Dialectical Behavior Therapy Center

Being emotionally sensitive has advantages and challenges. The challenges include overcoming stereotypes of others that affect your performance and self-confidence, and living with the ache that comes from feeling that you are walking around raw, with no armor against emotional pain.

The good news is science is learning more and more about brain differences and how to make behavioral changes to cope effectively with intense emotions. When you’re able to cope with the pain in adaptive ways, you are better able to enjoy the gifts of being emotionally sensitive. In addition, our culture may be on the cusp of giving greater value to skills that are predominantly right-brained based.

Daniel Pink states in his book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, that our culture has been focused on logical, computer-like capabilities (primarily left brain activities) for some time. This focus on facts, programming and numbers has also meant a devaluing of skills that are often the strengths of the emotionally sensitive–empathy, making meaning, consoling, caretaking, awareness of undercurrents in interpersonal interactions and creativity.

But according to Pink, change is coming and  these right-brain qualities will be in demand in the future.

L-Directing Thinking and R-Directed Thinking

Pink describes two types of thinking.  One is L-Directed Thinking, which is characteristic of the left hemisphere of the brain.  This type of thinking is sequential, literal, and analytic.  He labelled the other type as R-Directed Thinking.  This type is characteristic of the right hemisphere and is simultaneous, metaphorical, aesthetic, and contextual. Pink notes that both approaches are necessary to build productive lives and societies, and that the devaluation of R-Directed thinking is fading.

Reasons For the Coming Emphasis on R-Directed Thinking

There are several reasons Pink believes this change is coming.  The first is the abundance of material goods that our society produces. There is not just one type of computer, there are many styles and models. Choices abound with clothing, shoes, furniture and other goods that we use on a daily basis.  The result is that our choices are not based on having products that are functional or reasonably priced–it’s now about design.

Design means utility and significance. Utility means easy to use and significance means beauty as well as functionality.  And design is art, the purview of R-Directed Thinking.

Steve Jobs was famous for his emphasis on design. He believed appearance and utility were critical, even for the box holding the products. Many attribute part of the success of Apple to his emphasis on design.

A second reason Pink gives that R-Directed Thinking will be more valued is outsourcing. Companies are outsourcing many programming, accounting, and legal research jobs to foreign countries. Skills such as forging relationships, creative problem solving, and seeing a big picture cannot be easily outsourced. Such skills are typically strengths of  the emotionally sensitive.

A third reason is automation. Computers are performing more and more tasks that humans used to do. But computers can’t effectively provide counseling, mediation, or perform other R-Directed tasks.

Pink believes that we’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. Now we’re progressing again, to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.

Six R-Directed Aptitudes

Pink offers six essential R-Directed aptitudes: Design, Story, Symphony, Play, Empathy, and Meaning.

When facts are instantly available, as they are now, what matters more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact. Telling a story helps people remember information and understand its significance.

Emotional impact motivates people to act on the information given. Being a good storyteller means connecting with the audience, making it meaningful for them and creating emotion about the story. Story telling or narrative has become a part of medicine (listening and understanding what the patient is saying), sales, and other fields. Emotionally sensitive people often have these skills.

Symphony is the ability to synthesize, to put together pieces of information into a whole and to detect patterns. Empathy is essential for living a life with meaning and for effective building of work and personal relationships. Play or humor reduces hostility, relieves tension, improves morale and helps communicate difficult messages. Meaning is about having your actions serve a greater purpose and make a contribution.

A culture based on both L-directed and R-directed thinking may prove to be more satisfying for most people, not just the emotionally sensitive.

Note to Readers:  My sincere thanks to everyone who has completed our second survey. If you haven’t participated, please consider answering the questions on our new survey about being emotionally sensitive. Results will be given in a future post.

photo credit: dawvon

Many people don’t like crying. They fight tears, hate their tears and hide their tears. Adults and sometimes children are told not to be crybabies. People who cry are often judged as weak and out of control. Emotionally sensitive people may be told that they cry “all the time” and may judge themselves negatively as a result. So let’s check the evidence. Is it true that tears are a sign of weakness?

Tears can be a signal of cooperation and vulnerability. Tears handicap aggressive actions, as noted by Orren Hasson, in an article on emotional tears as biological signals. It’s hard to fight when you can’t see well. Tears signal to others that you don’t want to fight; perhaps this is the root of the belief that crying makes you weak?

In modern society, fighting is not the most desired social skill. Building a life of contentment requires cooperation and a willingness to be vulnerable in relationships. Tears signal a vulnerability that is authentic and powerful.

When watching someone cry, others may cry in empathy. Allowing tears means the walls are down and the person is undefended. It is an opportunity for intimacy. It’s a signal that something of importance is taking place. Tears are very difficult to fake, so they’re often a sign of honesty to others.

Tears signal a need for help and comfort. Universally people recognize tears as a sign of distress. In earlier times, this may have been seen as a sign of weakness. In today’s world, it is a way of communicating upset. It’s usually effective as most people have a natural response to offer help or comfort to someone who is crying.

Tears communicate different emotions. People laugh until they cry and cry for joy as well as fear, sorrow, and sadness. Some cry when they are angry.

William Frey, a biochemist who wrote Crying: The Mystery of Tears, conducted a survey which showed that sadness accounts for 49 percent of people’s tears, happiness 21 percent, anger 10 percent, fear or anxiety 9 percent and sympathy 7 percent.

Sometimes crying occurs when we cannot put overwhelming feelings into words. Tears can supplant articulation.

Tears may help relieve stress. Emotional tears contain manganese and proteins, including the stress hormones prolactin and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). But the amounts aren’t enough to explain why people feel better after crying. Frey discovered that not only do people cry hormones out but also cry hormones in. He found that the neurotransmitter leucineenkephalin (a natural opiate-like substance that reduces pain) is released in the brain when people weep.

Crying may bring us back into emotional equilibrium. The autonomic nervous system controls involuntary activities like breathing and kidney function and it is divided into the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems. The sympathetic is responsible for preparing us for action: physically, emotionally and mentally. The parasympathetic returns the heart rate, hormones and neurotransmitters to normal. Tears are believed to be a part of the parasympathetic system and a part of returning to normal. Thus often people may sometimes find themselves crying after a difficult event rather than during. Tears seem to be a way people calm themselves.

Is there an average amount of crying? Frey says the the frequency of crying in healthy individuals ranges from zero to seven episodes per month for men and from zero to twenty-nine episodes per month for women. The average is 1.4 times per month for men and 5. 3 times a month for women.

Do women cry more or differently than men? Fully half the men surveyed said they never cry but only 6 percent of the women did. Women’s crying doesn’t necessarily correlate with their hormone levels and those who are depressed don’t necessarily cry more than others.

The tear glands of the sexes are structurally different leading women to cry more profusely than men according to Louann Brizedine, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California. And whereas men tend to tear up and cry quietly to themselves, women’s weeping is a much noisier and visible event.

Crying is about attachment and social communication. Crying can be a signal that some aspect of a relationship is in jeopardy. Between two people in conflict it can be a need for reassurance. Tears handicapping aggressive actions and signal a need for help or submission.

In a relationship, tears may show trust. Being willing to cry with someone and be comforted means feeling safe with the other person. It can be about bonding, like when a couple cries when they get married or when their baby is born.

Tears seem to be about a powerful connection between thought and emotion, a way of expressing feeling that cannot be expressed in any other way. Others may be uncomfortable with the intensity of the emotion expressed by tears, with the intensity of the emotion aroused in them, or in their resistance to the message. They may not want to offer solace and be uncomfortable with the pull that tears have to draw them in. They may not be comfortable with the vulnerability expressed by someone who is crying. It takes a lot of courage to be that vulnerable. That’s not weakness.

photo credit: Andy Magee

When thinking about people who are emotionally sensitive, you might be most likely to think of the individual who cries easily and who shows her emotions openly. But there are many different types of emotionally sensitive people.

Type C Person

In the book The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotions, Michael Jawer discusses the Type C person. A Type C individual is a stoic, a denier of strong feelings and has a calm, unemotional demeanor.

This person has a tendency to people please, is not assertive, and tends to feel helpless and hopeless. He is at risk for autoimmune disorders from asthma to lupus. Type C people tend to say they aren’t upset but experience strong sensations in their bodies that indicate otherwise. They don’t say no or defend their personal integrity. Their emotions have no outlet. For the Type C person who is emotionally sensitive, finding a way to cope with emotions is critical.

Different coping strategies work for different people. For some who struggle with intense feelings about events that have happened, but have difficulty expressing themselves, expressive writing might be particularly effective. Finding a way to label and express emotions is a part of coping.

Writing and Trauma

In the 1970′s and early 1980′s James Pennebaker, a social psychologist in Austin, investigated the effects of a writing technique for people who had experienced traumatic experiences such as divorce, abuse, deaths of spouses and the Holocaust. He confirmed that following a difficult emotional event people are more likely to become depressed or ill, experience changes in body weight and sleeping habits, and even die of heart disease and cancer at higher rates than those not traumatized. People who suffered a traumatic experience and kept it secret experienced more severe consequences than those who did not keep it secret.

Dr. Pennebaker discovered that most people who write in a certain way about upsetting events in their past gain an improved mood and health. The writing technique is not about reliving the event, but about gaining a better understanding or finding meaning in the event. Sometimes the meaning is very difficult to find.

A Special Place and A Ritual for Writing

In his book, Writing to Heal, Dr. Pennebaker suggests that people who try expressive writing create a special place to write. A calming, nurturing environment, separate from where you work or do other activities, is advised. You’ll want a place where you can be alone for a while. Set up the room in the same way each time you write and try to write at the same time each day. Create your own ritual. You may want to meditate before or after.

A Few Don’ts

What not to do? Don’t write about anything that you cannot handle. In addition, don’t write about a recent event. The technique is usually not helpful immediately after an event has occurred. You need to manage your immediate reactions and be able to use your logical mind first. If you are in therapy, discuss this option with your therapist. If you are not coping well in general, don’t use expressive writing.

Guidelines for Writing

Pennebaker’s instructions are to write for about twenty minutes on four consecutive days. You can write about the same topic each day or different topics. Write continuously and don’t correct your grammar or spelling. Write about your deepest thoughts and feelings about an event that happened that has been influencing your life. Let go and explore the event in a deep and thoughtful way. Write what happened (the facts), how you felt about it at the time it occurred and how you feel about it now. You might write about how the event has affected your relationships with those you love and others you know personally as well as your working relationships.

On the second writing day, go even deeper into your emotions and thoughts. You might want to write more about how it has affected your relationships with those you love and your life in general.

On the third writing day continue to focus on the current emotions and thoughts that you have about the event that are affecting your life the most. Don’t repeat what you have already written. Explore the event from different perspectives and different points of view. Write about what you are feeling as you explore this. How has this shaped you as a person? What makes you feel the most vulnerable?

Write from your wise mind, using observe and describe. State the facts as you know them and separate writing about facts from writing about emotions and thoughts.

On the last writing day, continue writing about your emotions and thoughts. Try to cover any aspects you haven’t written about yet. What have you learned, gained and lost as a result of this experience you are writing about? Try to create a meaningful story that you can take with you into the future.

For more specific information about expressive writing, and instructions, Dr. Pennebaker’s website is at http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2005/writing.html.

A research study completed years ago has always fascinated me. In the 1960′s Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson administered a test to all students in an elementary school and gave the results to the teachers. They told the teachers that based on the test results some students were particularly likely to excel academically in the upcoming year whereas others were not.

The “gifted” students were actually chosen by drawing names out of a hat, not by their performance on the test. In fact, the test was bogus and didn’t really measure anything. At the end of the year the students identified as gifted scored significantly higher on an actual IQ test than students who weren’t labeled as gifted, though in truth there was no difference in the groups at the beginning of the year.

That is an amazing result. The authors believed that the only way this could have happened is through a self-fulfilling prophecy in the minds of the teachers. The students themselves did not know they had been designated as high-achievers (or not) and neither did their parents. Only the teachers knew. The researchers believed that the teachers’ expectations caused them to act in ways that improved the performance of the students who were labeled as being intellectually brighter.

Identity Contingency

How could someone just thinking a certain way about you actually change your performance? Is it just that they work harder with you or give you the benefit of the doubt more often? And did the teachers’ attitudes negatively influence the scores of the students not seen as gifted?

Recent research suggests that there’s another component other than the teachers working harder with the students labeled as gifted. Claude Steele’s work, as reported in his book Whistling Vivaldi, would suggest that part of the way self-fulfilling prophecy works is that people, even young children, pick up on cues about the expectations of others and the messages given to them by a setting, though they may not be conscious of these messages.

Even young children are often aware of general stereotypes. Performance results for all ages at many different tasks are dependent to a surprising degree on what Steele calls identity contingency.

Identity contingencies are the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given social identity, such as being female, male, an executive or whatever job you perform, black, white, oriental, geeky or emotionally sensitive. Some identity contingencies are more serious than others, but they all carry a sort of stigma.

In general the emotionally sensitive may be seen as too soft, too touchy-feely, or even unstable. The stereotype that goes with being emotionally sensitive includes being seen as not serious about business or career, weak as a person, unreliable, over-reactive, high maintenance, and less professional than those who are not viewed as emotionally sensitive. Many who are emotionally sensitive fear being stereotyped in this way which of course adds stress when in a situation where the stereotype could be applied to them.

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat is when you are in a situation where the stereotype could be applied to you and result in your being treated negatively. Thus someone who is emotionally sensitive may be on high alert in certain situations, fearful of showing “too much” emotion and being categorized in a negative way that would have consequences for their relationships and/or their career.

The fear is real. Evidence consistently shows that consequences tied to your social identity make a difference, from the way you perform in certain situations to the careers and friends you choose. To do well in a situation where a social stereotype is in play, individuals experience enormous pressure.

For example, emotionally sensitive people may go to work each day determined to not show emotion and fearful of the labels that others might give them. The added tension from the worry about being labeled is likely to make it even more difficult to manage their emotions.

Social identity threat does not have to be a known threat, with a particular bad thing that could happen, like being labeled as unstable or passed over for a promotion. Social identity threat can exist even if the person is uncertain that anything negative would happen if they were labeled. The person only has to believe that something negative could happen. Negative consequences include embarrassment, humiliation, possible social rejection, awkward interactions, lost career opportunities, being judged, and being dismissed or discounted.

As Steele points out, the problem is that the pressure to disprove a stereotype changes how you are in a situation. It gives you an extra task. In addition to learning new skills, knowledge and ways of thinking in a new situation, or in addition to trying to perform well in a workplace, the person is trying to overcome the negative stereotype. This multi-tasking is stressful and distracting and interferes with performance, especially when trying to learn something new.

When you realize that this stressful experience is chronic in a certain setting, such as that you will always be trying to prove that being emotionally sensitive doesn’t mean this or that, you may drop out. Or maybe avoid any situation that involves stereotype threat. Dropping out may confirm the stereotype for some and raise your own doubts about yourself.

How Stereotype Threat Impairs Your Performance

Steele states that identity threats negatively impact a broad range of human functioning. First, the threat of confirming the stereotype makes you vigilant to all things relevant to the threat, and to what your chances of avoiding it are. For the emotionally sensitive, this would mean any interaction or situation they perceived as having an emotional component.

Second, identity threats raise self-doubt and create repeated thoughts/worries about how valid the doubts are.

Third, the self-doubt leads to constant monitoring of how well you’re doing which impairs performance. The pianist who plays almost without thinking has a “flow” of performance. But should the pianist be wracked with doubt and evaluate every chord he plays, his performance will suffer. Finally identity threats pressure people to suppress threatening thoughts, thoughts about not doing well or about bad consequences of confirming the stereotype. This requires energy and is exhausting.

Identity threat brings about a kind of panic, according to Steele. Your mind races, your blood pressure rises, you begin to sweat, you redouble your efforts to perform well. In your mind you try to refute the stereotype and what you can’t refute you try to suppress. Your alertness to threats increases and this further suppresses the brain activity critical to performance and functioning.

The more you care, the more frustrated you are, and the highter the stakes of performance, the more panicked you may be. If the threat is part of an ongoing situation in you life–an ongoing experience in a workplace for example, or in school, then this reaction can become chronic. And, though it is difficult to believe, you’re probably aware of some of this defending and coping, but much of the time you miss it.

A mind trying to defeat a stereotype leaves little mental capacity free for anything else you’re doing.

So stigma matters not only in the way others react to you, but in your own performance and choices. Stereotypes hurt in ways we may not even realize.

photo credit: 1CreativeSoul

A Brief Overview of DBT

Have you ever wished you could take back an email that you sent when you were emotionally upset? Or maybe you made some statements when you were sad that you didn’t really mean or agreed to something when you were thinking with your heart that you later regretted ? Or maybe you wanted to be supportive and helpful to someone you love but couldn’t because your own emotions made it difficult?

Communicating when overwhelmed with emotion does not usually work well. Being overwhelmed with emotion is not a pleasant experience. For emotionally sensitive people, managing their emotions so they can communicate most effectively and with the best results means learning to manage the intense emotions they experience on a regular basis.

Validation from others is one of the best tools to help emotionally sensitive people manage their emotions effectively. Self-validation is one of the best ways for emotionally sensitive people to manage their own feelings. Self-validation is the step that comes before self-compassion. Acknowledging that the internal experience exists and is understandable comes before self-kindness.

Understanding Validation

Validation is a simple concept to understand but difficult to put into practice.

Validation is the recognition and acceptance of another person’s internal experience as being valid. Emotional validation is distinguished from emotional invalidation, in which your own or another person’s emotional experiences are rejected, ignored, or judged. Self-validation is the recognition and acknowledgement of your own internal experience.

Validation does not mean agreeing with or supporting feelings or thoughts. Validating does not mean love. You can validate someone you don’t like even though you probably wouldn’t want to.

Why is Validation Important?

Validation communicates acceptance. Humans have a need to belong and feeling accepted is calming. Acceptance means acknowledging the value of yourself and fellow human beings.

Validation helps the person know they are on the right track. Life can be confusing and difficult. Feedback from others that what you are experiencing is normal or makes sense lets you know that you thinking and feeling in understandable ways. Your internal experience does not have to be the same as anyone else’s but it helps to know that your experiences is understandable. Or not.

Validation helps regulate emotions. Knowing that you are heard and understood is a powerful experience and one that seems to relieve urgency. Some say it’s because when we don’t feel understood it creates thoughts of being left out or not fitting in. Those thoughts lead to fear and maybe panic because of the importance of being part of a group is critical for survival, especially in the early days of mankind, and of the potential loss of love and acceptance which is a basic need. Whatever the reason, validation helps soothe emotional upset.

Validation helps build identity. Validation is like a reflection of yourself and your thoughts by another person. Your values and patterns and choices are highlighted and that helps people see their own personality characteristics more clearly.

Validation builds relationships. Feeling accepted builds relationships. Some research shows that chemicals related to feeling connected are released when someone is validated.

Validation builds understanding and effective communication. Human beings are limited in what they can see, hear and understand. Two people can watch the same event occur and see different aspects and remember important details differently. Validation is a way of understanding another person’s point of view.

Validation shows the other person that they are important. Whether the person being validated is a child, a significant other, a spouse, a parent, a friend, or an employee, validation communicates that they are important to you and you care about their thoughts and feelings and experiences. Validation also shows the other person that you are there for them.

Validation helps us persevere. Sometimes when change is very difficult, having the difficulty of the task recognized helps people keep working toward their goal. It seems to help replenish willpower.

A simple to understand concept, validation is powerful and often more difficult to practice than it might at first seem. In my experience, the results are well-worth the effort.

photo credit: nathancolquhoun

In the previous post, Coping With A Stressful Situation: Managing Your Emotions, we discussed the importance of not acting impulsively on your upset emotions. When possible, taking a break until you are calm so your logical mind can be in charge is the best strategy.

Continue reading →

Whether you’re dealing with an emotional bully (see previous post about adult bullies) or other difficult situation, one of the first steps is to comfort yourself and manage your emotions.

The part of the brain that is responsible for decision-making and planning cannot function as well when you are filled with emotion. Acting on emotions without the thoughtfulness of the logical part of the brain usually means trouble.

Even when you’re in the right about a situation, if you act impulsively and emotionally it’s unlikely others will listen. They’ll tell you to calm down and don’t get so upset. This situation happens frequently for the emotionally sensitive and they soon believe no one listens to them. They also may find themselves reacting first and regretting later.

There are ways to learn to not act immediately on the feeling you are having. Mindfulness is a skill that helps you develop a pause between feeling and acting so you’re not ruled by whatever emotion you are experiencing. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “Paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, lists three How Skills and three What Skills of mindfulness. The What Skills, meaning what you do, observe, describe and participate.

Observe means to see what is present and real without coloring it with interpretation or assumptions. Observe is to see the facts of a situation. Describe is to put words on what you see without judging. You can see that the chair is red. Saying the chair is a horrid shade of red would be a judgment. Participate means to participate fully in events with full awareness of what you are doing. This means you’re not daydreaming or half-aware or clouded by emotion that you aren’t paying attention to what is actually happening.

The How Skills are how you do the What Skills: One-Mindfully, Nonjudgmentally, and Effectively. One-Mindfully means to do only one thing at a time and to have your attention fully on whatever you are doing. Non-judgmentally means to just experience without labeling good or bad and Effectively means to do what works.

In the case of the adult bully, observing and describing what happened is the first step: doing this in a nonjudgmental way may be difficult. Effectively is key. Regardless of whether the other person is being fair or behaving in reasonable ways, how can you be most effective in coping with his behavior?

Wait until you are calm enough to think clearly. Strong emotions seem to compel people to take some action, whether it’s to fight or run away or tend and befriend. The body is poised to act, not think or plan. This system was effective when human surivival depended on avoiding a tiger or a lion, but doesn’t work so well in most of the situations people face today.

The urge to do something to protect yourself against a perceived threat can be very strong, but in most situations the urgency is not real. Acting impulsively, without thinking through the action, can make the situation worse. Then one crisis is followed by another and then another. Impulsive efforts to solve the problem usually create more problems. Soon it may seem like your life is one crisis after the other. That can be discouraging and only makes your emotional state worse. Being mindful of your emotions and your internal experience without acting on your urges and impulses is an important skill. You learn that the emotion will pass.

Be Aware of and Name Your Emotions. When you observe and describe your internal state, that is one step in managing your emotions. For some, this means taking time to identify the specific emotions they’re feeling: jealousy, hurt, anger, or fear?

Sometimes anger acts as a shield against feeling hurt or scared. Knowing that your anger is a secondary emotion and that your primary emotion is fear will help you manage your feelings effectively. Knowing what you are feeling gives you more of a sense of control and gives you ideas about what action to take.

Some people have great difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations that are the basis of emotions. This characteristic is called alexithymia. If someone is alexithymic, then learning how emotions are expressed in the body is important. Sadness is often felt in the throat, chest and belly. Anger is felt in the neck, head, shoulders, hands and arms. Fear is felt in the belly, head, face, chest, and throat.

Sometimes focusing on the body sensation, such as your throat feeling tight, is more helpful than repeating in your head how anxious you are. Saying “I’m so anxious,” repeatedly may actually feed the emotion.

These are beginning steps in managing your emotions. Not acting on your emotional urges takes practice, but the peace you gain by not acting impulsively is well worth the practice time.

photo credit: AbigailPhotography

One type of emotional bully is the person who attempts to use anger as a way of protecting themselves, controlling others or as a form of connection. Anger is often a hurtful emotion for those on the receiving end. For emotionally sensitive people having someone angry at them can be devastating and result in their withdrawing, fighting, acting in unhealthy ways and experiencing hours of emotional pain.

One of the ways to cope with anger is to change your perception (see previous post on No Matter What the Problem, There Are Only Four Things You Can Do). If you blame yourself whenever someone is angry with you, or have an automatic response that isn’t effective,  a first step of pausing and considering the reasons for their anger could be helpful.

Spouses who verbally attack, the controlling boss, the critical parent–all may be described as angry people. Bullies are often angry people, regardless of their age. Maybe it’s hard to understand why someone would bully another. After all, being chronically angry has many negative consequences for both the person who lives in anger and those around that person.

Anger is a complicated emotion but we’re beginning to understand it better than ever before.  There are different ways that anger can work for people, at least in the short run.

Anger as an Emotional Shield

Consider Stephanie. (Like all the names used here, that’s a made-up name and doesn’t refer to a real person.)  Stephanie is focused on self-esteem. Focusing on self-esteem is a trap, as we know from Dr. Neff’s book Self Compassion (2011).  She looks for achievements to feel good about herself and assesses herself in terms of whether she is better than others in various ways, such as being smarter, more fit, wealthier, and the like. Most of the time she compares herself to people she believes are superior to her and so she constantly thinks she is worthless. She puts others down in an attempt to build herself up. Her anger is based on chronic thoughts of worthlessness and hurt.

Stephanie feels powerless and inadequate. When someone feels powerless, anger can be empowering. What a different feeling that is!  For fearful people, feeling in control may be soothing and they can often get that feeling through anger.

Anger and Control

Jake verbally attacks his wife Wendy. When she returned home late from a meeting, he raged at her, demanding to know where she had been. He “knew” she was cheating on him. Wendy apologized over and over and reassured him she loved him. To avoid his anger she told her boss she couldn’t stay late any more. She made many changes in her life to avoid Jake’s anger. Anger for Jake is about control, and in this case, his anger is  a way of controlling his fears of abandonment.

Anger and Entitlement

Allison is an ambitious professional. At work, she has a group of three or four followers who agree with just about everything she says. Allison puts others down and believes she is superior to others and deserves to be adored. When she wasn’t given a promotion she knew she deserved, she was enraged. She stayed angry for months and tormented the woman who was promoted. Her anger is the result of believing the world is treating her unjustly. Allison is exhibiting a narcissistic anger–she does not feel insecure, she feels entitled.

Anger and Connection

Wesley continues to form relationships that seem promising. He has a certain level of closeness with which he is comfortable. He is fine until he talks about marriage and then he finds a reason to be angry with the one he cares about. He has the same pattern in business. He works well with someone until he thinks about having a business partner. Then he destroys the relationship by finding fault with the other person.  Wesley’s anger is about fear of intimacy and commitment.

Anger is often a secondary emotion, triggered by fear or hurt. Think about your child running onto the road in front of your house. Fear comes first, then anger. Sometimes the change from fear to anger happens so quickly and automatically people aren’t even aware it occurred.

Steven Stosny, in his book Treating Attachment Abuse (1995) talks about anger as an emotional salve to cover up core hurts. He identifies core hurts, some of which are feeling ignored, unimportant, accused, guilty, untrustworthy, devalued, rejected, powerless, and unlovable. If someone doesn’t have the ability to soothe themselves or cope with core hurts, then they may use anger as a shield. By assuring oneself and others that the hurt was not legitimate, that the other person was in the wrong, the person establishes their superiority. Thus they avoid feeling the difficult emotion.

As an example, Jake is attempting to avoid terrifying feelings of abandonment. He does not have to see himself as insecure or controlling or difficult because he is sure his wife was the one at fault.

Anger can create distance when someone is afraid of getting too close.  If someone has grown up with distant parents, they may crave closeness but at the same time be afraid of it. Anger can be protective in those situations.

Anger can also be a safe way to engage with someone. I fight with you, therefore we are connected.

Anger and Pain Reduction

When a person gets angry, the brain secretes norepinephrine. Norepinephrine works much like a pain reducer. When provoked the brain also produces the hormone epinephrine, which causes a surge of energy throughout our body. The chemical reactions may be comforting as well stimulating. Some report almost addictive-like response to the adrenaline-like rush they experience when angry.

Understanding the many reasons for anger (I’ve just listed a few) may help you step back and consider the cause.  Taking that step back can help you consider your response and what coping skills you want to use  instead of reacting in an ineffective habitual way (like blaming yourself or making excuses for the other person) that may not be the best choice.

photo credit: cali.org