You wake up and open your phone, and you see messages from your significant other, or ex with requests, demands, or some phrase that sets you off yet again. You are drawn into drama at work and yet again you have to be the fixer. Someone completely dismisses you or ignores your inputs. Somebody did something to someone you love. There are many situations that we encounter in life that can leave you feeling degrees of angry, annoyed and frustrated to the point that you may ask yourself “Why do I feel so angry all the time?”
Caveat about this post: It is OK to feel anger as long as it is appropriately identified and dealt with and not misdirected in a way that intentionally hurts yourself or others – physically, emotionally, violating people or property. If you are a person that experiences explosive anger that you have difficulty controlling, please see a doctor or therapist to guide you through that.
Everyone feels the emotion that we call anger. It may be a transitory feeling, or it may linger. For some people it may seem that anger never leaves – it becomes a way of life, always there subliminally. For others anger is something that is fleeting, pushed away – perhaps replaced by another emotion that is more “acceptable”. Like any emotion at all, it is essential to recognize that anger is neither inherently good nor bad; it is a natural human emotion that is intended to tell us something about ourselves and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The important thing is what you do with the “message” the emotion of anger is giving you. Then we can start to determine how to manage it.
What is anger?
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines anger as “an emotional state varying in intensity, ranging from mild irritation to intense fury and rage. Anger is a natural, adaptive response to perceived threats or injustices, often leading to aggressive feelings and behaviors. Anger can manifest in various ways, including tension, hostility, and behaviors aimed at removing the source of anger or expressing the emotion itself”. Many things can cause you to feel angry in workplace and personal environments, such as:
- Childhood patterns
- Threats to physical safety
- Disrespect and unfair treatment
- Interpersonal conflicts
- Memories of difficulties or trauma,
- PTSD
- Feelings of powerlessness, stress and anxiety
- Overall health and wellbeing
Anger is a response to recognition that something is wrong and needs remedy or change. Its message is “something else needs to happen in the circumstance that you find yourself”. Anger may be externalized – meaning it is projected outwards – towards others, or in punching a wall for example. Or anger may be internalized – turned inwards and suppressed to try and ignore it, or internalized by turning it against yourself – e.g. “I am such a fool for doing that”. In either case, if you are feeling angry and nothing changes, you will still feel angry. To deal with it you have to understand what led you there in the first place.
Childhood patterns
The way you were brought up may provide many answers to the question “why am I so angry?”. Some people have been raised in a household where anger was a completely acceptable manifestation of feelings – “everyone screamed and yelled in my household”. In this case anger is expressed freely and children learn to fight early. It doesn’t mean that a child enjoyed this way of being – it just means that they learn how to operate in life using anger as a primary emotion. It becomes default behavior even for circumstances that don’t warrant it, extending into adult life.
Sometimes a household is dominated by overblown anger. There are also households where anger is not acceptable at all. Sometimes it is a mix – a parent is permanently angry, and the children are not allowed to express their own anger at all. In this case children learn to repress their own anger in order to survive. With nowhere to go, no change to make or remedy to find, this anger usually “leaks” and may show up as passive aggression or self harm.
When anger shows up as a primary emotion it is often serving to shield a person from the risk of more vulnerability created by other less familiar emotions. Sometimes the answer to the “Why am I so angry” question is actually – “I’m not”. The underlying repressed emotion might actually look more like fear, grief, sadness, anxiety or shame.
Threats to physical safety
Anger is closely linked to the fight-or-flight response, a reaction to perceived threats. When faced with a perceived threat, the body prepares to confront it by fighting or escaping it – flight. The perceived threat triggers a response from the sympathetic nervous system. This trigger creates a cascade of physical changes, including increased heart rate, breathing, and muscle tension. Externalized anger can be a manifestation of the fight response, preparing the body to deal with the perceived threat.
Disrespect and unfair Treatment
Anger triggered by disrespect is an emotional response characterized by feelings of displeasure and hostility, usually as a result of perceived slights, injustices, or threats to a persons worth, dignity, or authority. Unfair treatment can be more specifically defined as actions or decisions that are biased, unequal, or discriminatory. Anger is a response to someone being treated worse than others without just cause; this is a breach of fairness, often tied to favoritism, prejudice, or inconsistency.
Interpersonal conflicts
Conflict is a struggle or disagreement between two or more people that arises from differences in needs, values, goals, expectations, or perceptions. Conflicts can show up in various forms, such as miscommunication, personality clashes, power dynamics, or competing interests. These often become evident in the workplace where competing needs, wants, and desires are common. Your expectations for your work and those set by your employer may differ.
Memories of difficulties or trauma, PTSD
A single event from the past (e.g. sinking of the Titanic), or long term exposure to a negative circumstance (e.g. an alcoholic parent), will have a lasting effect on us – often for the rest of our lives. Something that happens today may, even momentarily, solicit the same instinctual response and feelings we had during the event(s) of the past. The body has a way of remembering its response to that trauma. Your brain is not aware that you are not in that trauma any more, but it will create that same fight-or-flight response.
Feelings of powerlessness, stress and anxiety
When someone believes they cannot influence or change a situation, even when they want to change the outcome, they feel powerless. This sort of anger is often stuffed – not allowed to surface is a way that may trigger the needed change. People shut down emotionally, leaving them uncertain about what actions to take or feeling like no choices are truly available; leading to feelings of self-doubt, hopelessness and internal thoughts like “Why bother?” or “Nothing I do matters.” If a person lives in a longer term state of stress or anxiety, they are in a chronic state of fight-or-flight mode. The brain constantly sends signals to the body to prompt a response.
Overall health and wellbeing
When your overall health and wellbeing is good, self-regulation is relatively easy. Even if life throws some curve balls, you are able to navigate through them and move along. Emotions come and emotions go. However if things are significantly changing with our health due to things like pain, hormonal fluctuations, mental health challenges we may feel more anger or resentment or sadness or grief than usual. If anger is your primary emotion when you are well, it risks becoming even more dominant and over-inflated when you are not.
Examining your anger invites an exploration of what lies beneath the surface. What pain, need, or fear is trying to signal itself through this fiery exterior? How might understanding the ways you manifest externalized or internalized anger, lead you to insights about why your work or personal relationships are the way they are? Might there be patterns there? If you changed the pattern, might you get a different result? Perhaps you will start to see a result you want, that has long been elusive to you. Understanding anger in this way can transform it from something destructive to something revealing—and even healing. That’s a shift we all want.
Why Not Take A Look At It
Does this all sound familiar? Here at The Welsby Shift we provide life and business coaching to help people move through their challenges for a more positive future. So if you are having a challenge with your life or your business why not get in touch today to see how we can help.
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