How to unpack anger

Over the last few years there has been a significant increase in the number of people who come to therapy because of an angry outburst, an episode of rage, or the fear that their anger seems to be consuming them. In 2004, when I started working as a therapist, one of my clients was struggling with road rage. His wife had pushed him to seek therapy as she feared that he would end up getting into a physical fight and harm himself or be attacked by another driver.

Typically, clients reach out in therapy describing their physiological and emotional triggers, sometimes set off by a small incident. They find it hard to regulate their emotions or calm down even after they have voiced their opinion. A female client described getting extremely angry at her children and saying nasty things. “The worst thing is it took my body two hours to settle and for the anger to leave my body. I was shaking, seething with rage and felt totally helpless,” she said.

Rage-texting is another way in which anger seems to show up in interpersonal relationships. People find themselves sending long angry texts, describing how they felt and entering a pattern of blame and shame. Then there are those who seek therapy because they find themselves experiencing intense emotions, including anger, and unable to understand and manage it.

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Anger is an emotion each one of us experiences. Like all emotions, anger serves a purpose too. It can become a compass indicating what is being evoked in us and if we pay attention to it, it can help in setting boundaries, getting a perspective, and addressing concerns in a timely manner.

At the same time, if we find ourselves getting worked up over small annoyances or if anger takes the form of violence, and begins to consume us and gets in the way of work relationships and sleep, then we need to work with a mental health professional to manage it.

A good starting point is to unpack anger as an emotion. We feel angry when we think that there is injustice at a micro or a macro level, when we feel people don’t understand us, when people make assumptions about us, or when we feel there is a boundary breach. Anger also rises when we are excluded, or when unpredictable comes in the way of our goals. Our ideas of how we see the world, beliefs that we hold about relationships, and our understanding of what is fair or unfair also feed into our anger. It is not always external events or people that provoke anger; often it is the stories we tell ourselves and the trauma we carry that shapes our experience of anger.

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What I have witnessed in therapy is that there are times where displays of anger are just the tip of the iceberg. As we unpack it, we realise it’s shame, grief, depression, loneliness, powerlessness or exhaustion which lies beneath it. So, choosing to stay with this awareness, and then examining the underlying emotions is important.

When you find yourself getting into an angry spiral, it can help to create some distance from it and choose to communicate that you will come back on this. Splashing cold water on your face or putting an ice pack on the nape of your neck can help you physically cool down, if you feel anger viscerally in the body. Other techniques that are useful include choosing to slow down your breathing, meditation, listening to calm sounds and engaging in activities that you find soothing. A workout, a brisk walk and being in nature can also be soothing.

When angry, choose to delay responding to a text, email or posting on social media. Our anger can come in the way of how centered we feel.

If you find yourself in a place where anger seems to be taking control and pushing you into a space of reaction, it may be a good time to pause and do the work around how you can manage it and develop better ways to respond to it.

Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based clinical psychologist. She is the author of the book Anxiety: Overcome It And Live Without Fear and has a YouTube channel, Mental Health with Sonali.