We all get angry at times. When we feel threatened or frustrated, many of us react with anger and rage.
—
We know people whose anger is so disruptive or frightening that it undermines their relationships at home or at work. I was one of those people. I was an angry kid growing up and the recipient of my anger was usually my dog Spotty. Most of the time he was my trusted friend and I loved him deeply. But I grew up with a lot of emotional wounds—not uncommon in this age of stressed-out parents and broken homes.
I would yell and scream and occasionally break things. I never hit her, but I scared her often.
|
Spotty was my only friend during my early years. He became the embodiment of my hopes and dreams for love. When he was the “perfect companion,” I felt loved and happy. But, inevitably there were times he was less than perfect. In his excitement he would jump up on me and occasionally I’d get hurt. At those times, I would become enraged, grab, and choke him. It was like a red curtain would fall over my eyes and I would lose it. Luckily, the red-rages didn’t last long and I would stop before I did real damage. I felt guilty and ashamed and vowed to never do it again, which I would honor…until the next time.
It probably wouldn’t surprise you if I acknowledged that this pattern was repeated as an adult when I fell in love and got married. I never choked my wife, though there were many times I got mad enough to do so. I would yell and scream and occasionally break things. I never hit her, but I scared her often. When I’d become enraged I would hit the refrigerator. It offered a satisfying “thwump” when I hit it and there was enough give that I didn’t break my hand.
◊♦◊
What became clear in my own life was that anger was often related to feelings of fear and anxiety and a deep feeling of unworthiness and depression.
|
Later I learned to “control” my anger by holding it in as best I could. The rages were fewer and farther apart, but I became irritable-angry, though I tried not to show it. My wife would say I would get that “beady-eyed” look. She said it often frightened her more than my angry outbursts because I seemed like a seething volcano. She never knew when I might explode or what kind of damage it would cause.
I wrote two books about how irritability and anger impacted my family and how I learned to help myself and my clients: The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship from The Irritable Male Syndrome.
When I did research for The Irritable Male Syndrome I developed a quiz to help people better understand their anger and whether it was causing a problem in their lives. Thus far more than 30,000 people have taken the quiz. Men take it to learn about themselves. Women take it to better understand and help the man in their lives.
What became clear in my own life was that anger was often related to feelings of fear and anxiety and a deep feeling of unworthiness and depression. Even deeper were feelings that I wasn’t loveable, that if I were truly myself I would be left and abandoned. In many ways my irritability and anger were cries of pain reflecting my hunger to be loved and my fear that I wouldn’t be loved. My greatest fear was that I would be abandoned and would die alone, discarded and cast aside. I raged against that fear for a lot of my life.
◊♦◊
Andrew Solomon wrote a very personal and comprehensive look at depression and describes the relationship between depression and love. In The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, he says, “Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.”
I recognized that when I would get aggressive and angry, I would often blame others for my unhappiness, usually my wife.
|
When I was the most irritable and angry, it was often because I was feeling desperately lovely and cut off from others. I recognized that my anger was pushing away the very people I needed to love me, but I often couldn’t reverse the negative cycle of anger, withdrawal, and more anger. I talk about what I learned to do in my new book, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come.
I recognized that when I would get aggressive and angry, I would often blame others for my unhappiness, usually my wife. Deep inside I blamed myself, but if I ever let myself truly experience the depth of my self-hatred, I would be overwhelmed with shame. Making the person I loved the target of my anger seemed better than being wiped out by my own fears.
Of course, all of this was subconscious. It took me many years, and a lot of therapy, to like myself enough to be willing to acknowledge how unlovable I felt. As I was able to be a little less irritable and angry, my wife was able to be a little bit more loving and supportive, which had the effect of making me a little less irritable and angry.
◊♦◊
Without help and support from my wife and a good therapist my anger would have destroyed my marriage. It isn’t easy to reverse the downward spiral when I would get angry and my wife would withdraw in fear and I’d get even angrier and she’d withdraw even more. But we can change that downward spiral.
I’ve learned that sharing our own experiences can help everyone. I’d like to hear from you. If you’ve been angry, what was really going on under the surface with you? If you’ve been the recipient of anger, how have you felt? Give me a “thumbs up” or a thumbs down. Your comments are always appreciated.
—
Picture: Getty Images
I’ve always found that anger has many “flavors” from rage to what my wife calls my “beady-eyed” look. It also overs over other feelings like hurt, fear, guilt, and shame. It often causes others to retreat or want to fight back instead of giving us the love we so desperately need. Thanks for sharing this with others you think would find it helpful.
‘Anger” is often times a secondary emotion top something else.
“What became clear in my own life was that anger was often related to feelings of fear and anxiety and a deep feeling of unworthiness and depression.” Beautifully said and resonates deeply with me. Thank you for validating the connection between anxiety and anger. In my own life, as I believe in the lives of many other men, anxiety has always been a trigger for (sometimes very) aggressive responses. Learning to tame the anxiety is the key to fighting anger.