Things I want my kids to know

We often think of anger as undesirable. It can feel like a sign that we are not climbing above our animal instincts, that it isn’t a rational or helpful thing to feel. Plus, we have often seen anger being used in harmful ways. If I were to ask you what you picture when I ask you to think of someone who is angry, what do you see?

The odds are, the image in your mind is not so much about someone being angry. It is about someone being aggressive.

Anger is a feeling, an emotion. It is something that we feel inside ourselves when we feel someone is doing something that is treading on our boundaries in some way. It is a part of the fight-or-flight response and is there to help us get ready to defend ourselves or push someone away.

However, the internal feeling of anger is not the same as the external expression.

Aggressive behaviour can come in many different forms. Baring teeth, looking at people in a way that makes them feel threatened. Squaring up to them. Raising fists. Pushing. Shoving. Hurting.

Aggression is one way that anger can be expressed, but it is not the only way. Sometimes people use a passive-aggressive mode: tutting, sighing, making sarcastic comments, or giving someone the cold shoulder.

And sometimes we just sit on our anger. We might carry around the tension but don’t say or do anything at all. Maybe out of choice, maybe because we can’t.

When we feel uncomfortable with our own anger, that might be because we have learned somewhere along the way that it is an emotion that is either shameful or dangerous. Perhaps we have learned that anger will lead to aggression, and we never want to do that. Perhaps we have learned that anger is something that others will judge us for.

Of course we don’t want to rampage about the place being aggressive all the time. The thing is, anger doesn’t always lead to aggression. There are plenty of people who feel very angry and don’t hurt people. It isn’t the anger alone: it is what is done with it.

When we feel that our anger is not allowed and that it is off the table, sometimes that can mean that when we feel our boundaries being crossed or our buttons being pushed, we don’t know what to do about it. You might feel angry not because you are being weird, but because someone is doing something that is bothering you.

It is helpful to think about anger as a sign that something is off, that a boundary is being crossed in some way. If you feel that your anger is unacceptable and that you mustn’t feel this way, sometimes that means that it is hard to express or hold your boundaries, because you have to swallow your feelings instead.

Ironically, that then means that we end up seething, carrying around resentment and tension that can’t go anywhere. In trying to avoid being angry, the anger builds.

If this is you at all, a useful place to start with getting more comfortable with your own anger is to practice letting yourself more of it, just for you. Practice noticing during the day moments where you feel angry, and practice either saying out loud or writing down exactly what you would say if you were allowed to be as angry and aggressive as you can, in a private space just for you. No filter. As sweary as you like.

The purpose of this isn’t necessarily to then go and say all of that to someone’s face, but to allow yourself to process the anger. As with any other emotion, when we squash it down it tends to get a bit stuck. If you can let it out, it helps.

If you can let yourself do this, then you might also eventually get to a point where the anger has dissipated a bit and has come down to a simmer. Then you might be left with what you might actually want to say or do.

Even if that’s ultimately the decision to do nothing at all, you are likely to feel better about it.

---

Thanks for reading. Until next week,

Ted

P.S. If you struggle to access anger, may I suggest a bit of Rage Against the Machine. That will do the job.