Many of us find anger disconcerting. "How do I get rid of my anger? I don't like feeling so angry. Anger is bad, right?" These are things I hear often from clients who find that themselves tripping over their anger. These same clients are surprised when I suggest that anger is not a negative emotion or something to ignore, suppress, or punish. Rather, it's a vital signal that you should be paying attention to. Like physical pain, which we dislike and try to avoid at all costs, anger shows us when something important is being violated, hurt, or destroyed.
Why We Suppress Anger
Many of us were raised in homes where healthy expression of emotion was not taught or modeled. Parents in survival mode with latchkey children are not well equipped to teach children that they can both express and cope with messy feelings; control and suppression were often the preferred way to deal with anger. If you were told to go to your room when you were upset, the underlying message is "your feelings are too much for us; go and deal with them alone, and rejoin when you've gotten rid of them." In some cultures, anger at a parent is even viewed as disrespect - "how dare you give me attitude?" Or perhaps one or both of your parents were explosively angry - throw alcohol, drugs, abuse into this mix and this is very scary and dysregulating for a child. It sends the message that anger is unsafe and dangerous, setting that child up as an adult to fear anger and to suppress or avoid it in themselves and others.
This doesn't mean that our parents were terrible people - just that perhaps at times they were at their wits end and didn't have great coping skills themselves. Any parent who's had a screaming toddler or an insolent teenager can understand how triggering it is for the adult to deal with big feelings in a child, which is why we can extend grace and compassion toward our parents for not teaching us how to manage anger better. However, it's important to recognize that anger is simply one of our core emotions and one that needs to be understood and managed well.
Stay tuned for Part 2: Why Anger is Vital for Emotional and Relational Health...
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