Episode 22 - Emotions 101: Anger

https://youtu.be/R8mBQuNo_CU

In this episode of Psyched for Sanity, Dr. Doss and Dr. Parker continue the Emotions 101 series with a conversation about anger. They explore why anger is often misunderstood, what it can reveal underneath the surface, and how it can show up in relationships, parenting, and everyday life. They also discuss how understanding anger can help us respond to it in healthier ways.

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***Listener Discretion Advised:
This episode contains discussions about mental health topics and real-life experiences that may not be suitable for all audiences. While the conversation includes humor and personal stories, some content may be sensitive or triggering. Listener discretion is advised.***

#PsychedForSanity #Emotions101 #Anger #MentalHealthPodcast #Psychology #EmotionalHealth

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello and welcome to Psych for Sanity. I am one of your hosts, Dr. Brendel Doss. I specialize in trauma treatment, child treatment, forensic psychology, and geriatric psychology.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

And I am Dr. Tara McKelvey Parker. I'm also a licensed clinical psychologist. I specialize in assessing and treating complex trauma and attachment wounds from childhood. And something you may or may not know about me is that I am quite directionally challenged. I think I've had a sense of this, but I did not know it till it's clearly it's okay. I don't know where I'm going ever. I have my GPS on constantly. I think I could probably make it around the block without it. The block? Wow. That was an exaggeration. But I do like put it on even to go to work. I know where I'm going, but I like to know when I'm gonna get there. I like to know if there's an accident. I like to, I like it's comforting. Yeah. But also like, I don't when people are like, go east, take a ride in the McDonald's. I'm gonna go to the man. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

What are you saying? Yeah. So well, I I am not as directionally challenged, but I recently have been reflecting on my um anger towards certain feathered friends. Feathered friends? Yes. I used to live, um, I used to have a house on like a body of water, um, like on a canal. Um and it sounds really like nice, and there's like there's like ducks and geese and waterfowl and all egrets, beautiful birds, like, oh, so magical. No. Birds are mean. Get angry at I'm angry at ducks. They are so un they're rude. They are rude and they um are invasive. They will sit in your planters and they don't care where they make their nests, they are just determined. And then the duck parties they have, it's just quackery. No, I'm seriously though, I really they're like, dude, this was my land. This was my first like right. Yeah, but I do I get I have an irrational, fully knowledge, an irrational anger towards ducks, and that is what I chose to share with you today.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

You think because because you think they're doing it on purpose.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Well, like that's that's probably a cognitive distortion. I'll address that on the way home. Thank you for that feedback. Welcome. Write it in your notebook. I'm gonna write it in my channel. You're thinking. Those ducks were there before you. They were there for me and they're probably there after me, and they are there after me. That's ironically. Because you moved and they will I left. I left the ducks behind. The anger. Um, but in I was thinking of this this kind of experience I have with these feathered people. Um feathered people. Because in our Emotion 101 series, yes, we are talking about one of my favorite emotions to talk about, and one of your least favorite emotions, uh anger.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

What's that? Um confabulating. Is that the word you used last time? I don't know, maybe a conundrum. No, conundrum.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Anger is a conundrum for me. It's a complex problem. It's a complex problem. So I'm not today, I'm not the complex problem. Anger is for you. Yeah, it's really bad about that. Yeah, well, let's talk about like you're I don't think you're alone in not liking anger.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yeah, and it's not that I don't like it, it's just that I can't feel it very easily. And that's what I was getting to. And I have a lot of negative, um, I have a lot of negative meaning and emotions attached to anger. So it's hard for me to access it and express it cleanly.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, and we've talked about um what a clean emotional expression is, but just reiterate for our audiences that may not have watched past episodes, what is a clean example of clean emotional expression?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

So clean emotional, I mean, when you when when one feels angry, yeah, you know, it is the ability to be you know, because because anger is a signal. All emotional issues. It is a messenger, right? It is it anger usually signals that something is unfair, you a boundary has been violated in some kind of way, something that you value feels threatened. So anger is like a very important emotion. So when any of that's happening, it's very legit to feel angry and to digest it and to be able to then like either mobilize action to change that's the number one of the primary messages to motivate to action, or to communicate a need or a feeling or you know, whatever. But when we have shame, for instance, attached to anger, like feeling angry makes us bad, for instance, right, then we tend to suppress it or it comes out in more dysfunctional ways, right? Because we don't feel comfortable just like being angry and expressing our anger, right? So then it's not clean anymore, it gets all like convoluted and complicated.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

So well, and I think kind of going back to your discomfort with anger and you're kind of not knowing how to express it, you shared about this on the podcast. Um, and I think a lot of people would resonate with at home that um some folks are not really raised in environments where they're allowed to express all of their emotions, and a lot of time a lot of parents struggle. Anger is a hard one with allowing a child to express anger or or that type of yes, righteous indignation.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Especially I think I think it gets hard whenever our kids are very young because anger usually equals some kind of like not great behavior. Right. And when you have a two-year-old and they're angry, they're going to scream, they are going to hit, they are potentially will bite. Like they have no ability to regulate things. No, they're not supposed to at that time. They're not supposed to, but I think the tradition traditional parenting methods would then encourage some kind of like consequence or punishment.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

100%, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

And so then that creates shame around feeling angry when it's not anger that's the problem, it's the way that it can be expressed sometimes that can be problematic.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

So I'll talk about that real briefly because so many people that I've worked with um don't know the difference. Um that doesn't mean you maybe you do know the difference, but did you know that anger and aggression are not the same thing? I did know that, right, Dr. Doss. I did. A lot of folks don't. So aggression is the is the maladaptive behavioral manifestation of anger. But anger is just that your rights have been violated, that something you care about has been threatened. And so again, anger, like you just said, is never the problem. But how we allow that expression can be problematic.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Right. And I I, you know, just you said it's you had asked me, do you know that anger and aggression are not the same thing? And I said automatically yes, but emotionally, actually, there is a part of me that does believe anger is aggressive when you grow up in environments where like you potentially had a parent who was really angry or scary.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Like anger equals aggression.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Was aggressive, right? Yeah. And so it can be scary for some of us to express anger because emotionally it does feel dangerous or threatening.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Yeah, it feels like they're the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Exactly. So emotionally, no, I don't always know that, which is one of the meanings I have attached to anger, which is why it is so hard sometimes for me to like feel it and and communicate. So I think that's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

I have I got the gift growing up that I was allowed to express all my emotions all the time. Yeah. Um sounds and sounds nice for you. Are you experiencing some jealousy? We haven't covered that yet. We're gonna do jealousy. We're gonna do jealousy about but today we're doing anger. And so I yeah, I grew up being allowed to express anger and feel angry. I think that anger is so important to understand. And anytime I I work with a patient or even have you know someone in my circle or life, it's like, oh, I don't really feel I don't get that angry. I don't feel anger. I don't experience that a lot. Or I they'll hear, they'll say, Oh, I'm just not an angry person, as if feeling some anger means that you're angry all the time. It's one of those cognitive distortions. Right. I think that kind of we have to demystify. We've talked about this in past episodes, but I think it really bears repeating. The best method is to allow access to all emotion to inform our experience, because all emotions have messages and they signal some type of um need, and they all attend have an the goal is to motivate to action.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yeah, every single thing mobilizes action. Anger is a very strong, powerful, it's not a reflective oriented, it's not a reflective emotion, like we talked about with sadness before, that slows us down and causes us to reflect. Anger causes us to act.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Right. So what are some of the thinking, the thoughts around the cognitions, as we say, around anger?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Anything having to do with that's unfair, they always do that. Um, it's their fault, right? So blaming, um, yes, anything about it. They're trying to harm me on purpose. Uh-huh. They're doing that on purpose. Uh, this that was disrespectful, perceived disrespect is a big one that creates anger. So those are the kinds of thought processes that would cue you into like, oh, maybe you're feeling angry. And this is important. I don't feel the anger in my body as much. So I'm much more aware, in this case, of my thought patterns. Yeah. Whereas other emotions, I feel it more in my body first. So I I tend to rely more on the cognitive piece here. It's hard for me to access this emotion in my body.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

So in the body, anger can um is very physiological, um, for sure. It can be muscles tensing, you know, racing heart. Um, some people describe blood rushing in the ears, like a feeling of like yeah, heat in the face.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Face flush. Yeah. Uh, one thing I think super interesting about that muscle tension or the jaw tightening is for a long time I thought that was anxiety. Recently, I've started to recognize that some of its anger, sort of, you know, it's not necessarily my anxiety. It's like a more subtle way to tap into some anger. Um, bald fists sometimes. I'll notice that in my patients when they're just talking and they don't seem angry, but they're like balling their fists. So those are good, some good, like um physiological or bodily manifestations of anger. Um, sometimes agitation too. Yeah. Um, it's more of a behavior.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

By having to move around, like feeling like irritable in your body, just needing like almost like pacing.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Restless. That's I guess more of a behavioral manifestation. We obviously, yeah, we've got the pace to express it. Right. Yeah. Um, what are some other like behavioral manifestations of anger? Well, there's the classic. It's fighting. Did you say fighting? Yeah. Fighting. Fight. Fighting. It activates the fight response. It does. It can be a fight response. It can know anger can be expressed aggressively, like Dr. Doss mentioned earlier, and that's the yelling and the fighting and the verbal aggression, which is yelling, um, cursing someone. That could be that's that's an aggressive expression of anger.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

But there's other, there's passive aggressive. Passive aggressive, yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Some of so this is like subtle ways of trying to express anger without really being direct about it.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

And I think people that utilize passive aggressive communication as an anger expression tool may have not been allowed to express aggressive forms during childhood that might have been punished or or dismissed.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Maybe even the aggressive, you know, man, if I can also see how someone might like, you know, suppress, suppress, suppress, suppress, and then just explode. Yes. You know, there's that pattern too. So those minimize, disconnect, not avoid. Avoid. I'm not angry, it's not a big deal. And then it all kind of stacks up, and then we're more likely to just kind of said this in other episodes, we say it here again.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Um, emotion is like energy. You cannot be destroyed. It has to go somewhere. It has to go somewhere. It's gonna come out somewhere. Effectively and safely, it's gonna come out left, right, sideways.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Definitely. Um, so yeah, passive aggress. What are some passive? I've I've certainly done it.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Silent treatment, that can be another, like another like a different version of anger.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, for sure. Silent treatment or like um kind of like sarcastic, teasing, biting, negative, like kind of jabs, like that kind of stuff can be like passive aggressive, absolutely withdrawal, can be passive aggressive, like expression of anger. Absolutely. Passive aggressive. I mean, there's lots of different. I mean, obvious what's what's the healthy? What's the healthy expression of anger then?

SPEAKER_01 12:16

That would be a great question. I think it's assertive communication. But before that, before you get to that, anger is a very, very intense emotion and it acts as a cover for other emotions.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Oh, yeah, this is a yeah, this is important.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

And we've we don't think we've talked about this element in emotion one-on-one or series this far. No, we haven't. It is very rare in the world of the human experience, in our human person experience, to only feel one feeling at a time. Normally we feel two to three, if not four, emotions at the same time to different levels. And depending on our comfort with each emotion and our ability to access that emotion in safe, um, coherent ways. Like anger is a emotion that feels very powerful. It is not a vulnerable emotion, and it is not emotion that society perceives necessarily as weakness, it's the opposite. So, right. Anger can act as a cover all for sadness, for anxiety, for hurt, uh, despair. And when it acts as a cover all, it is not, as you described earlier, that pure emotion. The clean the clean emotion. Yeah. Thank you. And expressing it doesn't really relieve the tension because the emotional energy. Because it's not really what you're really feeling deep, deep down. Or it's like layers of lasagna perfectly.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Yeah, or like, yeah, exactly. It's it's so it is it would behoove you then, right? Behoove you, behoove you. Once you you you follow the steps that we're gonna talk about and a little bit about what to do to try in in psychology terms, we call anger then a secondary emotion. Yes. It's something that we usually feel some people feel first. Some people are more they they experience anger and there's like that vulnerable emotion underneath, whereas I think other people lead with the vulnerable emotion, like me and they bury the anger and bury the anger. Yes. But it is like, yeah, anger can be a secondary emotion. So once you you kind of recognize if you're if that's you, then you can start to access the more vulnerable emotions underneath. And that will relieve the tension around anger. And then you'll start to express those feelings and figure out what you need around those things and kind of resolving those emotions. Um, that's it's effec effectively anger can definitely signal some other emotion that needs processing or healing.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Yeah. Especially I think for um for some some trauma survivors, um, anger feels protective for some, not all.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yeah. People who yeah, I mean, and that's that fight response. Some people who are survivors of trauma, they are fighters in terms of the four F's I've mentioned before. Flight, fright, flight, fight, freeze, spawn. Um, yeah, the anger. Anger is protective, it mobilizes action, it keeps people away. It is one of the ways. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Kind of like in past episodes, we talked about how sadness is a signal and a bid for connection. Anger, I would say, is a bid for protection.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

And space. Space. Right. You know, which is one of the main ways that we can go about beginning to deal with anger.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

You know, right? Once we kind of understand that we're feeling angry, right. Usually because anger is so intense, and for so many of us, it can come out passive aggressively, yeah, passive aggressively or e aggressively, then we really want to pause. Right. Take a break, take space. Right. You know, we're kind of needing that to calm down.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah, I absolutely that's the first step, even though it might sound counterintuitive since it's an emotion that motivates action. I always tell folks that are struggling to separate and understand anger, especially like reaction related to anger, is you can have a feeling and not have a behavior, an automatic behavioral reaction out of it necessarily. Another way to put it, I'll tell my patients, you can overreact later. You can overreact later. You can react, choose to react aggressively later. But if you can find a way to stop, pause, and try to engage in some level of reflection, even though it's not a reflective emotion.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

You have to get to a reflective place. So first you have to calm down. Right. First you have to be. Right. And to figure out then what anger is telling you, right? Right. And and what else, what other emotion you may be feeling that also has a message for you. So first you and this, it's a s it's a skill, you know, it's a skill to be able to pause to be able to pause and take a break. So take space, go on in go on a walk, like do something to take space from whatever you're angry with. Yeah. Um, yeah, and then reflect what boundary was violated. Right. Right? What value feels threatened? Right. What's unfair here?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah. What disrespect did you experience?

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yeah. Am I feeling sad underneath? Am I feeling actually scared underneath? Am I feeling ashamed underneath? These are really, these are big. I mean, anger often covers up shame, sadness, right, fear, frustration, like you mentioned, embarrassment. So, you know, am I feeling those things too? And maybe we need to address the those emotions. Right. Those need to be expressed. We need to figure out what we need. Sure. And then we need to be able to, you know, either either change something, set a boundary. Right. Right. Speaking of boundary. Speaking of protection. Um, anger often tells us a boundary has been violated. Or we're or and or we are not setting boundaries that we need to be setting. Right. Sometimes anger can signal anger at ourselves, but in a healthy way. Like, hey girl, hey girl, don't buy that third cup of coffee. That's an internal boundary. Right. So boundaries. Or how can I figure out how to make the situation more fair? Um absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

And that's the action that is calling for.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

That's the action piece.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

And after that awareness piece of like the levels or layers of emotion, yeah. Or even like maybe your emotions are more like um a ball of yarn all tumbled together.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

What is a a functional you know, the word that the healthy way to express anger that's not aggression, verbal, or physical?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Aggression, verbal, or physical, yeah, or passive aggressive. Well, assertive communication, folks, this is what we want to shoot for. Okay. What does it look like? Well, it once you have paused and you have decreased arousal and you have figured out what anger is telling you and what other your, you know, your emotions are telling you, then, you know, if you've if you've taken action, but it maybe it has to do with a person, you know, in a relationship, you want to communicate your needs, your feelings, your wants, like respectfully and directly. Very direct. Calm and direct.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Right. I felt this.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

I think there's in the missive that anger it has to be um loud and boisterous and aggressive. But there is a real um a different power that can come from calm, measured, direct expression. Yeah, and that's it's it's even I feel it's more powerful and communicative when it is measured and with that same intensity. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

And I just think that many of us did not learn that. No, right? We did not learn that there was no class in that school? There was did you say there's no class in that school? Yeah, yeah, there was an emotion in school. I really wish there were. Actually, uh in my school there was, but I went to Of course there was. Does this get any better, guys? We're doing jealousy next.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Wow, but it what segue? She's getting so good at this podcasting thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Look at her transitions go. Man, thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Um so assertive communication. It's hard. So hard, and we're not taught it, generally speaking. No, and and you know, it's it's not modeled for us. Yeah, and and I can't, I cannot also like underscore the importance of the idea that some people do not feel angry. There sometimes things I should feel should feel angry, like other people are feeling angry for me. I'm right. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

I do not feel angry. Every time we have past couple years of your life, I've been really angry at things that are happening in your life, and you're like, you're she's like holding all the anger for me until I'm ready.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

All of my friends that are like holding anyway. Yes, it's hard to just experience for some of us, it's harder to experience. So not hard for me. It's not hard for her. I know that's why she's always angry for me. I'm like, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

I I just feel I do think I experience a healthy amount of righteous indignation for the people and things that I care about. And I think I have learned functional ways, even in my own expression over time, because I think we all can learn more and benefit from that experience. But I think learning how to express the roots behind my experience of anger are something that like I've learned more recently too. Like more of the primary emotional. Or this is what is really frustrating about this experience.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

You know what I mean? Yeah, and being able to just own that, you mean and communicate it. And that directness. And that direct, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's hard to do because I do think when we get angry, like we mentioned you before, there can it it can really mobilizes immediate reaction. So we can blame, we can threaten, we can say things we don't mean, you know, and it it's just not it's not helpful.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

So it's not helpful when it's um if we don't learn how to uh express anger in a in a helpful, safe way, it can get real maladaptive real fast. If we have struggle with our anger and healthy anger expression, it can lead to I think increased substance use at times, things like that.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah, for sure. Well, and one, I think for you, because since since I'm such an internalizer, yeah, my anger just kind of gets channeled into like so is just more anger at myself, you know, or more inward version inward, like a little bit more shame or guilt or like even fear because my body starts to feel like I can't it can't protect itself. Like because I don't feel like I can be angry or express it. And that actually increases my anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Yeah. That's an interesting mechanism.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

It is right.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

But and you said you see like you feel like it's not protective, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Like I can't protect myself. And anger's motivation is to help you protect yourself. Protect your your bot your physical body, your values right? Like fairness. Super big important the respect. Right. I was like hey I don't like this thing that just happened to me. Right. Anger it like tells you what's important enough to defend.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

I really like that anger tells you what's important enough to defend. Yep. Yeah. What you care about. Right. Right. So notice, pause.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Okay. Um just definitely regulate, reflect, and then be able to take action about what needs to be changed or communicate, assertive communication, assertive communication feelings, needs respectfully and directly. That's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

It's hard to do. I think I want to honor how challenging that is um to do. I think the the feeling that people avoid with anger is they're afraid that in their direct communication of the need to protect something or defend something, it'll hurt someone else's feelings or it will not be received well. And I understand those fears. Yeah. I think and that's where the other types of passive aggressive or withdraw might come from.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yeah. It's when we we have all those meanings that we attach to the anger. Right. It's it's unsafe, we're going to be rejected, we'll be punished, abandoned. Right. Yeah. That's it's all of those fear-based meanings, shame-based meanings that make us not not be able to access it or communicate it or be feel okay feeling it. So then it comes out aggressive, passive aggressive or just completely stuck. Um you know and which is yeah no bueno.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

So I think stuck anger comes out as irritability.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yeah it can come out as irritability can come out as um you know feeling a little bit more depressed or ashamed or um agitation. Yeah just some kind of like there's always like Dr. Doss keeps saying there's always a manifestation of an emotion. If you're just not getting out it'll come up in some kind of left right sideways. Some kind of way.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Yeah yeah what are you so this was not this was an emotion that you avoided in our in our podcast and you're like oh I don't want to do anger and I'm like I want to do anger. It's not that I don't like it. I'm just like confused by it. She's confused by it.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

This has been actually though doing just thinking about this episode was helpful in reorienting me to the emotion and my dedication to you know just like I do with sadness I think I need to do um probably some more somatic like just more intentional somatic yeah sort of work around anger. Sure. It's easier for me to do sadness than it is for for anger. But I do feel I have felt it in my jaw before and in my fists um so when I've done somatic meditation around it.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Yeah I think I am taking away you know as we've kind of gone through these episodes over these recordings is really just how crucial each emotion is in the a human experience. And anger gets a bad rap but it is no different than um sadness or in um or joy or joy or comfort. And it really is about um you know sending a message. Yeah. And I think it's really up to us as to how we try to receive and what we do with that message is you know important. But let us know what you think about anger and let us know what other emotions or experiences you'd like us to cover in this emotions 101 series. Yeah and uh yeah happy feeling happy feeling this podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy diagnosis or any kind of professional mental treatment. We hope that we can share with you our experience authentically and genuinely and we hope that occasionally we'll make you laugh. Maybe you can relate to our quest and how we're psyched for sanity. The content we share is um our personal opinions and insights they are not clinical insights to anyone and they don't represent or reflect any entity that we worked in or have worked for in the past. But if listening to this podcast has made you think we'd really encourage you to seek out a mental health professional in your area