the person they're in conflict with. Sometimes people take satisfaction in the fact that they never display angry feelings toward anyone. They never get to experience the benefits of expressing anger in an effective, non-harmful way.

Get Angry -- It's OK!

Some people are uncomfortable with the emotion of anger. Not only do they ignore or deny their own angry feelings, but they try to ignore and deny the angry feelings of others, as well. They believe that all anger is bad, and that people should strive not ever to be angry. Sometimes this belief is rooted in a person's religious background. Sometimes it's the result of a person's very bad experiences with anger in the past. If a person has never experienced healthy, not hurtful, expressions of anger by others, it would be difficult for them to imagine that anger can be anything but harmful and bad.

Another misguided message about anger is that it's "not nice." Many women heard this when they were growing up. Recall the rhyme that starts, "Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice." As a result, they learned to suppress their anger and other uncomfortable feelings in an effort to be likable. Some women (and some men) reach adulthood totally out of touch with their feelings because for so long they have been denying that certain feelings exist.

When anger is not accepted as a normal, healthy emotion, it's easy for people to reach the conclusion that there's something wrong with them if they get angry. This is far from the truth. Actually, there may be something wrong if a person never gets angry. What we need to monitor is not whether we become angry, but rather what we do or say when we become angry.

Anger Can Be Useful

Anger is useful when it serves as warning that something's just not sitting right with you. You may be facing a situation where it's necesary to set boundaries to prevent another person from taking advantage of you. You may need to set limits on how much you are able to do to help someone, because you're feeling depleted yourself. Whatever the source, your anger can strengthen you so that you are able to assert yourself or face an upcoming conflict.

Once you receive an anger alert, stop and pay attention to it. Identify what exactly has triggered your anger. What exactly is the issue? Think about how you might be able to address the issue rather than allowing your anger to get out of control. Taking time to think can help you to resolve the problem or situation more rationally and more effectively.

Anger Can Be Triggered by Beliefs and Expectations

Your perception of the people and events around you affect how you respond when you feel angry. Think of your perception as the lens or filter through which you view the world. Perceptions, in turn, create beliefs. For example, suppose your supervisor, Tom, is preventing you from doing something the way you want to do it. Your perception is that Tom's way is less efficient. This leads you to believe that he is wasteful. In the past you have felt slightly irritated with his approach to problem solving. Now, however, you might overreact the next time his course of action is less than the utmost in efficiency. Your belief that Tom is wasteful has set you up to overreact.

Expectations are also set ups for anger. For example, if you throw a huge birthday party for a friend, you might expect that when your birthday comes around your friend will reciprocate. Instead, your birthday comes and your friend merely sends you a card and a gift. Why do you feel enraged? After all, your friend did remember your birthday and was thoughtful enough to acknowledge it. Normally you would have felt appreciative. Instead, when your expectation was not met your anger was triggered.

When you feel angry, observe how you might be viewing a person or event. Awareness of your triggers can help you to regain a more balanced perspective of a situation and enable you to keep an angry response in check.

Temper: When You Lose It, You Lose a Lot More

Losing your temper may feel like a release in the moment, but in the long run there's a lot more at stake. In addition to damaging your body, chronic uncontrolled anger damages your relationships and your quality of life. When you think about what triggers your out-of-control anger, you'll probably find that your triggers are people or situations that you are trying to control in order to get something you need or want. Because you cannot control what another person says or does, and often cannot control the outcome of certain situations, you are wasting energy that will eventually run out. When this happens, you feel even more frustrated. At the same time, you push your family and friends away, because no one likes to be controlled. When you push people away, they're not inclined to listen to you or to give you what you need or want.

The next time you feel like exploding in anger, stop and ask yourself who or what you're trying to control. See if you can avoid playing the role of a Controller and instead find a way to ask directly for what it is you need or want. By doing this you may gain a lot more than you would otherwise lose.

Angry Feelings Are Natural; Anger Behavior is Learned

Many people reach adulthood without ever learning how to respond to anger in a healthy way. Kids tend to imitate their parents. If parents express anger in hurtful ways or fail to express it at all, their children will follow their example. In some families, adults unexpectedly react angrily over seemingly minor situations. In others, people frequently snap at each other with impatience. In still others, anger is pent up, leaving each person to simmer and act moody, dwelling privately on bad feelings and resentment. Finally, there are those families who deny anger because they believe they "shouldn't" ever be angry. However a family chooses to deal with anger will have a significant impact on the children. How the children learn to react to anger and experience it early in their development will affect how they will react to anger and experience it later on as adults.

The good news is that behaviors that have been learned can be unlearned, and new behaviors can take their place. It takes a willingness to observe yourself, a clear idea of how you would like to do things differently, conscious effort to change your behavior, and the ability to be patient with yourself when you fall back into old patterns.

Angry? Will a Punching Bag Help or Hurt?

People tend to think that one way to release their anger is by punching a pillow, a punching bag, or taking it out in some other way on an object. The belief is that this kind of behavior is cathartic, and that it will help a person to empty themselves of anger. Actually, the opposite occurs. Physical aggression ratchets a situation up rather than serving as a release. Watch any group of kids who play aggressively. You'll notice that the longer they play the more aggressive they become.

If you resort to aggressive behavior in response to anger-provoking situations, you are reinforcing an association between anger and aggression. Physical venting may feel good in the short term, but in the long run it doesn't help you to manage the anger-provoking situation, and can cause it to become worse, because your anger escalates.

Fight or Flight and Violence

Nearly every day we hear stories in the news about people whose livelihood or significant relationship has been threatened, and who have resorted to violence as a result of the threat. When a person is facing a change in life as they knew it, most often the emotions that arise are anger and an underlying fear. Thoughts like these run rampant through the individual's mind, triggering their fight-or-flight response: "I'll never get another job, and I'll end up homeless" or "No one else will ever want to be with me, and I'll end up lonely and dying alone." The anger and fear that accompany these thoughts can grip a person so tightly that they can't think through to a rational solution.

In the meantime, his or her body is surging with hormones, prepared to fight and defend. Unfortunately, this is the type of situation that all too often leads to violence. If you find yourself overcome with anger and fear over the loss or threatened loss of a job or a loved one, seek the support of someone you can talk with and who will listen to your feelings without judging. Don't let your fight-or-flight response determine the ultimate outcome of the situation.

Angry Supervisors -- How to Respond to Them

Suppose it's an extremely busy day at work. You've got a pile of paperwork to process, or a long list of customers to contact or visit, or many service calls to make, or a huge project to tackle. You're going about your day, trying to get as much as possible accomplished and to do a good job at it. Suddenly your supervisor approaches you with a scowl on his or her face, pointing out that an error had been made the previous day which created all sorts of problems for many people, and blaming you for having made the error. Your supervisor shouts, "This isn't a kindergarten! Stop playing around and do your work the way you're supposed to do it!" Several of your co-workers are standing around, watching this scene. You know that the error wasn't yours, because it involved a piece of work that a co-worker had performed. You feel angry over having been accused of something you didn't do, humiliated over having been dressed down in the open work space, disrespected because you have been a loyal employee who always tries to do your best, and disappointed that the co-worker responsible for the error is standing close by witnessing this episode but not owning up to it. What do you do?

Let's look at your options:

1. Shouting back at your supervisor that it wasn't your error.
2. Remaining silent, but slamming things around to show your anger.
3. Apologizing to your supervisor just to keep the peace and hoping the incident will blow over quickly.
4. Looking your supervisor in the eye (respectfully), acknowledging that an error had been made, and stating that you will do whatever is necessary to correct the problem.

Option 1 might cost you your job or a negative notation in your personnel file. Option 2 will perpetuate your supervisor's current impression that your behavior is childish. If you follow Option 3, you will ignore your own feelings about the situation, running the risk that they will "come out sideways" some time in the future.

Your best bet is Option 4, because it will not fuel your supervisor's current anger and it leaves the door open for you to express your feelings about the situation later. When things have cooled down, you will be able to speak with your supervisor privately, empathize with his or her anger over the error, and express your surprise over having been blamed because the error wasn't yours. If you do this respectfully, you can set the record straight and maybe even get an apology from the boss! It's even possible that in the future your supervisor will think twice about how to handle situations in which errors are discovered.

Healthy Anger -- How to Recognize It

To determine whether your anger is healthy or destructive, ask yourself these questions:

• When I feel angry, how angry do I get -- do I get out of control, not thinking about what I am saying or doing? Or do I step back for a moment and think about what I want to say and what I want to do?
• What kinds of situations most often make me angry -- am I aware of my personal anger triggers, or do I "fly off the handle" in a wide variety of situations?
• How do I and the people around me feel after I've expressed anger -- do I feel guilty or remorseful for the way I handled the situation, and do the people around me feel hurt or offended?

If you get out of control, fly off the handle, and feel guilt or remorse when the angry incident has passed, your anger is unhealthy, and it's time to change your unhealthy reaction to anger before it progresses.

Healthy anger feels very different. You know your anger is healthy when you are able to:

• Feel your anger
• Take a step back to explore its source
• Think about whether it's worth addressing and, if so,
• Use "I messages" to express how you're feeling and
• Respectfully state what changes you would like to see in the other person's behavior or in the situation.

You come away from a healthy expression of anger feeling satisfied that you handled it well. Because you have not hurt or offended those around you, they are better able to respond to your feelings and work with you to reach a resolution.

Passive Aggressive -- Does the Shoe Fit?

You may find that you neither act aggressively nor express your anger directly. If so, you may be acting passive aggressively. In passive-aggressive behavior, a person tries to appear to agree with the wishes or demands of others but, in fact, passively defies them. This passive defiance is a form of aggression, hence the term passive aggression.

People can become extremely skilled at expressing anger in this way. They may be hurt, but they don't ever talk about their hurt. Instead, they focus on everything that's wrong with the situation, the other person or the relationship, still remaining silent about their feelings. Because they do not express straightforwardly how they feel, they never get what they really need -- another person to acknowledge what they are feeling.

Sometimes people become passive-aggressive because they fear others' reactions to their direct expressions of anger and they want to "keep the peace." Time and time again they keep their disappointments, irritations, frustrations and stress to themselves. Eventually they begin to pout, criticize or stonewall the people around them -- typical passive aggressive behaviors. If this sounds like you, keep in mind that, while you may avoid direct confrontation in the present, in the long run passive aggression can ruin a relationship.

The Difference Between a Feeling and a Thought

When I ask a client how he or she felt in a particular situation, there are two words that signal to me that the client is expressing a thought rather than a feeling. Using the word "like" or "that" immediately after the word "feel" is not an expression of a feeling. It is a thought. For example, "I feel like you're not understanding me" and "I feel that you don't understand me" are thoughts. Thoughts often contain judgments. Before you know it, you'll be arguing about whether or not the other person understands you. "I feel misunderstood" is a feeling statement. Notice that when you open by expressing a feeling you don't use the dreaded "you" word. You are not accusing the other person of misunderstanding you; you are merely stating how you feel. Consequently, the other person is more likely to remain open to what you are saying and to respond to your feeling rather than becoming defensive. It's a subtle difference, but it could change the entire tone of your conversation.

Perception: Real or Imagined?

Anger is triggered by a person's perception of an event or a situation. It does not matter whether the perception is accurate or distorted. All that's needed is the perception -- the lens or filter that you look through. Have you ever gotten upset over someone or something, only to be asked, "What are you so upset about? It's not such a big deal!" In those situations, your perception of the situation was different from that of the other person. Likewise, there are probably times when another person has been upset, and you could not understand why he or she was so bothered. It's all in a person's perception.

When you look at life through a rigid or a biased lens, it is difficult to entertain the idea that another person sees things differently from you. You tend to believe that your perception is the real, accurate one and that the other person's is wrong. Such is the basis for many arguments between partners, friends, and family members. The next time someone sees something in a different light from the way you see it, accept that their perception is different. Agree to disagree. Let there be room in your relationships for two opposing points of view.

Unless you're dealing with a life-or-death situation in which the outcome will really make a difference ten years from now, it doesn't really matter whether a perception is real or imagined.