The Anger Solution

Many currently practicing mental health professionals believe that anger is simply a cover; like out-of-control ivy in a well-manicured yard. They contend that underneath anger is the real issue that lurks and hurts people: fear. They believe if they can help patients, parents, and partners pull off this cover and deal with what frightens them, then their anger will magically disappear.

Essentially stated, the message is, "You are not angry. You are afraid," or "Your anger is merely covering up your sadness or disappointment." This point of view is couched under the heading of, "You are not feeling what you say you are feeling. Let's get to the real emotions underneath your anger."

This traditional approach defines primary emotions as sadness, loneliness, fear, joy, love, and so on. But anger, say these professionals, is a secondary emotion.

However, my experience has shown that anger is a primal feeling that anyone with a pulse experiences weekly, if not daily. It is an essential emotion: You can't and shouldn't avoid anger.

Jeremy discovered his wife of five years, Samantha, had her tubes tied without discussing it with him. This was after they had both declared that becoming parents was a life goal.

In therapy, Jeremy expressed his anger at his wife half a dozen times. After hearing this, their couple's counselor said, "Jeremy, my guess is you're not really angry so much as you are disappointed and scared that you and Samantha won't stay together without children."

When Jeremy told me this story he half-jokingly said he became so angry at the therapist that he wanted to punch him. Instead he got up and walked out, saying to his wife as he left, "I'm not going to sit here and listen to someone tell me I'm not feeling what I have every right to feel."

What Jeremy experienced is what we have all felt. Anger is energy that pulses through the human body, brain, and soul. When this energy is expelled appropriately from a person, not only does the person expressing anger feel more energized, but no one is hurt or worse for the expression. However, if this life force is suppressed, repressed, bottled up, stuffed, or swallowed, there are profound negative repercussions and consequences to both the person and those around him or her. This is why so many think of anger as being solely negative—they are seeing the damage done by anger that has been held in and not expressed appropriately.

When I ask clients or workshop participants who they are most angry at most of the time, 80 to 90 percent will declare it to be themselves. In other words, they have turned their anger inward, where it has not only failed to diminish but has increased from remaining pent up. If you stay stuck in a place for too long without expressing anger, then you'll feel sadness. Although sadness and anger are two primary emotions that go hand in hand, they are not the same feeling and cannot therefore be used interchangeably.

Anger is meant to circulate like a spring. As long as that anger is about current injustices, slights, wrongs, hurts, rejections, or slanders, and given release, it will flow up and out into the world, not down and back into your body, and will produce positive results both inside and outside you.

If employed and expressed appropriately, this powerful emotion can be used to move individuals, couples, families, corporations, and nations out of dead-end or abusive situations or relationships.

The women's movement was fueled by an anger that was overdue. The outcome forever changed the world we live for the better. Rosa Parks's anger in 1955 is what contributed to her and a whole race of people from being stuck at the back of the bus. Anger is what got our country out of Vietnam.

Can you imagine someone saying this to Gloria Steinem or Rosa Parks or the Vietnam vets, for that matter, "You're not really angry; you're just scared"?

Everyone from parents to teachers and pastors have been telling children things like, "Good girls and boys don't get angry," for generations. And what about, "It's not ladylike." Girls have been told they are bitches, ball busters, nags, hags, and witches if they get angry. Boys have been taught to think of "angry" women that way. We wonder why women are angry—well, just look at what they are called when they express their emotions!

Most people—of all educational backgrounds, incomes, religious persuasions, and inclinations—have it in their heads, hearts, or rear ends that anger equals pain.

When someone got angry in our childhood, we felt the slaps, hits, silent treatment, and icy stares. We were punished by being sent to bed without supper or exiled to our bedroom or boarding school. In other words, when someone got angry, someone got hurt.

Somewhere in our subconscious, we decided early on that if anger equals pain, then the best way to keep from causing pain to others or incurring pain by others would be to bust a gut, get a migraine, numb our body and soul, and just try with all our might to never get angry.

The big question is: How's that working for you?

In my experience, not well.

Most human beings get mildly or massively angry at the very least once a week, if not more often. Yes, even nice people. It's what they do with that emotion that makes all the difference.

To recap, here's how anger relates to pain: Healthy/constructive anger has not, will not, and cannot cause pain; quite the opposite. If anger is expressed appropriately, it equals energy, intimacy, and peace of mind. But unhealthy/destructive anger is what causes everyone pain. The one experiencing and expressing destructive anger, and whoever is within the near vicinity of this contagious behavior, is going to feel small or serious amounts of pain.

The first step toward getting a grip on rage is to know what it is.

Rage is as different from anger as night is from day; as apples are from orangutans. Remember, anger is a feeling and emotion. Rage has the ability to cover other feelings, but it is not a feeling or emotion in itself. It is an action or behavior used to disconnect us from any and all emotions. Rage is a negative coping mechanism that numbs peoples' feelings.

Cocaine, alcohol, heroin, and sugar numb us. Too much of anything numbs us, too—too much television, too much time at the computer, too many hours at work; all are ways to numb our feelings.

Rage is like a huge dose of morphine. It is a drug that is legal, plentiful, readily available, and can be addictive.

Rage creates more rage. It is more contagious than the flu, cancer . . . or compassion. Rage spreads like the wildfires in California, destroying everything and everyone in its path. It is a huge factor in divorces, delinquency, and the dissolution of families, friendships between individuals, and business partnerships.

At fifty years old, Burt is prematurely gray but his face and body look like they belong to a man half his age. In my consultations with him he discovered—what many men I've worked with have—that when his construction company is making much less money than he needs, rather than feeling afraid or like a failure, he rages at his employees and even his own family members (especially his brother Bill, who is his onsite foreman). Burt realized that on the surface rage looks more potent and powerful than does being a scared businessman who shakes in fear when viewing the bottom line. To Burt, rage feels temporarily empowering, but here's the rub: It is only an illusion. Rage weakens both the person who is raging and the person who takes the brunt of the rage.

Sandra is an attractive stay-at-home mom who is sad and lonely most of the time because she is married to a workaholic, alcoholic husband. He is rarely home, but when he is, he's unbearable. Sandra refuses to sleep in the same bed with him and goes on retail therapy binges that maxed out their credit cards. Is this healthy anger? No, Sandra's actions are examples of rage. When I asked her if it was time she felt her anger and extricated herself from this painful partnership she actually said, "How can I get angry at him? He works hard for us and his drinking isn't really that bad." Not only could she not see how her rage was throwing them both into financial, not to mention emotional, ruin, she was in complete denial about having any anger, healthy or unhealthy.

If destructive anger is identified and understood, seen for what it is, and dealt with, all kinds of feelings, emotions, memories, hurts, slights, abandonments, and other issues that have been locked inside (perhaps for decades) will surface. Following, you'll find a list of traits and examples that further distinguish healthy anger from destructive rage.

I said, "Tell me how he expresses his anger."

After four or five descriptive sentences, I said, "I hate to interrupt, but everything you've said so far is rage." And she said, "What's the difference?"

Anger is about the "here and now"; it is a response to issues and situations occurring at the present time. You feel anger because of what your boss said to you this morning or because your spouse incorrectly balanced the checkbook this week.

Rage is about the "there and then"; it is about our past. Rage is a reaction to what your boss has said to you every morning for the last year. What you've stuffed and bottled up all this time, suddenly comes gushing out like a geyser. Likewise, rage occurs because the checkbook has gone unbalanced for two years, seemingly warranting a deafening silence to correct or punish your spouse's behavior. Rage can also be fueled by a seemingly over-and-done-with matter that has never really been resolved, such as being unable to trust a spouse who strayed once, years ago.

Anger lives in the present and so takes minutes, at the most, to be felt and expressed. It gets to the point and moves on. When Jerome's wife was late for a special luncheon they'd planned, Jerome said, "I'm angry. Now I only have forty-five minutes left for lunch before I have to return to work. Let's eat and make the most of our time."

Rage lives in the past and takes a very long time because it is grounded in our personal life history. Once it is unleashed, it wants to remain where it is, unresolved. In contrast with the above scenario, in a rage situation no one wants to eat with anyone because no one has an appetite left: When Sandy's chronically late boyfriend was late once again, her response was, "I'm tired of you always putting everything before me. Didn't your mother teach you it is rude to keep people waiting? I got here on time. I can't see why you can't!" . . . and she was just getting warmed up. Clearly, there was more than anger going on.

Rage is what constitutes most marathon arguments. You know, the ones that begin at eight o' clock after dinner after the kids are put to bed and that are still going strong at one in the morning until someone cries uncle and says, "Does anyone know the original point of this?" or attempts to just share some feelings.

Anger is about "me" and rage is about "you": If I express anger, I am telling you about me, stating my immediate feelings. Anger is revealing. If I am raging, I'm telling you about you, rehashing your past behavior(s), and thus I am concealing what I am really feeling and going through right now.

Rage perpetuates when two parties use it habitually to avoid meaningful discussion. One spouse tells the other what he or she didn't do and shouldn't have done; why what he or she said or did is wrong, crazy, sick, or messed up; or that he or she "always" commits a perceived offense. When this party finally finishes the diatribe, then it's the other spouse's turn to tell the first how it is all that person's fault, and how what was said doesn't apply and "there you go again," and if the first speaker had only read more self-help books the words wouldn't have been said at all. After that, then it's the first speaker's turn again, and then the second, and we affectionately call this marriage and then very often we call it adversity or irreconcilable differences and grounds for divorce.