Why Do I Get So Angry? A Guided Exercise

Hi,

This is Dr.

Tracey Moreno,

Psychologist,

And today we're going to talk about the possibilities of why we get so angry.

It's important that we figure this out because it could also help us manage our anger much better if we can identify where it could have come from.

Now this is a guided exercise,

So you'll need a pen and paper.

I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions that I want you to write down the answers to.

And as we go through this,

If you need more time to answer any of the questions,

Please feel free to pause the recording at any time and then continue when you're ready.

So the first question is,

What does your anger look like?

If I could witness you angry,

What would I be looking at?

Write down and describe what happens in your mind and body when you're angry.

Although we can all experience anger differently,

Some common examples of what would happen maybe in our mind would be racing thoughts,

Catastrophizing,

All or nothing thinking,

Confusion,

Impaired attention and concentration.

And then some common symptoms in the body could include a racing heart rate,

Increased blood pressure,

A change in our body temperature,

Maybe sweat or chills,

Stomach distress,

Or a flesh or red skin color.

So go ahead and take a moment and try to think about when you're angry what happens in your mind and your body.

Now what are the consequences to your anger?

This could include getting in trouble,

Problems with relationships or problems at work,

Stress-related medical problems.

And if your anger is more intense,

It could be property damage or violence towards yourself or others.

This one is really important so really take some time and think about the consequences to your anger.

Now this next question might seem rather odd but bear with me.

What are the benefits to your anger?

Believe it or not,

We don't maintain a behavior that doesn't have some sort of gain for us.

Although the gain is usually unconscious and can run pretty deep psychologically,

It's there.

It's there somewhere.

Human beings don't do anything that doesn't give us some sort of benefit.

For example,

It's somewhat common for survivors of sexual abuse to have excessive weight gain for the unconscious benefit of thinking that the extra weight makes them an unattractive potential victim in the future.

They go through life struggling to lose weight,

Never realizing that the problem is not their weight.

The problem is their history of trauma that needs to be healed first.

Our anger can have similar unconscious benefits.

Think about what your anger actually does for you.

Think about when your anger started.

How could it have benefited you back then?

Because it's possible you may not be benefiting from it currently.

Once that benefit starts to turn against us,

That's when we usually start to seek help for it and we start to want to change it.

So it might be better to think back of when it started and what could have reinforced it to continue over the years.

It could have been a way to establish power or control over someone.

It could be an easy way to shut down conversations or prevent people from challenging you or disagreeing with you.

It could be a way to intimidate people or as a defense mechanism to protect yourself from getting hurt by others.

We keep people out,

We push people away.

It could also be for attention.

For some,

Especially children,

Negative attention is better than no attention at all.

So again,

What are the benefits to your anger?

The next question,

Is this perceived benefit still happening?

Is your anger still working for you or is it now working against you?

Because changing our behavior is difficult but it's not impossible.

But it does take commitment and persistence so we need to have a strong motivation for change in order to make it a permanent change and part of our new normal.

If not,

It's usually just a temporary fix and we regress back to the mean which is we regress back to our baseline behavior which is anger.

So the question is,

Are the current consequences enough for you to change your behavior?

If this isn't enough,

Ask yourself,

How could my life be better if I was able to control my anger?

How could my life be better if I was able to control my anger?

Would your relationships be better?

Would you be more successful?

How?

The more specific you can get with these questions,

The better.

Now let's look at how you may have learned to react in an angry manner.

For most of us,

Anger is a learned process.

We learn it from someone else close to us,

Usually as children.

This is most likely from a parent or caregiver but it could be anyone that can influence us.

As children,

We're like little sponges taking in stimuli from all our senses and processing it.

We're learning how to communicate with people,

How to handle stress,

How to problem solve and basically how to just function in the world.

We model the behavior of others and the behaviors we either see the most often or the ones that make the greatest impression are the ones that get socked away for safekeeping in our brain until we're ready to use it.

This is why maladaptive behavior tends to run in families from generation to generation until someone breaks the cycle and learns a new way of functioning.

Now remember at the beginning,

The first thing I asked you to do is to describe your anger.

I want you to go back and look at what you wrote.

Is there anyone else close to you or who was around you growing up that displays a similar type of behavior?

It doesn't have to be the exact behaviors,

Just similar behaviors.

If you know of someone,

Go ahead and write down their name.

If you can't think of anyone offhand,

Take a moment and mindfully scan through your life in chronological order and think about who you may have been influenced by.

It could have been a parent,

A step-parent,

Maybe someone a parent was dating,

A grandparent,

Sibling,

Friend,

Teacher,

Neighbor,

Anybody at all.

It could have even been someone from a TV show or movie or a video game.

Take your time and think it through.

Now I'm going to ask you some questions and I want you to write down your answers based on the person that you came up with.

Again,

If you need more time to think about who this might be,

Just pause the recording.

There's no rush and continue when you're ready.

Sometimes even asking somebody close to us helps.

Sometimes we're too invested and we can't really see it and other people have a more objective view where they can come up with that answer probably pretty quickly.

So once you have that person or people in your mind,

What do you think of this person?

Write down your answer.

You think they're a good person,

A bad person,

An annoying person,

Someone you can trust,

Someone you're scared of.

What do you think of them?

Next question is how did you feel or do you feel when this person gets angry?

Did it scare you?

Did it make you anxious or nervous?

Uncomfortable?

Or did it maybe not bother you?

Next question,

Can you see any similarities between their anger and yours?

What would those similarities be?

Now when you get angry,

Could you be causing other people to feel like you did when you saw that person get angry?

I can repeat that.

So when you get angry,

Do you think you could make people feel the way you did when you saw that other person getting angry?

Do you want other people to feel that way about you?

It's often difficult to see what our own behavior looks like until we see it in someone else.

It's also easy to excuse our behavior when we compare it to others.

We say all kinds of things like,

Oh,

But I had a good reason to do it or but I'm not that bad.

I'm not as bad as they are.

But all these are excuses.

And if you're making excuses for your behavior,

You're not seeing what other people see and you're definitely not helping yourself.

So hopefully you've been able to identify why you get so angry,

Where it comes from,

And how it's affecting you and the people around you.

With this information,

You can see that you're actually not an angry person.

If you ever thought that you weren't born angry,

You were taught to be angry.

Now that doesn't mean you can go blame other people for how you act as an adult.

As a child,

Yes,

Blame away.

But as an adult,

We have to take responsibility for our own behavior,

Regardless of how we were raised.

It's usually easier to get control of the anger when we have a better understanding of the relationship we have with it.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for allowing me to be part of your journey.