Putting a lid on anger
Here’s how we cope with seeing red.
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I’ve always prided myself on staying cool, calm, and collected in my relationships and daily life; but I can feel myself gravitating toward anger more these days… and I don’t like it. What do you all do when rage feels like the easiest emotion to grab?
Ash: For me, rage is a rarity. I do experience anger, but seldom is it where my brain turns to. I don’t know if I do or do not have a good relationship with the emotion — and let’s be honest, my bipolar disorder and autism make me question if I am able to have any good relationships with emotions — but I do know that anger and screaming and hurtful language left big stains on my brain from being so exposed to it growing up. Anger is mixed with feeling bad or guilty, which is just a recipe for my brain to slip into depressive thoughts over self-worth because of that harmful connection my brain has latched onto out of safety. And it has latched onto not expressing anger toward or around others because I know the devastating results it can have when it’s misdirected, intentionally or otherwise.
As I don’t feel super well equipped to answer since my brain seldom rages, my main suggestion is to allow yourself to feel it without shame but then to take a step back and unpack it. Sometimes a basic need isn’t being met (hello, hangry!), sometimes you’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious, sometimes someone has wronged you, or maybe sometimes you’re just beating yourself up. Feel what you need to, but make sure you give yourself that grace and time to reflect if it’s something that is troubling you to so often experience.
Jess: Anger has often been one of my more familiar emotions. I’m not someone who flies off the handle or even necessarily acts out my anger, but I am someone who feels a lot of it. When I was younger, I couldn’t understand why people always thought I was “so sweet” when I was a constant storm internally. That also led to people being extra surprised when I showed any anger or “negative” emotion (“negative” in quotes because I don’t actually believe these emotions are negative, but I do understand that’s how we’re socialized). As so many of us traumatized and neurodivergent folks have experienced, I’ve also often been cast as a “troublemaker” when bringing up patterns or things people find uncomfortable — even when doing so as kindly as possible and with potential solutions.
Over the years, my anger has morphed quite a bit. When I was younger there was a lot of unmanaged trauma, and I didn’t always have the language to express what was affecting me. As I’ve learned and healed, I’m better able to sort through what I’m feeling and better able to express what’s going on.
What I’ve realized is that I have two general types of anger. One is rooted in emotional dysregulation, and one is rooted in love.
Emotional dysregulation anger is what I call that burst of anger that happens when I’m overstimulated and my shirt catches on the doorknob, or that car cuts me off in traffic, or whatever other inconvenience sets off an internal storm. It’s the shit that pops up seemingly out of nowhere (it’s never out of nowhere), feels jarring to me, and sets off my fight or flight response. The best way I’ve learned to handle it is to LET IT BE. What I mean by that is not judging myself for feeling that way, not compounding it by shaming myself, etc. “OK, I’m really fucking angry right now. Cool.” There’s some research that suggests emotions last about 90 seconds, and when they last longer than that, there’s something else going on. I can work with that. Once that initial couple of minutes has passed, and I’ve just let the anger be there, then I can breathe or use another tool to move back towards emotional regulation. I don’t have to know why I’m angry or what’s going on under the surface at that point. Psychoanalyzing myself while I’m dysregulated just leads to more dysregulation for me. So I try not to do that or take it out on myself. I’m a work in progress. 😅
Righteous rage is what I call that deeper, more lasting feeling. It’s not based on my emotions so much, and it’s always rooted in love. When someone harms someone, when unjust policies are passed, when someone acts like a jerk interpersonally — it’s natural to feel anger in these situations. Righteous rage usually shows up with a surge of energy that propels me to action, but from a grounded place. It’s not fight or flight action, it’s generative.
On the surface, they may both appear as “anger,” but the internal mechanism and how they impact me are quite different. Distinguishing between the two has helped me immensely in my understanding of myself and how I react to the feeling.
Kat: If you met me in person, you’d be surprised to hear that anger is an emotion I’ve been defaulting to more and more lately. Why? As much as I’d like to solely blame the end of the world, it’s mostly because my anxiety is at an all-time high and my chronic pain has zapped all of the patience from my body. It appears that in my middle age I’ve lost all of the mental padding that used to be devoted to being optimistic and sunny-side up! Neat!
One of the most important things I’ve learned about my mental health over the past seven years or so is that my anger is rarely rooted in actual rage. Sure, people’s behaviors fire me up sometimes, but more often than not I find myself numb, exhausted, disappointed, or in utter disbelief with those behaviors. So when I put two and two together that my anger typically shows up when I feel my emotions spinning out of control, or when I have nothing left in the tank thanks to my chronic illness symptoms, it changed how I approached it. First things first: I have to continually remind myself that I do not like who I am as a person when I am angry. It’s a really uncomfortable way for my brain to move through the world, and I don’t get off on the adrenaline spikes or confrontation. Calling attention to this shift has been really paramount for me, because it makes me conscious of the behavior and motivates me to change it.
Side note: I think it’s really important to call out that anger, like a lot of other emotions, can become a default setting based on your environment or upbringing. For example, if you grew up in a household where yelling was literally how your family communicated with each other, raising your voice — along with other anger-tinged behaviors — doesn’t necessarily feel bad, it just feels like the only way you know how to interact with the world. Anger can literally be hardwired into our psyches, forcing us to get to know who we are around those sharp edges; and it’s hard as hell to deprogram that fight-or-flight out of ourselves. If any of that sounds familiar, or you’re in that “deprogramming” process right now, I’m sending you love! You’re doing great.
The next thing I do when I sense myself in an angry state is to go for a walk, or any kind of cardio that my body can manage that day by myself. No company. No conversation. Sometimes I won’t even blast music if I think it’ll press my buttons in the wrong way. Maybe it’s just me, but I continue to be shocked (insert Pikachu face here) by how much raising my heart rate and breaking a sweat can act like a program reset.
Lastly, and this is something I’m trying to get even better at, is not putting myself in situations where I know my fiery emotions will often get worse or come back to bite me. I’ve canceled plans, I’ve bailed on reaching out to someone when I told them I would, and I’ve even gone as far as telling my partner that it’s a don’t-mess-with-me kind of day, and that he’ll likely recognize (and love) me more in the morning if we just don’t talk a lot in the moment.
All of that might not sound revolutionary to you, but as a people-pleaser to my core, it bucks against every single tendency I have to push through at the expense of myself!
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