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.
