By Caylen Sunderman, M.S., Marriage and Family Therapist
“Emotions were like wild horses and it required wisdom to be able to control them” – Paulo Coelho
You’ve probably heard someone tell you to “think positive” in your lifetime, or tell you that negative emotions are bad or poison. Sometimes it works to think positive, sometimes it lands on a tender nerve. When someone is EXPERIENCING hurt, pain, shame or anger, and they are told to change their thinking, it can actually exacerbate the negative emotions. The truth is that we have a full spectrum of emotions, some positive, some negative, but every emotion is important. The old view of emotion is that if you change how someone thinks, you can change how they feel and act. The new view of emotion is that feeling and thinking are inseparable; that thinking and feeling involve the whole brain and can not be cleanly removed from each other. This is hopeful for us therapists and those of us interested in true and sustainable change because it says that we can find a balance of both thinking and feeling. The more we understand feelings and emotions, the more we can connect and be who we want to be.
Emotion can be unconscious (the lens we wear) and conscious (the way we act). Feelings are explicit, and we know we’re feeling them. This is the difference between emotions and feelings: we don’t always know we’re in a state of emotion, but we do always recognize a feeling. We are ALWAYS in a state of emotion, good or bad, whether we realize it or not! If emotions are the wild horses, they can run rampant without a balance of wisdom to guide emotion.
One of the most common emotions I see in my therapy practice is ANGER. Anger can result from old events or current events. Some people come in to process old anger from situations such as parental misconduct or abandonment; or new anger from things like affairs, betrayal, or job stress. Anger is confusing for people because we don’t like feeling it, and we aren’t clear at times why we’re feeling it.
Why is it important to better understand anger? Because if we don’t, it can be the catch-all emotion. Anger is often a reaction to another emotion, such as shame or hurt. When we get clear on how and when we get angry, we become more emotionally intelligent and attuned to those around us, and our relationships can thrive.
Anger itself isn’t BAD. When we ‘lean in’ and understand it, we can actually nurture and grow our relationships, or draw appropriate boundaries with people who aren’t helpful to our emotional health.
Anger means “I’ve been violated.” This can be a real or a perceived violation of a boundary or a value system. This is important to understand because we have to learn to sort this out so that we can learn what is real and what is perception. Discernment around the real or perceived violation is where we get control over how our anger impacts our relationships. If we respond to a perceived violation, we can hurt our relationships without intending to. For example, we can be too hard on our children if we perceive them as having bad intentions and our discipline can land as harsh and disconnecting instead of creating growth and learning. If we get clear on why the child’s behavior wasn’t acceptable (based on a value), they can learn and begin to cultivate their own values.
We have to learn to give anger a “voice,” and if we’re not careful, the voice it is usually given is sarcasm. When I see sarcasm in my office, it is usually because the angry person is unable to express the anger because either they were “trained” by their family that anger is unacceptable, or they are afraid of some level of rejection if their anger is voiced. Sarcasm, when tied to anger, will almost never allow you to get your needs met or lead to effective repair in the relationship. There is actually a LOT left unsaid when sarcasm is present, because it triggers a response from our partner and in turn tends to produce a fight or hurt feelings.
So how do we determine if anger is real or a perception? We identify VALUES and BELIEFS. Anger is real and deserves to be addressed when it is a violation of our values. This is how we use anger to move our relationships forward. If someone steals from us, it makes sense that it is real anger because our trust has been broken. If your partner calls you a name, it is valid because your value of respect has been violated. When we identify our values, then anger can actually be productive because it helps us heal our relationships or draw stronger boundaries with others. Here is a great list of values to help you get started in identifying your value system.
The moral of the story is that we are supposed to experience all emotions, even the yucky ones like anger. The more we learn about our emotion and our values, the more choice we get in how we feel and how we do relationships. Don’t be afraid of anger, get curious about it!
~Caylen Sunderman, M.S., Marriage and Family Therapist
The Imperfect Therapist 