There are so many things for people to be angry about these days and there are a lot of angry people around. That’s not a surprise to anyone. It seems like people all over the world are angrier than ever. The kind of anger that brings people to therapy however is anger that is created very early in life and has little to do with world events, political outrage, or a bad day at the office. Like every other kind of emotion, there are different kinds of anger. There is an anger continuum and as it increases the more likely it is to interfere with one’s life, and the lives of others.
Some anger is visible, even explosive, and evident to all. This kind of anger draws the most attention since it almost always involves other people in a problematic way. Even when it involves inanimate objects, it involves another person or persons. The object is a stand in. I’m not speaking of the anger featured in movies, sports, or places where it is confined to socially acceptable expressions. More than any other emotion, anger causes the most social/relational damage. The examples are numerous and everyone knows someone who has had problems because of his/her inappropriate or unmodulated anger. Anger management is part of our vernacular.
Anger can result from a variety of sources, and not all anger is bad. Let’s consider an example of anger almost everyone is familiar with or has even witnessed: road rage. Here are two drivers. One is cutting in and out, honking his horn, tailgating, flashing his lights, clearly in a hurry, clearly in a rage, clearly dangerous. He’s obvious, he’s the poster child for Road Rage, and he’s the one the cops pull over.
Consider Driver #2. He’s the guy who parks himself in the left lane doing the speed limit or less with 40 cars lined up behind him. He refuses to yield because it’s his right and too bad for everyone else. He is aware of what he’s doing and even takes delight and satisfaction from it. Other drivers start trying to pass on the right, which is dangerous. The second driver is frequently honked at, given the finger or sometimes worse. In his case, everyone around him is angry. The second driver is breaking the law as much as the first one, he’s creating as much danger, yet he rarely gets pulled over. Question: Which driver is angrier? Which one is more dangerous?
My point is that passive aggressive anger, of which Driver #2 is a classic example, can be just as destructive, debilitating, and detrimental to oneself and others as overt anger. Covert anger can be just as angry as overt anger. It’s just expressed differently because it’s a different way of coping with a family problem. My road rage example can be applied to a marriage and particularly to a parent-child relationship. From there, it can extend to the outside world, including friendships and work relationships, etc.
For example, a passive aggressive husband can infuriate and frustrate a demanding and intrusive wife by being unresponsive. This could include not only emotional unresponsiveness, but also physical withdrawal via male sexual dysfunction, often experienced as a form of withholding and rejection by his wife. Similarly a chronically impatient and irritated parent can produce a passive aggressive child who drives him crazy by constant dawdling and other forms of “lateness.”
Passive-aggressive anger is often not
thought about or even felt by the person who “employs” it. A clue that passive aggressive anger is present is that everyone around the
person is feeling irritated or angry. Elementary Ed. teachers are well aware of this
as are parents. What better way to fight off adult control and power
if you’re small and powerless than to sharpen your pencil 10
times or do things very, very slowly. It works!
The kind of anger that brings a person to therapy is often “court ordered," meaning that someone else gave the person an ultimatum: Deal with your anger or you’re gone, or I’m gone, or you’re fired, or maybe Driver #1 got one too many speeding tickets. On the surface, it appears as though the person’s problem is simply about anger management and behaviorally it is. The person can no longer behave that way and be effective or tolerable. On an emotional level however, anger is much is more complicated that it seems. It can often be a smokescreen for other feelings.
When someone is very angry, that’s all anyone usually sees. It’s hard to hear what someone is actually saying when he's is yelling at you. It's not as though the person shouldn't be angry. Most of the time there is a legitimate reason for them to be angry. It is the intensity of the anger that causes problems. Intensity is also an indication that there is something else in play. The anger doesn’t fit the current “crime.” In these situations, I have found that the past is usually glued to the present. Whatever the intense anger is about in the moment has triggered a psychic, emotional wound from the past that never healed. Now those past wounds are glued to the current insult; hence the intensity.
Anger from the past can result from abandonment, loss, criticism, internalized parental anger, observation of parental anger, marital conflict, abuse, and any combination and permutation thereof. As noted with other emotions, the family dynamics that cause anger occur over time and occur often. Intense anger, violent anger, rarely if ever results from a one time event, and it always occurs within a relationship. (An exception would be war) Constant criticism, overtly or covertly delivered, causes children and therefore adults to feel inadequate, humiliated, or ashamed, and those feelings generate anger.
Authoritarian parenting (my way or the highway parenting), which has criticism built in, (you are never right) almost always produces anger, which can be expressed towards others, institutions, or oneself, depending on how the parental criticism was directed and how other family members have participated along the way. This would include extended family members as well. Sometimes parents have their parents cracking a critical whip, either literally or in their heads.
Verbal criticism can be more wounding and debilitating than physical abuse. Parental anger that is openly expressed in an unfiltered manner can be both frightening and debilitating to children. Criticism delivered angrily can have a long lasting if not a lifelong impact particularly as it relates to other authority figures. So can the passive aggressive withholding of affection.
True anti-social, or violent
aggression does not
result from violent video games, Goth clothing, or heavy metal music,
etc. The young people who embrace those adolescent/young adult
identities
are already angry and have been for a long time. Anti-social and/or violent behavior is created by complicated family dynamics in all
cases, except those involving neurological damage, which are very
rare.
Men tend to be more overtly angry than women not only because of testosterone, but also because boys are physically and emotionally more vulnerable than girls and women early in life and pretty much throughout life. Until late adolescence, girls are physically and emotionally more mature than boys in almost every way.
Girls are socialized to rein in their anger whereas boys get a mixed message at best. This allows girls to perform better in school and be generally more well adjusted. In fact, girls are often socialized to not express their anger enough. Boys, on the other hand, have historically been socialized to rein in the “softer” feelings. When you combine boys' vulnerability with a limited range of emotional expression, anger can easily become a default position and continue into adulthood.
Anger, more than any other emotion is most exacerbated by
alcohol and certain drugs, which men generally consume more than
women. Alcohol and pre-existing anger are frequent partners in
emotional conflict, relational harm, and societal damage. The anger-alcohol-more anger syndrome is a circular and repetitive pattern. When that happens the substance abuse has to be dealt with first therapeutically before the relationship problems caused by it can be addressed. Ironically marijuana, also consumed primarily by men, is frequently
used by them to modulate anger. It does so fairly well, but at the
high cost of motivation and achievement.
As noted, anger is an emotion that can effectively mask other emotions. Anger can be a defensive reaction that protects against helplessness, shame or loss of control. In the road rage metaphor, it’s hard to tell that Driver # 1 might be scared, feel trapped and phobic about confinement, (traffic) when he’s driving like an aggressive, angry jerk. Maybe he becomes frustrated when he suspects everyone else is incompetent, perhaps the way important people in his life have been. Maybe the act of driving itself allows the man (it’s almost always a man) to express anger or fears otherwise prohibited. Cars can be great equalizers. There are a number of possibilities, and none of them is an excuse for his behavior. It is important to note, however, that most of the underlying reasons for his road rage are not thought of by him while he’s enraged. They are unconscious and may remain so even when his rage has dissappated. Road rage incidents tend to be impulsive acts. Discovering the original source of his rage is still the key to gaining control of it.
Anger like many other emotions is one that people express most “comfortably” in the privacy of their own homes. This is because family members are the most trustworthy, the most tolerant, the least likely to leave, and in some cases, willing to play an enabling part in fanning the flames.
In some cases, when anger “runs” in a family, when successive generations are raised with or exposed to anger or severe deprivation of some kind, anger may become a problem throughout adult life. In situations like this, the therapeutic goal is to modulate the anger, help the person manage the anger more effectively, so that he/she can function.
Like all emotions, there is good and necessary anger. There is a certain amount of aggression that is required to move forward in life, to transcend developmental stages that must be broached. Sometimes anger can facilitate growth in a useful, healthy way. This is seen most often and most poignantly when it occurs between parents and adolescents. Anger is used by both parent and teenager to effectively navigate issues of autonomy, separation, independence, and most importantly, the losses that accompany them. Both parent and teen have conflict and sadness about the latter growing up and leaving, while the parent worries about his/her child’s safety in a complicated world. There is actually such a thing that I call “fear of empty nest syndrome,” which is all about loss. This is often expressed through angry power struggles. When these issues get lost in those battles, a therapist can serve as a mediator and clarifier.
If treated early enough, therapy can really make a difference in the lives of angry children and their familes. The first step is to determine where and when the anger occurs. Does it occur only outside the home? (school) Does it occur only in the home? Does it occur in both places? Focusing only on the child with behavioral approaches can sometimes actually be harmful because the child’s anger may not only be legitimate, but usually serves an important purpose in the family. The parents of angry children must be involved in their child’s therapy, including those of angry adolescents. A therapist can be a helpful liaison between parent and child.
Most angry people don’t actually like being angry and frequently have feelings guilt, remorse, and shame over the loss of control and/or the people they may have hurt. Whether a person seeks therapy for anger independently or is “court ordered," just being able to talk about it can bring relief and a fairly rapid reduction in it. Anger is an emotion that does not generally elicit empathy or compassion. It frightens and pushes people away. As a result angry people are frequently alone, left to stew in their own angry feelings and thoughts. It is a relief when they have a trained therapist who they can share that burden with.