Are you always angry with blowups
or stewing about something?
There's probably some hidden hurts stirring it up.
I'm going to show you how to analyze your anger.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and I make mental health education videos.
Our emotions are the way we express ourselves
and affect how we feel about ourselves,
the decisions that we make, what we believe about the world,
and how we interact with others.
Renowned psychologist, Dr. Paul Ekman,
identified six basic emotions that we all have.
Fear, surprise,
happiness, sadness,
disgust, and anger.
From this group of emotions, the most destructive
to relationships is anger.
Yet, it's a normal emotion that we all have.
How you express your anger has a lot to do
with your personality and your upbringing.
If feeling angry makes you feel vulnerable and exposed,
you may suppress your anger and not express it
because you fear losing control.
Suppressed anger is a form of avoidance
and can lead to anxiety and feelings of depression.
On the other hand,
some people don't filter their anger at all,
and as soon as something triggers them,
they express their anger with aggression,
either yelling or sharp words or actions.
And action may be as simple as deleting you from my contacts
or blocking your messages because you say things
that make me angry or hurt my feelings.
I could insult you back,
but because that's not my personality,
I wouldn't know what to say.
So rather than invite an argument with you,
which I'll probably lose and make me feel worse,
I just delete you.
Sometimes, the immediate expression of anger is a good thing
and allows you to purge the negative feelings and move on.
But it can be a bad thing when your response
is too aggressive, like blowing up at people
or having a reaction that's out of proportion
to the trigger, like feeling heat in your chest
from anger when someone interrupts you too many times,
and the person doesn't even realize how
much their interruptions bother you.
Another sign of pathological anger is chronic anger
when you're always angry or annoyed about something.
So anger can be adaptive if it helps you prune away
negative situations or experiences
like the example of deleting people who upset you,
or it can be maladaptive when the expression of it
does more harm than good.
When dealing with maladaptive anger,
it's helpful to look at what lies underneath the anger.
And one way to examine your anger is to think of it
as an iceberg that has a visible part above the surface
of the water, but then a much larger part
lying beneath the surface that you can't see.
The visible part is the situation
that triggers your angry response.
In the middle, just below the surface,
is your hurt feelings and unmet needs.
Then at the deepest layer is fear.
Let's look at an example of how to analyze this together.
Think of a situation that triggered your anger
and caused you to blow up at someone
in a way that seemed excessive,
or maybe you didn't blow up, but you felt very angry
as if someone poked a sore spot on you
and now you're aggravated, distracted,
and just in an overall bad headspace.
Here's a hypothetical example.
My sister Jane asked to borrow $500
from me to start a new business.
She quit her job because the company
no longer allows her to work from home,
and she didn't want to have to drive to an office anymore
and wants to be her own boss.
I know Jane, and I know that although she was being paid
for an eight-hour day, she probably only worked
a couple of hours each day.
She doesn't have a whole lot of ambition,
and I can't see her making enough money
to replace her old job.
When I tell her this, she says...
- [Jane] Why can't you just be on my side this one time?
- implying that I don't trust her, which I don't.
So, to be supportive, I give her the money.
Months passed and I don't really get many details
about how Jane's new business is going.
Whenever I ask, she just says, "Oh, it's fine."
We get together at a family dinner
and my mom asked Jane how she likes her new job.
I say, "You mean her new business, right?"
Jane, matter-of-factly says...
- Oh no, that didn't work out.
I had to get a real job.
- I then asked about my $500 and she says...
- Oh, sorry, that went into the business,
and I had to close it down.
- I asked, "When were you going to let me know?
I still want my money."
My mother then says...
- Oh, don't be that way.
At least she tried something on her own,
and why are you so mad?
You can afford $500 or you wouldn't have given it to her.
- Now, I'm enraged.
I blow up at my mom and sister, and I leave the dinner.
I get even more angry when my father
later calls me and tells me
that I need to be the bigger person in this situation
and let it go because we all know how Jane is.
Now, I'm livid.
I can't bring myself to curse my dad out,
so I burst into tears and hang up on him.
Here's my iceberg analysis,
and this is hypothetical because I don't have a sister.
Did I have a right to be angry at Jane
for telling me that she blew my money,
moved on, and had no intentions of paying me?
Sure, but that's not really what infuriated me,
causing a scene at the family dinner
and on the phone with my father.
So, thinking about the top of the iceberg,
the first blowup came from my mother saying
that I don't need the money.
Moving just below the surface,
why was that statement so hurtful?
Because it's a recurring theme,
that as the successful child, I don't need much.
Jane was always needy and failing at something,
so she got extra attention and help from my parents.
So deep down, I feel like my self-sufficiency
made it easy for them to let me grow up on autopilot
without much support because I didn't need it.
The second dagger came from my father with his statement
that I needed to be the bigger person.
Again, that triggered a longstanding hurt
that I have to be the mature one
who lets things go and not show upset.
So that's the hurt behind that anger.
What was the unmet need?
In this specific situation,
I needed my parents to empathize with me
for being angry at my sister for her inconsiderate behavior.
I needed them to acknowledge that I had a right to be upset
instead of treating me as if I was a bully.
Now looking even deeper, what's the fear?
I fear that they, my family,
will never let me be imperfect, and if I am,
they won't love me.
I fear the dynamic of me, being the unflawed person
without any needs, will never go away,
and because of that, I'll never feel close to them.
And if I really let my mind think about this fear,
I may realize and then admit to myself
that I actually hate them,
and I fear that they'll eventually figure that out.
Now that conclusion sounds harsh,
but the reality is, often, fears that trigger anger
have an ugly primitive core to them,
and they're primitive thoughts
that we don't want to accept on a conscious level.
Usually, it takes a trained professional
to help you recognize some of these unpleasant thoughts,
but it's not impossible for you to become self-aware
with lots of reflection.
The positive that can come from uncovering
unpleasant thoughts like this is to give you a chance
to address the hurt and fear directly
instead of only reacting to it.
So in this case, after pondering how I got here
with so much anger about this $500,
I conclude that I need to give my family
a chance to respond to my feelings
of being emotionally neglected over the years
and using my success against me.
Sure, I have an axe to grind with my sister
for acting so entitled and insensitive,
but it's really my parents who caused the hurt.
Having a conversation with my parents
can help them understand what's really bothering me,
it's so much more than money,
and give them a chance to make amends.
Now, yes, there are parents
who intentionally harm their children.
That happens, and it's a terrible thing.
But there are a lot more parents who are flawed individuals
and unintentionally make mistakes that they don't realize
have the longstanding effects that they do.
And I've seen this kind of situation many times,
and I've seen a parent confronted about this
who had no idea that their child
was harboring these feelings.
The mom says...
- I was just so thankful
that I didn't have to worry about you like I did Jane.
- But mom doesn't realize that focusing
on the special-needs child
made the self-sufficient one feel unloved.
And that dynamic shows up again and again
in various situations until it finally gets addressed.
Another way this iceberg analogy can help
is giving you more empathy toward others
who blow up all the time
or seem easily angered or irritated.
We all have these icebergs.
And although it's not okay to attack people
because of deeper hurts, understanding that the angry,
volatile person may have some unresolved needs
may make it easier to overlook their reactions.
It doesn't mean they should get a pass
every time they get angry and lash out,
but at least you can avoid engaging with them,
because if their reaction is based on some deeper hurt,
you're fighting a battle that has little to do
with the surface issue that started it.
I have some other videos on managing anger,
and I'll have them linked in the description
if you want to see more on anger.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.