Why You’re Angry All the Time. And What To Do About It.
Written by Cassandra Currado
Anger, like all emotions, is an automatic signal from your body that is trying to bring clarity to your needs. Though we all experience anger, you may feel you’ve reached a point where day after day you lead your life with anger and frustration, which is now impacting your relationships and wellbeing. Many people come to us for therapy, particularly couples therapy, feeling angry all the time and not knowing what to do about it. This blog post will help you identify why you may be feeling angry all the time and offer you some solutions to help you learn from your anger and support your wellbeing.
Understanding Anger
As an experience, anger can be felt through physical and emotional sensations in your body as instinctive reactions to things in your environment. Some common factors that can contribute to the bodily sensations of anger include:
Loss of control and/or authority
Having your boundaries and expectations disregarded
Experiencing injustice
Being disrespected and/or insulted
Though this seems pretty straightforward, with so many different words to label how we feel, any of these situations may have you feeling jealous, annoyed, or even sad; all of which are very different from anger. Now you’re probably thinking - obviously I know what it means to be angry and what makes me angry. This might very well be true, but in certain situations and over time we can end up masking our vulnerable emotions, like fear, with more protective emotions, like anger. When you begin to rely on protective emotions to process your experiences, your vulnerable emotions can be easily dismissed. However, ignoring your vulnerable emotions doesn’t mean they go away, but rather end up doing more damage to your wellbeing and relationships. Keep reading to learn insights from individual and couple therapy that can help you find relief from feeling angry all the time.
What are Primary and Secondary Emotions?
Emotions are a complicated part of life and play a powerful role in how we understand the world around us, feel about ourselves, interact with others and build relationships. From a young age you’re taught to label the different bodily sensations you feel in situations with specific emotions. For example, you get a gift on your birthday, you smile, and are taught that this feeling is happiness. However, it’s not always that straightforward. You might be surprised by how often our therapy sessions with just about everyone focus on understanding, accessing, and identifying emotions.
Among the many emotions we feel there are primary (aka protective) emotions and secondary (aka vulnerable) emotions. A primary emotion is an automatic response you instinctively feel in a situation. For example, someone jumps out from around the corner to scare you and you get an adrenaline rush of fear through your chest. Your secondary emotions then come after as you process and reflect on the situation. For example, after being scared and feeling that initial fear you then feel angry and embarrassed for falling victim to this little prank.
Primary Emotions
Immediate and instinctive reactions
Feel strong, sensitive and vulnerable in the moment
Often easier to identify
Can bring clarity to your needs and goals
Feeling them fully can lead to intimacy with yourself and others
Some Examples: happiness, sadness, fear
Secondary Emotions
Primary emotion + thought and reflection
Learned behaviour through early childhood and experiences
Protect you from feeling your more vulnerable primary emotions
More difficult to identify as they’re masking and numbing other emotions
Lead to distancing yourself from your needs, goals and others
Some Examples: shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride, resentment
A skilled therapist can help you to improve your abilities with identifying and connecting with your emotions to help relieve anger, depression, anxiety, and other uncomfortable emotions you may be struggling with.
How to Better Identify and Connect With Emotions
If you find that you tend to experience secondary emotions, you may notice that these emotions can also be felt for much longer periods of time than the initial primary emotion. When you rely on secondary emotions to process situations it can be difficult to identify how you’re actually feeling, and what you need. The next time you feel an emotion try asking yourself these questions to better connect with those primary emotions.
Was the feeling strong and immediate, or did it come after I had a chance to think?
How does my body feel? (i.e. tight chest, tense, relaxed, etc.)
What lies at the core of this feeling?
What is this feeling trying to tell me about my needs?
Has this feeling shifted or transformed into a different feeling? (i.e. sadness to frustration)
We get this can be easier said than done, but it’s a great place to start. Your therapist can offer more strategies for you to practice at home, and can go through exercises in real time so that you can experience the difference of what it feels like to identify and connect with emotions.
Why Are So Many People Angry?
Anger is a complex and overwhelming emotion that we experience. There’s also a bit of debate surrounding whether it should be considered a primary or secondary emotion. Truthfully, I tend to fall with those that recognize it to be both. Anger, as a basic emotion, can be felt as a strong, instinctive and natural reaction. However, based on early childhood and life experiences forms of anger can also be used to mask and dismiss vulnerable emotions like sadness. This then begs the question, who in the world is angry and why? Is it simply a primary emotion indicating what you need, or are you using anger to protect yourself from feeling something else?
The Socially Accepted Angry Man
Unfortunately, many of us are raised with this terribly unrealistic idea that men are weak if they’re anything but stoic. The mere display of sadness, fear or even some forms of innocent and authentic joy are socially ridiculed regardless of what they face. So what does that leave them with?
Emotions are both naturally felt and learned through experiences. From a young age, many boys are raised to understand that it’s not okay for them to cry or be vulnerable. Though I’d like to think there’s been a more recent cultural shift with new generations of children learning to embrace all emotions, unfortunately many still work within this mindset. Social norms have shaped many men to rely on anger as their only form of expression. In many ways, it may feel easier to cover painful and vulnerable feelings with a dismissive emotion such as anger, resentment or jealousy. However, in the long run this will only continue to distance yourself from the people you care about and your own understanding of what you need.
The Burnt Out Mother
Contrary to the socially accepted angry man, comes the burnt out mother who is told that being anything but patient and joyous means they’re a “bad mother”. During childhood, boys seem to have greater freedoms relying on aggression compared to girls. Rather, girls are raised to “bite their tongues” to keep the peace and are socialized as nurturing caretakers. However, regardless of trying to keep the peace, that anger that has been taught to stay hidden doesn’t just disappear. Instead, the burnt out mother has years and years of built up anger that lies within.
As a mother you are socially expected to be the all-knowing role model for your children, to mother them with nothing but joy since you now have the “best job in the world.” Though being a mother is a very rewarding experience it also comes with an endless variety of stress and responsibilities for you to manage. You may feel frustrated because no one seems to be listening. You may feel irritable and tired because after working all day you now come home to your second job as a full-time mother. Yet, you feel pressure to put a smile on your face and be the glue that keeps your family together.
More recently the term “Mom Rage” has entered the conversation and highlights why it’s so important to authentically feel your emotions. Through research, “Mom Rage” was identified as the boiling over point; the point at which you’re so exhausted and can no longer ignore your anger or needs. At this point, you’re burnt out from all your responsibilities and release the anger you’ve been trying to ignore. This experience of “Mom Rage” really emphasizes that you can’t just forget about your emotions, but should rather feel them authentically. If you don’t, you can impact your relationships and take away from opportunities for joy as your anger lingers and lies at the root of your experiences.
The Exhausted Strong Black Woman
Similarly to the burnout mother, is the exhausted strong Black woman. The understanding of the Strong Black Woman (SBW) stems from the experience of intersectional oppression through race and sex. Throughout history, Black women experienced and continue to experience the hardship, trauma, and expectations that come from living within two notoriously oppressed groups of people. Yet, through all trials and tribulations many of these women learned to show strength and resilience instead of expressing their more vulnerable emotions.
Though it’s beyond admirable to be such a strong role model for your family and community, it can be so exhausting to constantly feel the pressure to fulfill this role; the understanding that if you’re anything but powerful that you’re weak. As a strong Black mother you may feel the additional pressure to be the nurturing caregiver society expects. As part of this role the SBW tends to keep their emotions to themselves so as to not burden those around them and to uphold this image of strength. You’re exhausted as you continue to reassure others while you work to keep a smile on your face. You begin to resent others and feel irritable, distancing yourself from them as you feel you can only depend on yourself. In fact, this overwhelming pressure to show strength has been linked to distress, depression and anxiety. In many instances feelings of anger and irritability are masked through depression.
“…helps [a Black woman] to remain tenacious against the dual oppressions of racism and sexism…. It keeps her from falling victim to her own despair but it also masks her vulnerabilities… As much as it may give her the illusion of control, it keeps her from identifying what she needs and reaching out for help.”
~ The Icon of the Strong Black Woman: The Paradox of Strength (2000, p. 225) by Regina Romero
Solutions and Support for Always Feeling Angry
Mindfulness
Practicing mindfulness can help you identify and connect with your primary emotions. As you create space for your emotions you can become more aware of them and experience them without judgement. Consider asking yourself: What lies underneath this emotion I’m feeling? What is it telling me? Learn to explore your emotions through mindfulness instead of dismissing them. Consider using a journal to help you explore your emotions. Something as simple as writing one sentence each day to identify how you’re feeling can help you create a greater awareness of your emotions in general. You can also try guided mindfulness meditation or mindfulness breathing techniques to help you gain awareness of how you’re feeling.
2. Learning Emotion Language
How we express our emotions is greatly influenced by the language we experienced in childhood. Even though we all feel the same emotions, we likely express them differently based on how we were raised. As you learn your emotion language you can gain self-awareness and improve your relationships through the understanding of emotional triggers and the root causes of your emotion expression. Take a moment to reflect on the questions below to explore what your emotion language is when it comes to anger.
Do I feel uncontrollable rage and yell when I’m angry or do I withdraw?
Do I blame and criticize others?
Do I feel guilt and aim to avoid conflicts?
Am I threatened and jealous about others’ success?
3. Embodiment
To embody your emotions is to feel your emotions with your body as you embrace all of the authentic bodily sensations that come with that emotion. As you learn to embody your emotions instead of concealing them, you can recognize and easily name your emotions as they pass through your nervous system. This gives you the opportunity to notice patterns in your behaviour when you experience different emotions. Through embodiment you can learn to feel your emotions and regulate them in a way that is less reactive. With the example of anger, embodiment can allow you to feel your anger while also addressing conflicts in a way that supports your relationships.
4. Get Support
Emotions are complicated and at The Relationship Agency we understand that and recognize the important role emotions play within all aspects of your life. We offer a variety of counseling options such as Women’s Therapy, Anxiety + Burnout Therapy, and Culture and Race Therapy, all of which can help you explore any anger you may be struggling to manage. Our therapists are here to support you as you learn to authentically feel those primary and vulnerable emotions, and are able to offer virtual therapy across Ontario as well as in person individual therapy out of our Oshawa office for folks living in Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Bowmanville, and surrounding areas.
Interested in learning more? Contact us to ask questions or get help with choosing your best fit therapist. If you’re tired of being angry all the time and are ready to get started, choose “book now” to book a free 20 minute video consultation and get started.
