Why So Angry?

Is your relationship getting heated? Are you feeling more angry these days? In this episode of Heart Versus Head, Randy and Beverly dive into why anger shows up in relationships and how you can navigate the angry moments with more compassion. 

Heart Versus Head is a podcast about relationship styles and how those relationship styles influence communication in the most important relationships. The hosts - Randy Hampton and Beverly Craddock - are a married couple who are sought-after relationship coaches, award-winning authors and regular people who (like everyone in relationships) are just trying to stay connected through all the noise of life in the modern world. You can learn more about the couple and their work at HeartAndHeadCoaching.com, where you'll learn to fight better and connect again. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to Heart vs. Head, a podcast that helps couples communicate and fight better. Here are your hosts, Randy Hampton and Beverly Craddock.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Hey everybody, it's Randy and Beverly. Welcome to the Heart vs. Head Podcast. Hope everybody's having a great week out there. Hey Beverly. Good morning. It is a spectacular day, a little bit windy where we are, but we're not complaining. It's Hawaii and the weather's generally pretty good, but it's been windy lately, and so I know some of that wind and some of the storms we see turn into storms in the in the continental United States. So uh fasten your seatbelts if you're if you're on the continent listening. The weather's coming. Mother Nature has been kind of angry lately. So let's talk about anger. Uh on the program today. We are talking about anger. We're going to talk about what it what it does, what it serves, what purpose it has in our lives, but how it comes up in our relationships and how hearts and heads use anger differently. Now we of course talk about things from a heart and head approach. Hearts are the partner in a relationship that makes their decisions in the relationship based on how everyone is feeling, takes everybody's feelings into account. Heads are the partner in the relationship that makes decisions based on fact, logic, black, white. This is the problem that we have found as relationship coaches working with thousands of people out here is it creates a difference in the way that that we communicate. It creates a difference in the way we make decisions in our relationship. That's where conflict comes from. And so we found some ways to kind of head that off. We're going to talk today, though, about anger. I I'm not an angry human, I don't think.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

I No, but we had our moments. Shirley been together 16 years, and I think that's one of the reasons we make really good relationship coaches, is that we experienced a lot of the things that couples are going through, whether it was even our our first marriages or this this uh second marriage.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

We have our own experiences with anger, and this is, I think, one of the things that all as Beverly says kind of makes us effective is we went through it. This is not us sitting in in some kind of ivory tower judgment of relationships or people that come to see us for help with their relationships. This is us generally listening and going, yeah, I get that, me too. We're gonna dive into anger. Let's let's give a story though. It's always good to kind of start with an example of what we're talking about. I mentioned that neither of us are really angry people, but we have had experiences where we are certainly triggered humans, uh, and anger, anger comes out in that situation a lot.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Especially the early days.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

The early days when you're when you're really starting to navigate a relationship and the conflict comes up and they can take you by surprise, and so anger can be more common in the early phases of a relationship. You're still trying to figure out the negotiation. So early on in in our relationship, uh, if we dive into the Wayback Machine back when Beverly and I were were first married, and when we first came to Hawaii, there was a situation one one year where we went to Colorado. We were visiting the the kids, they were all living in Colorado. So we went there to see them for the holidays, Christmas time. And uh we went to see my son. The visit did not go well, and that's probably enough said about that. Um this was gosh 12, 13, 14 years ago. So it's been a while back. Um he he's doing much better, thank you. At that point in his life, he was dealing with some stuff. So we went to see him. The visit did not go well, and there was a lot of I think he was angry with me as a dad for some of the things that had gone on that he felt you know had affected him in his life. We left that that that get together, and on the drive away from there, Beverly and I got in an argument because Beverly was Beverly was angry.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

I was. During this encounter that we had, first of all, we it was kind of unexpected. So uh as a heart, I just viewed, oh, it's the holidays and family, it's gonna be all rainbows and butterflies. And uh, and then when we got there, we we found out that it was not. And so I didn't get to be a part of these discussions, but I was in a room next door and could hear a lot of the discussion. So when it was over, Randy was feeling like, okay, and this is again a difference in heart and head. Randy was feeling like, okay, you know, we got through that, you know, fights aren't to be avoided. His his son needed to express that anger. And Randy actually felt pretty good about that whole conversation and and so forth. Whereas I'm sitting there as a heart and I'm feeling bad for my husband because I feel he's a great father and a great human. And so I didn't like hearing him be, you know, somewhat attacked and and I was very defensive in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

As we drive back to the place we were staying, the the argument was on, and in that moment, I think where Beverly got angry and was was talking about, oh, that that's not a nice thing, and he shouldn't talk about you that way. I kind of looked at it from from maybe my perspective and got a bit defensive, probably about my son, and I said, Well, you know, he's angry, he's just a you know, just a kid, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Went through a divorce, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Right, yeah. I mean, there were there were there were plenty of I guess reasons for for it in my mind. What happened then though was because I ended up kind of taking a different yeah, different a different position. I don't even know that it was sides. I was just trying to prevent the fallout. Because I ended up taking kind of that different position, it created opposition between us when there when there didn't really need to be opposition, but there was. So the next day when we got on an airplane and flew back to Hawaii, uh, an eight-hour flight, we didn't talk. We did not talk on that on that flight home. We were both angry.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Not even want some water when the flight attendant came.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Flight attendant walks by, you know, we didn't talk. We get we get back to to Hawaii, we land at the airport, and I remember turning the phones on, lots of text messages coming in on the phones, and Beverly looks over at a text message on her phone, which happened to be from my my elderly mother, who just said, Hey, it was great to see you guys when you were here. Hope you had a nice flight home. To which Beverly texted back. I think we're getting a divorce. Send.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Not my best moment.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

And I'm like, no, one, we are not getting a divorce, we're having a disagreement. Two, what in the heck? You have to light my mother up for her. She's an old woman. Um this is this is anger in your relationships, and sometimes it gets bigger. People talk about things like rage and all of those things. You know, when when it gets really angry, how do you keep it from tearing things apart? And I think one of the things that I would point out, as somebody that looks at anger from maybe more of a practical sense, and this is true, and we'll talk about how heads and hearts see this differently. I think heads see anger sometimes as an effective tool to accomplish a little bit of chaos and to resolve problems. And so we actually look at that anger a little bit differently. But what is anger? And I think one of the things that that we really don't understand enough about it as humans is anger is a protective response. We look at a scared kid and we go, okay, that fear, that anxiety, that scared that that little kid is undergoing is hard and horrible, and you know, everybody would want to comfort a scared kid. And then you look at an angry kid, and everybody's like, oh, you know, uh, deal with that, control that child. We have a, as humans, a more negative response to anger because anger often ends up in in situations that can be more dangerous, more violence and things like that. And so as humans, we we look at anger as as somehow worse than being scared or being fearful.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Aaron Ross Powell Right. Well, we know the solution. You can comfort a kid with sadness, and when someone's angry, it can be very difficult, unless you're a very skilled parent, to turn that around, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Sure. It is it's easier to deal with all the other emotions than to deal with anger. And and that's what makes it so hard. But but at its very core, it is the same as fear, it is the same as anxiety. This is the fight or flight response. When you are in danger, you get fight, flight, freeze. Well, and for all my pet psychologist friends out there, fawn, which they've thrown on the list lately. Don't uh we're gonna ignore that. Fight or flight. It's this fight or flight response.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Or freeze, freeze is fair.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Freeze is is fear as well. Um but all of these things are actually fear responses. You respond with anger because it's a way you defend yourself when you are afraid, fight or flight. Fight is anger. It is it is the same, it's coming from a place of fear, and so people that have these anger issues that get so triggered. One of the most important things you can do as a person that's triggered, or that you can do as the partner of a person that gets triggered is first and foremost understand this is actually their fear. This is that partner of yours responding to something that has made them uh afraid or fearful.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

However, it shows up differently for hearts and heads.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

When Randy talks about this kind of fear, a lot of times with heads, it's about something being unfair, frustrating. Uh, maybe there's just too much emotion in it. Maybe that's where the fear's coming from because heads do not like emotion. Emotions are are squishy, unreliable. And what heads really want to do is fix and solve the problem. Now, hearts are completely different. For hearts, anger is usually mixed in with hurt and or rejection as well. So, what we do is as emotional beings, the heart really feels that conflict deeply within, in our body, even. It causes us to get emotionally flooded. There may be a lot of tears, a lot of emotion and drama, hence the uh reaction that I had to the text, getting divorced, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:12

I think we're getting a divorce.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

And it's also about disconnection. Anger is is very much a disconnected feeling. So you can already get a feel for how hearts and heads look at anger differently, which means we're going to address it differently and the solutions are going to be different.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

If you've followed the podcast along the way, you know that we're responding very differently to these things. I can only answer for heads in how we use anger. Like I said, it's a defensive response, but I think heads are, when angry, trying to be heard. We're trying to push the facts as we see them. We're trying to argue what we see as the unfairness that we're experiencing in this anger, and and we're trying to make the other person understand the facts. We're trying to be heard, we're angry because we're not feeling heard, and we feel like everything we're basing the argument on is just immediately not making any kind of impact on the partner.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Right. So then what's going on with the heart is that we won't accept the facts or even listen to them because it it doesn't help us in how we feel. It doesn't matter if yes, you left the front door open or the garage open because you thought that I was coming back through or I was the last one coming through, and therefore it's unfair that you're getting blamed for leaving the door open. I don't want to hear that because instead, inside, I'm just feeling unsafe. I'm feeling like I can't trust you that you're not protecting us, perhaps. So it it becomes very obvious to us as relationship coaches when couples come in and they are at two different places. It's usually this, you know, fight or or common themes of fights that couples go through. And maybe now you can start to see why it's very hard to get some resolution. So let's move on now to kind of the solution part of this. For what is that for heads?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah, how do you how do we fix the anger? And like I said, I think for heads, so much of solving things is really understanding and function. Well, you understand it. Your your partner, your heart partner's being angry because they're feeling something. If you want to make your relationship easier, break down the function of it and recognize that when your partner is angry, it's because they're they're feeling that unsafe or they're feeling unheard or hurt or all of those things. And heads, it is your kind of role in the relationship to be more mindful of those things and to be protective for your partner of those fears. So understanding it and recognizing, and also recognizing you're not gonna make them safer by being angry back. There's never been anybody that's felt safer than being bludgeoned by anger. And so, you know, somebody's gotta stop kind of that escalation cycle too. Heads be aware of it, recognize that it's fear. And oftentimes when Beverly is angry with me, I recognize it as her fear response. And so I'm able to go, oh wait, I don't want that. That's I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to further traumatize the this human that I like that I hang out with. And so because I understand it, I'm able to to kind of slow it down just myself and maybe use anger in a more useful, insightful way in the relationship. So for heads, I think it comes down to understanding, but it's very different for hearts.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Yeah, for hearts, what we're looking for is emotional validation. So if I have tone or volume or tears, big emotion coming at a head partner, that is sending a big message. And so what I need you to recognize right off the bat is okay, these are big emotions. What's going to help with that? It's going to be validation. I don't need you to fix this. I can fix this. I need you to validate me for it.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Yeah, I don't I uh the heart doesn't need us to fix it. They need us to feel it.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Or at least understand it and say, okay, I see you're upset. I see that I have I've freaked you out by leaving the garage door open. That that wasn't what I intended, right? So these are ways that you validate what I'm feeling. I see that you're crying. I I understand that I've hurt you in some way. That was not what I was going for, right? So that's kind of what Randy's talking about is that understanding. And then, you know, putting that the validation part is when you acknowledge and you say it to me so that I I feel heard and I feel seen.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

So what you're what you're saying is if I'm able to say, so I see that you are completely out of your mind right now.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

That's probably not the way to go about it. I I yeah, I suspect it is. Okay, never mind that part, but disregard Randy's last sentence. Disregard that's actually should be like a disclaimer at the end of every podcast. Disregard anything Randy said that was completely wrong or something.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Where I could just kind of eject that.

unknown 16:35

Erase.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Like on my chair, like eject me as the podcast co-host.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

No, no, no. More like, okay, erase. I need an erase button.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah, erase button. Maybe we can go back through it and post-edit and just take it all out and you know the delete button on your computer. Delete, delete, delete, delete. Okay. Okay. Never mind.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

So let's go back to hearts.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

And please, let's go back to hearts.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Hearts need that validation. We already talked about that. We also need to have the reassurance that we have that connection. The connection is still there. So another thing that Randy and I coach clients around is to say, I love you, and, which is a podcast out there. And the I love you and is a way that you can start now to solve this together by starting with love and connection. And so by saying I love you and now the heart is like, okay, there's my connection. It's still there. We're still a team, right? And then the last thing would be then once we're, once we're more calm now, once we have that connection back in place, then basically we can feel like we've expressed it, we've been heard, we're uh connected. And then now we just really need some closeness. A lot of times I told Randy, at the end, I just need a hug. And sometimes that just kind of seals the deal, gives me that reset, and I'm good to go. Hearts are actually pretty resilient, even though it seems like a big emotion, it can fall fast and be back to a very neutral space. Whereas what I notice with heads is if Randy gets triggered and angry about something, he will internally process that and won't come back really. It isn't like this big dramatic intense emotion. There isn't, but instead it's more of a just a small step up and then it stays there for longer and then it comes down finally.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Are you saying I'm slow to recover?

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Oh, okay. Just checking. I I probably am.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

From the heart, then what I want to close with is we're both trying to protect the relationship just in different ways. So one isn't right or wrong. We do it differently, which has kind of been this rhythm and drum that we talk about every week. So you've got really the the heart looking for emotional safety, the head trying to find that stability, that clarity. And if we can just understand that about one another, then we can become that team and we can give each other what we need in those uh heightened moments, and we can recover much more quickly. So I want the the end of the story, which was once I realized, you know, Randy and I sat down and talked about the issue with uh back in Colorado, back, you know, so many years ago. And what's really changed, I think, is that we're more that team when it comes to disagreements. We're we're gonna fight, couples do, we're very different. Go look at uh go listen to space aliens if you want to see how different we are as humans. Also recognize that I am much more emotionally regulated within myself. So I'm not saying that maybe that wouldn't have been a little bit of a disagreement there, and it would have been a healthy conversation, giving each other the benefit of the doubt. And I think my emotions would have been uh much more regulated. And really it's not it's not uh cool to involve other people. So I was really out of line by sending that text to the mom. I I get that now, however, it makes a great example of what not to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

That is the podcast for today. Anger in your relationships. Recognize that it has a purpose, it is trying to solve things and and kind of in a way keep you safe. It doesn't do that very well in relationships. Thank you for tuning in. You can check out uh our our other products that are out there, the Couples Rule Book on Amazon. We also have a new book coming up. We're gonna be uh putting that out later this year uh along the Heart versus Head theme. Uh and we will be uh, by the way, looking for some of you out there as listeners to this podcast that might be interested in being on our book launch team. There's some some cool stuff that goes along with that. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you have questions for us, you can always send those questions to info at heart and headcoaching.com. Info at heart and headcoaching.com. The and is spelled out. Info at heart and headcoaching.com. We look forward to hearing from you, and we look forward to joining up again next week on the Heart vs. Head podcast.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Thanks for listening to Heart vs. Head. You can learn more at Heartandheadcoaching.com and check out new podcast episodes every Wednesday. If you have a question for Randy and Beverly, send an email to info at Heart and Head Coaching.com.