Danger! Anger ebook

Publisher Natuli

Editor in chief Michał Dyrda

Lead editor Alicja Szwinta-Dyrda

Coordinator Aga Nuckowski

Translation Joanna Aleksiejuk

English proofreading Sue Jorgensen, Monika Moczulska

Illustrations Kamila Loskot

Cover design Emilia Kucharczuk

Author photo Magdalena Trebert

Typesetting Bogumiła Dziedzic

E-book: Kagira

© Natuli / natuli.pl

© Ewa Tyralik-Kulpa / ewatyralik.com / szkolatrenerowempatii.pl

First edition, Szczecin 2022

ISBN 978-83-66057-97-5

CONTENTS

Introduction

1.The Thing about Anger

WE’VE ALL HAD THE SAME MONDAYS

WHY DO WE GET ANGRY IN THE FIRST PLACE?

•How Anger Works

•How We Usually Respond to Anger

THERE’S MORE TO ANGER THAN BEING ANGRY

LEVELS OF ANGER

•Old Patterns of Anger

HEALTHY EXPRESSIONS OF ANGER

•Anger Code

2.Anger, Brain and Body

THE MECHANISM OF GETTING ANGRY

HISTORY OF BRAIN DEVELOPMENT AND OUR CONTEMPORARY ANGER

STRESS AND THE ROLE OF PARENT

•Daily Practice of Self-Care

•Journal of Anger

•How to Activate the Prefrontal Cortex rather than Trigger the Amygdala

•How to train a child’s frontal lobe (1)

BRAIN LEFT AND RIGHT, OR THE LEFT-HEMISPHERE AND RIGHT-HEMISPHERE MODALITIES

•The Magic Wand of Anger or How to Attune to the Right Hemisphere

ANGER FROM “DOWNSTAIRS” AND ANGER FROM “UPSTAIRS”

ANGER AS BODILY SENSATION

3.Anger in Communication

COMMUNICATING ANGER

ANGER WITHOUT YELLING OR SCREAMING

•Freeze frame

•Visualization — Leave Your Body and Stand Next to It

•Practice — Micro-Mediation

COMMUNICATION BLOCKERS AND EMPATHY KILLERS

•It Makes a Difference

•When You’re Listening, Listen

•The Magic of Listening

•“The Dirty Dozen”

•How to Avoid Communication Blockers Without Throwing out the Communication with the Bathwater

LANGUAGE OF OBSERVATION VERSUS LANGUAGE OF EVALUATION

REQUESTS INSTEAD OF DEMANDS

•ACT II – request, refusal, and request for honesty

SELF-EMPATHY

HIGHLY SENSITIVE PEOPLE

•How Differently We May Interpret Communication

4.Anger versus Boundaries

WHAT BOUNDARIES ARE AND WHY THEY’RE SO CRUCIAL

HOW TO COMMUNICATE WE’RE UNHAPPY ABOUT SOMETHING. SAYING “NO”

•How to Disperse Trigger Thoughts Looming on the Horizon

HOW TO COMMUNICATE WE’RE UNHAPPY ABOUT SOMETHING. GIVING FEEDBACK

BOUNDARIES AS A WAY TO COPE WITH OUTBURSTS OF ANGER

•Beliefs

•Anger from “Upstairs” and the Role of Boundaries

5.Anger and Child Development

BIOLOGY OF ANGER

THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING — ALSO OF LEARNING TO BE ANGRY

ANGER IN STAGES OF A CHILD’S DEVELOPMENT

•After 3 Months

•Between 6 and 12 Months

•Around 1 Year of Age

•2 Years of Age

•4 Years of Age

•Between 5 and 6 Years of Age

•Early School Age

•Competition and Sore Losers

•Anger in Adolescence

6.Anger — Practice. Non-required Reading

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS AS A DEVICE FOR HANDLING ANGER

•How Can a Parent Use the Awareness of These Four Different Ego States?

•Body and Emotions

ALEXANDER LOWEN’S METHOD

•Screaming “NO!”

•“Get off my back!”

•Grounding

•Mattress bashing

•Boundaries

•The Body According to Alexander Lowen and Parenting

FOCUSING

PSYCHOTHERAPY

•How to Choose Psychotherapy and a Psychotherapist

•The Most Popular Forms of Psychotherapy

7.Conclusion

References

Introduction

I shook him. Upon seeing this, my husband took him from me and said I must be crazy. But I literally couldn’t take it anymore. Our son had been crying for two hours.”

“I started tugging away at his arm. I wanted him to stop beating his sister.”

“I was shouting over them to make them get the hell out of there and let me get on with my work.”

“I told her that if she kept on waking me up at night, I’d end up in hospital.”

“I burst out saying that if he dropped that bowl one more time, he’d be eating the food off the floor.”

“I pulled the toy out of her hands and told her to go straight to bed.”

“We’d been fighting so hard in front of her that in the end she asked if we were going to divorce.”

“I hit him.”

I’ve heard so many similar stories, not only from parents who happened to lose their temper and had terrible remorse afterwards. I’d go as far as to suggest that each one of us has been there — we once went nuts and would prefer to forget it altogether. Such memories are usually accompanied by fear that our momentary loss of control resulted in harming our own child, and by shame — that we turned out to be worse parents that we’d thought.

One of the things we realize very quickly after the birth of child is that, all of a sudden, we’ve become responsible for another human being who is tiny and totally dependent on us. This is the first and most fundamental change when becoming a parent. We’re no longer responsible just for ourselves and our own backyard; we realize that someone else — our son or daughter — is completely dependent on what we say and do. This realization alone may cause frustration. Even though we knew that having a child would change virtually everything, and nevertheless, we wanted this child more than anything, we are still caught off guard by the extent of the change. And even though there’s obviously so much we’ve gained thanks to the child, we’re confronted with a sense of loss (for instance, loss of sleep, peace, comfort, freedom, autonomy, sense of security), which is why we need to make a fresh start in our own life.

This loss definitely marks the end of a certain stage of life. When we’re confronted with such an irreversible change, at the very beginning, our ego attempts to save us by saying, “Nothing has actually changed.” Life is quick to make us realize that this is not completely true and that is when anger may appear. What we need is time. What we also need (and others may sometimes help us with this) in order to feel at home in the new reality, is to confront the difficult emotions mounting in us. When we experience a revolutionary change of both the internal and external worlds, we learn completely new things about ourselves. One of the discoveries we might make is the fact that there is anger in us, and that the amount of this anger isn’t negligible!

Getting ready to become a parent, we seem to understand that everything is going to change dramatically; that a stage of life is coming to an end, at least to some extent or for some time; that a new creature is going to enter into our lives. And this new creature, completely dependent on us, is going to need our time, love, patience, care, and money. At the same time, fantasies about parenthood are conjured up in our minds by idyllic images from TV series and commercials. We see lovely babies cooing and smiling; we see independent preschoolers engaged in creative games in the garden or in their tastefully decorated rooms (and all they want from us is chocolate or pudding); changing diapers is nothing more than a playful activity; and when kids are feverish, it’s enough to give them the right medicine and all our troubles vanish into thin air. On Instagram or Facebook, our friends’ children are always well-behaved and cheerful, and their faces are never tear-streaked. Not to mention that you don’t hear them screaming their heads off.

As for our friends — the new parents — they look relaxed and appear to be keeping abreast of the most recent advances in child psychology and fashion trends. How effortlessly they combine their family life with careers! Their houses are clean and uncluttered; their cars gleam on the outside and smell nice on the inside. At times, we can hear something along these lines — “You poor thing, your life’s over.”; “The party’s over, welcome to the adult world!” — usually from our parents, aunts, or someone from the older generation. But hold on! They can’t be right! Sure, we may sometimes come across a drained mother bent over her newborn’s pram with an irritated expression on her face, or a father yelling at his toddler while queuing up for ice cream. Indeed, THOSE parents may well be angry or exhausted, but we’re quick to convince ourselves that it’s THEM who can’t cope. They should come to grips with their lives! It will certainly be different for us. We have better knowledge and almost unlimited access to expert advice on every parenting style imaginable. Up until now, we’ve done brilliantly at everything we’ve attempted — from building a career, to climbing mountain peaks on vacation, to driving a car and even training a dog. And let’s not forget the top quality layette waiting for our little darling. All this anger, helplessness, and exhaustion simply won’t happen to us.

The anger that emerges as our parenthood unfolds can really baffle and overwhelm us with guilt. Up to this point, we have never lost our composure. Obviously, we don’t yell at colleagues, let alone the boss. If we’ve managed to stay together as a couple for so long, then we know how to mend fences. Anyway, isn’t the ability to keep emotions in check a sign of maturity and professionalism, especially in women? Isn’t it we, as women, who have always been trained to expertly conceal dissatisfaction? A dissatisfied, irritated, or angry woman is a shrew, a dragon, a pain in the neck, an insane hag, a madwoman … And we obviously aren’t mad, are we? Of course not!

Having repressed our objections for years, we, as women, have developed the skill of predicting the future and controlling every single aspect of our lives so as to make the reasons for getting angry disappear. And before our first child was born, we were rather successful at it. Perfectionism gave us calm and a sense of control, which came at a price, but we failed to notice being cut off from our emotions.

Becoming parents, we tend to be surprised by the fact that, along with parenthood, anger suddenly entered our home. We’re astonished by the fact that even during pregnancy we’re running out of steam and patience. That we’ve had enough and that we’re fighting more than before. That our visions of the future are so different from each other. That we yell at the kids and growl at each other. That this sexy woman has turned into a constant whiner. That he can’t understand anything and you can’t even count on him. That the kids do as they please and there’s nothing we can do about it because we don’t want to ruin their mental health. That there’s no room for spontaneity even though “before the kids” we gladly welcomed a bit of craziness in our life. That children can scream so loud. That the house is a mess. That we haven’t had a good night’s sleep for two years. That the two of us can’t go on vacation. That work’s different than it used to be because we’re less able to put in the hours. That children are such a nuisance when we’re trying to work. That they keep moaning and are so often ill. That they test our boundaries. That everyone’s telling us what we have to do or should do as parents. That we can’t have sex and when we can, we have to be quick about it. That kids get angry. The list could be infinite.

Anger is one of the elements of being a parent that we’ll have to face up to almost from the very beginning. We’re all in the same boat as we all become angry and this is unlikely to change. We want to do our best, so it’s hard for us when we fail. As a result, we may end up at each other’s throats or start blaming ourselves or denying there’s even a problem. Parental anger is taboo, a bogeyman whom we fear even more than our children do.

My dream is that anger becomes an ordinary topic — one that we can discuss and simply deal with as humans. As humans, using the whole potential of the upper layers of the neocortex. And as humans, granting ourselves the right to be “only human” and to error, but to also rectify such errors.

I’d like this book to offer each and every one of us a better understanding of our parental anger and the opportunity to accept it. At the same time, I’d like to prove to my readers that they can also learn to separate anger from the behaviors to which it can lead. It is these behaviors, not the anger itself, that are the gateway to the process of intense self-improvement, through which we’ll learn not to hurt our children or ourselves anymore.

I truly believe that when anger kicks in, we should embrace it — acknowledge it as legitimate, accept it, and give ourselves the right to feel it. We, as parents, don’t have an easy life and anger is a necessary part of everything we’re going through. It’s a messenger trying to tell us something about a value that is vital to us — a value that we’re longing for and which seems so distant at the moment. And in that moment, we forget about other values that are also important to us, such as patience, support, or respect.

Resorting to yelling, intimidating, humiliating, shaking, or hitting means that the value which prompted us to do so must be absolutely vital to us. If our frustration is so huge that we need to shake another human being (in this case, our child) and for a split second it doesn’t matter that we might actually hurt them, SOMETHING ESSENTIAL must be hidden underneath.

The hundreds of interviews I’ve conducted have taught me this: in most cases, it is about ourselves as parents (or more broadly — ourselves as humans), desperately wanting to be seen, heard, understood, and acknowledged. We also want to feel that we’re being effective — we want to test ourselves, and to pass the exam of parenthood, which is about raising a healthy and capable individual who is able to rise to the challenges of today’s world. Not to mention that we’d also like to keep house and maintain important relationships.

This is where a question arises. Which is easier, accepting and handling our anger, or fighting with a child? This book is meant to prove to the reader that the former is possible. It is possible to live with anger.

1

The Thing about Anger

The connotations surrounding the word “anger” aren’t the most positive, especially if we think about the last time we lost it with our children. We would most certainly rather not think about it. How is it possible that we’re so capable of losing our temper only to have so guilty a conscience afterwards? If we don’t take a closer look at the ferocious animal inside of ourselves, we won’t be able to tame and understand it…let alone appreciate it.

WE’VE ALL HAD THE SAME MONDAYS

It was a Monday morning, and this fact alone meant my spirits were low right from the moment I opened my eyes. I got up at 6:30 to get ready and prepare breakfast before heading to my daughter’s room and waking her up for preschool. Her alarm clock went off at 7am. Standing at the door, I watched as my daughter mumbled something in her sleep and pulled a blanket over her head. If it were a weekend, she’d be standing next to our bed with a stuffed animal even before 7am. If it were a weekend, she wouldn’t need an alarm clock to spring out of bed like a jack-in-the-box and exclaim, “I’m not going to sleep anymore!” Unfortunately, this is not how things work on Mondays. I switched on the light to brighten the room, semi-dark in the faint autumn sunlight.

“Time to get up, sweetheart!” I said.

“No.”

“It’s seven. Time to get up!” I was being firm but tender at the same time.

“If you don’t get up now, we’ll be late for preschool.”

After some grumbling from beneath the blanket, there came an offended squeak.

“I wanna hug!”

“Alright,” I said, perched on her bed. “We’ll hug for a moment, but in five minutes…”

“Well, OK.” my daughter snapped. I took our deal seriously and, almost mechanically, pressed the snooze button. Five minutes, no more than five minutes… I myself was quite pleased to cuddle the sleepy, warm body.

Unsurprisingly, the sound of the alarm clock at 7:05 was even more piercing than five minutes earlier.

“We’re getting up!” I said again.

After a second of silence came a loud,

“NO!!!”

“But we had a deal…” I protested weakly.

I jumped out of my daughter’s arms and pulled the blanket off to break our cozy, sleepy cocoon. Tears began to well up in my daughter’s eyes.

“I don’t want to go to preschool!”

She clenched her hands into fists. Tears started flowing — an ocean of tears.

“I’m not going to preschool!” A sobbing little human turned her back on me. “Ever again!”

I felt a hot flash mounting in me. How is it going to be today?

Let me confess something here and now: I sometimes lose my composure. My mind starts racing, and my temper is hot on its heels. “You’re not going? We’ll see about that! My mom was right — I spared the rod and spoiled you! My husband could also get a grip on himself and help me out. Why is everything always on my head?! We’re meeting a client at the office today, so I can’t be late!”

This time, my mind reached the lightning speed of a top-notch race car, and soon after, I heard myself yelling,

“GET UP NOW! IF YOU AREN’T READY IN FIFTEEN MINUTES, YOU’LL GO IN YOUR PAJAMAS!”

What happened next? Visibly scared, my daughter wrapped herself up but, after a moment, did get up and go straight to the bathroom. At the same time, I was immediately overcome with remorse. It could have been worse — the kid might not have given in so easily and might have started to sob out loud, more and more hysterically. She could have grabbed the blanket and hidden under it. And upon seeing that, I could have kept on yelling and yelling, ever louder and more furiously with every passing second…

However, it sometimes happens that, on hearing her first words, I manage to spot the moment I’m beginning to get worked up. Instead of letting my temper flare, I focus on my body. I focus on myself. What happens then?

I grit my teeth. I can feel my breath become quicker. I make a conscious effort to slow it down. I can see a helpless little girl, clenching her small fists and crying. I can now actually hear her say that she doesn’t want to go to preschool. I take another breath. In a way, I can even relate to what she’s saying; I’d much rather not be rushing to get to the meeting on time. I’m not particularly eager to go to work, either…

“I guess you’re very, very angry. I can really see it. Actually, I can not only see it but also hear it,” I say calmly.

“I don’t want to go to preschool!!!”

“I bet you don’t. It’s no fun to get out of a warm bed, is it? It can really make you angry.”

No reaction.

“You know what? I do understand. I actually hate Mondays. I’ve been going to work for so many years now, and I still find it hard on Mondays. I’m anxious, and I don’t feel like going. All of that also makes me a bit angry.”

Silence. The right eye takes a quick peep at me. The little body seems to relax a little bit.

“Would you like me to carry you to the bathroom, just like I did when you were very small?”

I can see a nod, and then a sleepy face lands on my arm. I take a deep breath, and then another one. And one more.

Once my daughter gets to preschool, her face finally lights up on seeing her favorite friend in the locker room. I’m in my car, and it seems like I might actually get to the meeting on time. While driving, I think to myself, “Being a mom can be really exhausting at times. It drains so much of your energy. You need to be both as sensitive as a butterfly and as thick-skinned as an elephant. It’s so hard to strike the right balance between spoiling a child and raising them well. All of this anger is mind-boggling, even for a grown-up like me.”

If there was anything in my story that you could relate to, then we’re in the same boat. We’re parents, and the issue of anger, be it our children’s or our own, will get us sooner or later.

I am a parent, just like you. I’ve also spent years working in the field of communication. I specialize in an approach called Nonviolent Communication, and I’m also studying Gestalt therapy. I help people to communicate with each other, especially when this seems way too hard. Every passing day — both at home and at work — makes me more and more appreciative of how fundamental a role emotions play in communication. I also know that, despite our greatest wish, we seem to be unable to stop getting angry.

WHY DO WE GET ANGRY IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Anger is a feeling with plenty of negative associations that we’d rather not experience, even if it is impossible to live our lives without it. We tend to mistake it for fury, rage, fear, helplessness, and aggression, and we perceive it as harmful and threatening — something that can cause frustration and undermine relationships. This is why we often put in a great deal of effort to repress it both in our children and in ourselves. Is it the way to go? Although I can perfectly understand why we do so, I am also deeply convinced that pent-up anger will lead us nowhere.

What is anger, anyway? What do we need it for? I like the definition that likens it to an “alarm bell” to inform us about something important and to spur us into action. Anger’s role is to let us know that our internal landscape is in jeopardy; it pops up when we feel that someone or something is overstepping our boundaries (psychological or physical), or when we believe that someone should fulfill certain needs we have. If we look at anger in this way, we realize we cannot escape it. In fact, it is unimaginable that our control over the external world could be so great as to make other people do things we’d like them to do, exactly the way we’d wish; or ensure that our values and personal habits are always respected. Without going into detail, it is possible to view anger as a kind of internal energy that we can sense within our body, meant to help us avoid or prevent a situation that is undesirable and potentially harmful to us.

Anger is an alarm signal informing us that our well-being is under threat.

Talking with parents about anger during workshops, I realize that what they actually fail to accept are behaviors resulting from anger, exhibited by themselves or their children. I can definitely relate to that! I’m not a fan of yelling and sulking, myself. I don’t like it when my children are pouting, when they’re saying I don’t love them or they don’t love me. I have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they’re capable of hitting someone or offending them with hurtful words. Nor do I enjoy being nit-picky or showering others with the torrents of yelling and reproach that anger is still capable of unleashing in me. But does all this mean that I don’t like anger?

It’s more complicated than that. The road that led me towards embracing anger was long and winding, but I know for sure that it was worth following. I can very well remember how much energy and health my old habit of suppressing anger had cost me and, above all, how ineffective it had been. Each time I ended up bursting with anger (which, by that time, had evolved into fury), the eruption was on par with that of the most powerful volcano causing widespread devastation.

How Anger Works

It is worth noting that there’s a space between anger, as such, and getting angry, by which I mean behaviors and actions motivated by anger. That space has turned out to be the key to breaking the code of destructive and unwanted behaviors in my life.

But let’s go back to the very beginning when our child is refusing to go to preschool. What exactly is going on? What’s happening inside us before we start yelling? We often fail to realize that something’s coming, don’t we?

When anger mounts, the reactions of the body and of the mind go hand in hand. The body activates a physiological stress response, and the levels of certain hormones — adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol — go up. At the same time, different systems and organs within our body become active in order to motivate us to take action. We feel anger in our bodies; our muscles tighten, blood rushes to our face and hands. These are exactly the parts of the body we tend to tense up. (You may be familiar with the sensation of clenching your jaws or fists.)

So far, the experience is similar for everyone, and I guess it wouldn’t be sensible to get upset over that mounting anger; it’s just something that happens to us and will always happen. No one can realistically think that they could have total control over their physiological reactions.

While our physiology is taking the driver’s seat, our mind is getting into the act, and all sorts of thoughts are racing through it. These are often thoughts that could be compared to triggers or finely tuned elements of computer software, whose aim is to detonate a bomb. One of the thoughts that is able to trigger the detonation is one suggesting that the child is getting on our nerves on purpose, or that we’re completely useless as parents. Since we’re physiologically provoked, we cannot see those thoughts for what they really are, and they end up reinforcing one another. In such a moment, we aren’t really able to think logically or objectively, or to express ourselves dispassionately, and neither are our children. Being gentle, understanding, or kind doesn’t come easy, and we actually shouldn’t expect it from ourselves. However, it’s worth knowing that the maximum duration of such a state has been scientifically measured — it can last between 7 and 20 minutes.

All of this becomes problematic when the physiological process finds an undesirable outlet and we do something that the “best version of ourselves” wouldn’t exactly do the same way. For example, we yelled at someone, trashed another person’s possessions, or hit someone. Or, without going to such an extreme, we said something that the other person was slighted by or found hurtful. Our action was accompanied by remorse or even powerlessness because we couldn’t imagine another course of action. We don’t know how to deal with our anger; we don’t learn this either at school or at home. Behaviors that we come across may be extreme, either aggression or repression of anger, which amounts to denying oneself a chance to express one’s anger. We sometimes have a vague feeling that it could all look different, but we have a hard time specifying what exactly this “different” could be.

Instruction manual — how the “anger bomb” works:

•Physiological changes — at the level of hormones and of the body.

•Physiological changes leading to provocation start to be accompanied by trigger thoughts.

•Stress reaction to trigger thoughts — the body becomes more provoked.

•Increased provocation — more and more trigger thoughts are coming.

•The body’s response to trigger thoughts.

How We Usually Respond to Anger

There are two sorts of reactions in response to anger mounting inside of us:

•Aggressive Behaviors:

•yelling1,

•beating,

•pushing,

•using intimidation,

•threatening,

•humiliating,

•shaming.

•Passive-Aggressive Behaviors:

•intentionally ignoring the other person (Saying, “I’ll do it in a second!” and staying glued to the chair, staring at your smartphone screen.),

•scathing comments, insults, or diminishing remarks about the other person presented as a joke (“What’s your problem? I’m only goofing around!”),

•denying the other person’s feelings, even though it’s apparent they’re seething,

•rejection,

•in a relationship, rewarding “the right behavior” with sex,

•failure to keep one’s promise and blaming the other person, for it — turning the whole situation around (“I didn’t do that because you’re never happy with what I do anyway.”)

•making the other person look bad in front of others.

What, then, should we do when anger is mounting in our child or ourselves? Making us recognize our own boundaries, anger allows us to communicate what is and what is not acceptable to us. How can we therefore convince ourselves that it can indeed help us to build a truly close relationship? How can we harness the positive potential of anger to bring about positive changes rather than letting it morph into overwhelming fury, aggressive behaviors, passive aggression, or other things that will work against us?

I truly believe that suppressing our anger and teaching our kids to do the same does more harm than good. I’m also convinced that to learn how to deal with anger, a child has to first experience different ways of expressing it. They will learn through trial and error, which is natural — if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t learn anything. The help that we, as parents, can offer our children is twofold: we can react appropriately to what they’re doing; and we can set the right example, provided that we also learn to deal with our own anger, and thus show our children that it may actually come in handy in life.

THERE’S MORE TO ANGER THAN BEING ANGRY

If asked around 20 years ago, all of my friends would have said, “Eve never gets angry.” Indeed, it would have been hard back then to find a single person with whom I lost my temper. Instead, I was the smiley type, sure that whatever happened, I could always sort it out in the end. I was equally sure that the control I had over my life was so complete that nothing could make me lose my composure. I took pride in my ability to keep my emotions in check; isn’t that priceless as far as anger management is concerned? I can imagine this is exactly what you would want to achieve reading this book: maintaining your composure, wearing a poker face, and keeping a tight rein on your “childish emotions.”

Unfortunately, what I’d believed to be my perfect composure turned out to be an extremely common practice, present in every part of the world — cutting off my emotions and doing the best I could to not feel them. Acting as protective shields against the suffering connected with uncomfortable feelings, our bodies and minds have learned to cut them off altogether. At some stage in life (usually in childhood), that ability must have been necessary for us to be able to survive and cope. Ultimately, however, our body needs to pay the price for it. I paid it one freezing afternoon when my colleagues had to call 911 and I was taken to the hospital straight from my office. I had passed out — my blood pressure had gone through the roof, and my heart couldn’t stop pounding; my body clearly had gone on strike. The cost of storing and processing the anger that I hadn’t expressed became too much of a physical burden to bear.

My perfectly controlled world fell into even smaller pieces after my first child was born. I was suddenly catapulted to a place nobody mentioned in any of the guides for future moms, leaving behind a predictable, more or less controlled reality. I was drained, sleep-deprived, and terrified. My daughter was crying, and I didn’t know why; she was screaming, and I didn’t understand what she wanted and what I could do to make her stop. It’s impossible to have full control over the life of a small human being, although I do admit I desperately tried. That was when I started to have — often for almost no reason — fits of anger that were short-lived but could hurt just like a sharp knife. Neither my husband nor I could fathom them; no one could, for that matter.

The anger I thought I kept perfectly in check started boiling over. I was angry practically all the time. (Or sad, for sadness, as surprising as it may seem, has a lot in common with anger.) I kept going off on my husband. (In retrospect, it seemed for no apparent reason.) Yet, I had a long-awaited daughter, whom I loved with my whole heart and soul. I also had a partner who was doing his best. I was on well-paid maternity leave and had so many other reasons to be pleased with my life. There was something wrong about all this — as wrong as could be!

That was when I went to my first therapy session, with my baby girl in a carrier. I was desperate to understand what was happening to me and why I could blow a fuse so easily. I will tell you what I have learned since that time.

First and foremost, I have come to understand that we often deny ourselves the right to express and show anger — never mind if we’re angry with others or ourselves. Suppressing it in a knee-jerk fashion is by no means safe for us. Keeping a lid on anger by hiding it not only takes a great deal of energy but is also doomed to failure. Once triggered, emotional energy cannot be repressed — it will eventually find an outlet, most likely a destructive or self-destructive one.

I was absolutely struck by a list drawn up by Theodore Isaac Rubin, psychotherapist and author of The Angry Book (1998), which made me realize what a multitude of different masks anger can put on. Although these attitudes and behaviors aren’t normally associated with anger, this is exactly what they express. In other words, devoid of a natural outlet, anger may morph into something completely different.

Anger can be expressed through:

•fear, neurotic disorders, nervous agitation, fatigue, and inability to act,

•depressed mood,

•feelings of guilt,

•starving oneself, overeating,

•workaholism, excessive physical activity, overactivity,

•insomnia or oversleeping as a form of escape,

•excessive and chronic worries about the future,

•bizarre and obsessive thoughts, self-harm, self-destructive behaviors (even such “innocent” ones as biting one’s nails or pulling out one’s hair),

•psychosomatic illnesses (for example, migraines of unknown origin) or abnormal activity of the immune system, which attacks the body instead of protecting it,

•self-sabotage (addictions, prone to injury or accidents, losing things),

•subtle sabotage of others (being late, losing others’ possessions, missing deadlines, breaking promises),

•tyranny (manifesting itself through verbal attacks or through playing the martyr/victim),

•being too nice,

•provoking others, which leads to us becoming the victim of others’ aggressive behavior,

•chronic fatigue, lack of energy,

•endless lecturing of others,

•reckless driving (and other instances of dangerous driving).

Are you familiar with these behaviors? Some of the items on Rubin’s list were painfully familiar to me. I could even venture the opinion that I was a real expert on them, even though I didn’t realize that they were ways to vent my anger.

This is why, when I speak to parents who come to my workshops and share their fantasy of never ever getting angry again, I respond with a resounding, “NO!” Avoiding anger is not only impossible but also unhealthy. It is a very intense and powerful feeling, and if we forbid ourselves to allow it to vent, we’ll keep harboring it and end up being contaminated by it — blocked or devoid of energy and the joy of living. Or it will eventually find an outlet, but not one that we’d wish and not at the right time. I’m convinced that if as children, we’d been allowed to get angry with our parents in safe circumstances, and if we’d learned to do it without harming others, there would be far fewer reckless drivers on our roads!

There are, of course, people who seem to hardly ever go berserk and those who do so more often. To some extent, it can be put down to the upbringing we had — whether we were allowed, as children to express anger and, if we were, how we did that. How did our parents voice their anger? Did their anger hurt us in any way? Did we learn that it may bring something positive to our lives?

A great deal depends on our disposition and personality as well; there are people who will be less inclined to express anger in an overt way than those who, by nature, seek confrontation.

There are people who find it harder to feel angry than to feel bitter or sad, so they will be more likely to feel sadness. There are also those who have a hard time experiencing sadness but, on the other hand, find it very easy to vent their anger and cross other people’s boundaries through yelling, insults, door slamming, or beating. Then, there are those who are constantly sullen and will always find a reason to criticize or lecture others — being with them, we may get the impression that they can never leave their pent-up anger behind and that it’s never far from reaching a boiling point. Some people appear to be stuck in their lives and unable to take a step forward. Finally, there are those who look as if they are frozen (Cf. Januszkiewicz, 2020). I would like to stress that I’m far from stigmatizing any of these. Our coping strategies were developed when we were confronted with anger as small children, dependent on the adults around us. We managed the task as well as we could, and the strategies we developed have served us for years. However, now that we’re adults, we can have our reasons to decide that it’s time to change. In fact, our own children constitute a great reason to try to change.

Another important thing I’ve learned about anger is that, as adults, we rarely experience pure anger stemming from a momentary inconvenience. One example of a momentary inconvenience is when a sleek lady in stiletto heels suddenly stamps on your foot. Another example is when a passerby hits you with their bulging grocery bags.

Reasons for being angry are seldom so clear cut. Very rarely is our anger caused solely by a momentary inconvenience. Unfolding simultaneously in our bodies and minds, anger is able to conjure up images and thoughts (the previously mentioned trigger thoughts) from the past that are connected with voicing or suppressing it. Anger is also quick to communicate with a whole ocean of memories we are completely unaware of. It’s like lighting Christmas tree lights — you can’t light one without illuminating the whole string. Similarly, our anger hardly ever results exclusively from the situation at hand. It is often triggered by a lot more in us: a feeling of disappointment, a lost sense of security, or hurt feelings. Typically, that “more” originated in our childhood, specifically in our relationships with adults — parents, teachers, grandparents — and with siblings and peer groups. It was a time when, as usually happens in life, a part of our needs was not fulfilled, or something hurt us or caused discomfort but we couldn’t show or voice our displeasure. In addition, we often mixed up (and we still do) that pent-up anger with other feelings: fear, disgust, or sadness, all of which we were equally unable to express. This is why, now, hearing our child or partner tell us something in a displeasing tone, similar to that of our disgruntled grandmother or menacing father, we may react emotionally not only to the words coming from the child or partner but also to the comments from the past.

Sometimes, when I’m enraged with my husband, I’m prone to forgetting what we’re actually fighting about because of the unexpressed anger from past fights over similar issues. I’m on the verge of blurting out, “The only person you always think of is yourself, and you never call to say you’ll be late!” Trigger thoughts detonate one another and remind me of all the times my husband failed to call and say he’d be late. All those memories add up and create a displeasing impression that he has no consideration for me, which is a feeling I can remember from my childhood. My own therapy made me realize that I had interpreted some of my parents’ behaviors as a failure to see me and consider my point of view. It had certainly made me angry, but I’d known how to hide it and had been given no chance to communicate it to others.

LEVELS OF ANGER

We already know that anger is an alarm signal, meaning that it appears when we want to express our desires or, quite the opposite, when we want to protect ourselves, or even attack someone in order to gain something. Habitually, an outburst doesn’t come out of the blue but is caused by many factors, including subconscious ones. Still, it is possible to trace the dynamics of feeling angry.

According to Alexander Lowen2, a psychotherapist and the founder of bioenergetic analysis, feelings that are alarm signals are gradable. I’ll try to explain this by using an example that’s very familiar to so many of us: My partner cannot find something when I happen to be busy. How do things play out when I move from one level of anger to another?

1.I feel annoyance, a kind of discomfort. Example: My husband asks from another room if I know where his tie might be while I’m trying to reply to an urgent email from work.

2.Irritation, which is more intense than annoyance, appears. It mounts when my husband enters the room to look for his tie and starts to slam the drawers.

3.Anger takes the stage. My husband asks whether I could check if I don’t happen to be sitting on the tie. I scream, “I’m not!!!” which is a spontaneous reaction but one that shows I’m still in touch with reality; it is by no means my goal to break off the relationship with my husband.

4.When my husband goes into a sulk or starts complaining that it’s impossible to find anything in this house, I lose my composure, and the emotional load threatens to blow up the whole room. Rage emerges, which can be characterized as being inadequate to the circumstances and out of touch with reality. Rational thinking vanishes into thin air, and I start yelling that he’s the one who never bothers to tidy the house and that I’m not at his beck and call.

5.Possibly, I can end up overcome with fury. For a brief moment, I might completely lose touch with reality and myself. In the example of this argument with my husband, I may start tossing clothes from the closet or kicking a handbag that got in my way.

Having spoken many times with the participants of my workshops on anger, I’ve come to an important conclusion: they only realize that things are getting out of hand when they’ve reached the stage of rage. Unfortunately, regaining one’s composure when one’s gotten so far in the cycle verges on the impossible. It’s an extremely delicate moment for tackling one’s emotions; it’s like trying to stop a furious T-Rex charging at us — and, as it will shortly become obvious, a comparison to this behemoth is quite well-justified! Only by becoming aware of one’s emotions at a far earlier stage is it possible to react appropriately. If we don’t learn to do just that, we risk acting as if our pain receptors are faulty and we are only able to realize we’re burning ourselves after a red mark appears on our skin.

Just as frequently, I hear from parents how much energy they put into the conscious suppression of anger, trying as best as they can to avoid hurting their own children. This, however, also leads to an emergency landing on Planet Anger.

Old Patterns of Anger

Problems with anger may arise from two situations: either we don’t let ourselves or can’t communicate internally with our anger and we cut ourselves off from it; or we do quite the opposite — we let anger overpower us so that it quickly morphs into rage, which takes hold of us and makes us lose control over our own actions.

This mechanism concerns all of us — men and women. People taking part in my parenting workshops are very self-aware; child rearing is a subject very close to their hearts, and they don’t want to perpetuate the same old patterns they’re so familiar with. They’re looking for new paths and are suddenly faced with the fact that these are rather narrow and lacking in proper road signs.

Why this is the case:

•Patterns and actions we don’t want to perpetuate in our own children are embedded in us and, to make matters worse, we’re often unaware of them. We act on autopilot, oblivious of the mode it was set for. Our patterns of anger were established when we were still very young, so much so that our self-awareness wasn’t fully developed yet.

•Traveling off the beaten path is synonymous with adventure and exploring the unknown. Even if we managed to provide ourselves with a map, the road may surprise us, and surprises tend to be stressful. When stressed out, we more often than not seek help from old patterns we’ve tested before; this is when it becomes so easy to revert back to our old ways.

•In a world where we’re bombarded with contradictory messages and information, trying out new modes of behavior whose results we can’t be completely sure of, might impinge on our sense of security. Each and every change is stressful because it transforms us into a battlefield between the new and the old.

•What we learned as children is precious to us — it has helped us to adjust to our environment and to feel a part of it. It enhanced our chances of survival — after all, we’re still walking this world and even reading this book! This is why, when introducing a new solution, we can observe different thoughts popping into our minds: Am I doing the right thing? What if I’m wrong? And what if my parents were right? We can experience the fear of losing something that has proven to be important and good, and this fear is very well-founded.

•We’re not making all those changes in a laboratory setting, but in real life. We’re sometimes tired, sleepy, overworked, drained. It’s not only our own lives that we’re trying to change, as we’re obviously part of a system, a family. As we’re changing, so is the whole system, and it may take unexpected turns. Whenever a system is undergoing a change, the cogs in the human machine may start to grate, making an awful lot of noise.

My parents’ generation had a very clear concept of anger. Mom wasn’t allowed to express it openly, but she would often have headaches or go silent, and days of silent treatment would ensue. Direct expression of difficult and intense emotions by women wasn’t socially acceptable, so all they were left with was the so-called passive aggression. On the other hand, Dad was allowed to bang his fist on the table and raise his voice and, in some families, even his hand. Male anger in the form of violent behaviors was tolerated by society, if not found completely normal. In that past cultural model, what is considered violent expression of anger today was regarded as closely linked to manliness and the archetype of the male hunter or warrior. Roughness, a “heavy hand,” orders, and, in some families — slaps, were a male preserve, and as such were permitted. By contrast, what wasn’t permitted were overtly aggressive behaviors on the part of women, which was illustrated by a comment I heard over and over again as a child, “Why would such a pretty girl get so angry?!”

It’s all changed today — whereas a woman expressing her anger openly isn’t as heavily stigmatized as it used to be because her behavior is viewed as an attempt at gaining independence, an “old-school” angry man may be strongly criticized. It is male aggression and anger that have become the new taboo, something that is considered undesirable and, therefore, is suppressed.3

Women confess that they get angry and enraged but then, at the end of the day, they are left to deal with their guilty consciences and a feeling of being alone with everything because their partners lose interest and withdraw. Nowadays, it is men who are prone to using passive-aggressive coping strategies. They say that they feel as if their hands were tied; that no matter what they do, it’s never good enough, and their partners are never happy, so they prefer to give up and do nothing. They may also add that, because of those conflicts, they withdraw from family life and from parenthood.

It would seem that old patterns of anger aren’t particularly effective, but we still haven’t come up with new ones which would be useful and feel comfortable. So where can we find them?

HEALTHY EXPRESSIONS OF ANGER

Luckily, there is some good news. The latest brain research suggests (Sztander, 2001) that as little as under ten percent of our emotional responses are automatic, meaning that we cannot really control them. The rest, however — over 90%, including anger — can be managed, as they are connected with cognition. Aside from people with brain or mental disorders, everybody is able to voice their anger in a healthy and conscious way. This book is meant to help you with just that.

Anger Code

What is worth knowing:

•Anger is healthy. What is, in fact, unhealthy is bottling up anger, suppressing it, or cutting ourselves off from it.

•We have no influence over anger building up, but we can have an effect on how we will respond to it.

•Anger is both a physiological and mental reaction — it involves our body and mind.

•It is worthwhile to express anger openly. Children will sense our anger anyway, even if it stays hidden under “even-keeled” remarks, in which case they don’t know what to trust.

•It is possible to learn how to express our anger, but it is a process, not a one-time effort.

•If we know how to express anger in both an empathetic and assertive way, no one will get hurt, and our relationships will benefit.

•Passive aggression, as well as aggressive (violent) behaviors, are not healthy.

•Our children should get angry in order to be healthy and eventually spread their wings.

•Learning to deal with anger and teaching the same to our children is not always a bed of roses, but it’s worth it in the long run — it will benefit not only our relationships with children but also their future.

•It is easier to address anger with professional help (e.g. psychotherapy) — we can free ourselves of chronic anger, at the same time gaining more serenity and joy.

The question that arises now is where to begin. And why is it all so difficult at times?