Cloaked as Anger
I could feel the boiling rage inside me swell to a bubble when he walked into my office and said he needed a few more minutes to charge his laptop before we left. I had to spend the day with him, and it was only 8:30 am. It was already too late. All I could do was suppress the grease fire going on inside me, containing it before it exploded out into the world.
What had this person done to ignite such fury within me you ask? Wrong question. The problem wasn’t my co-worker, the problem was me. But I didn’t recognize that at the time. Fortunately for him, this man left the organization we were working for after only a few weeks, and he didn’t have to suffer the wrath I assuredly could not stifle within me for very much longer. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t learn the lesson about expressing anger until years—actually a decade--later.
Last year I was experiencing this same form of internal rage and my coach at the time told me that much of this visceral explosion, this red-faced, wide-mouth, head-raised scream within indicates a personal boundary is being crossed. Author and life coach Martha Beck says, “Anger appears when something you need is missing from your life or something you can't tolerate is present.”
I’ve come to know and understand (I’m sure I read it somewhere and can’t take credit for it) that some feelings, including anger, are an expression of other suppressed emotions we can’t deal with or are more difficult to acknowledge. For some reason, anger is an acceptable expression, or at least one we can’t deny and one we more easily recognize.
One client of mine (I’ll call him Jerry) kept coming to me with expressions of rage at his work not being appreciated, acknowledged or stewarded in the future. He expressed the anger, not just over one project, but project after project, the same indignation coming up for him. Digging a little deeper and sitting with the feeling, Jerry acknowledged he was not going to change other people. I sensed there was something else going on, something behind the anger. I asked Jerry what else was there and suggested there were other emotions going on within. Jerry nodded and said, slowly, “Yes. It’s sorrow.”
Jerry was deeply saddened that others were not appreciating his work product like he did, that for some reason others didn’t share his value of quality and excellence like he did. Jerry’s anger was a cloak for his deep internal sadness that his work, his gifts were not appreciated, his work was for naught. Anger was his way of expressing that sorrow, the only way he knew how to let it out.
Psychologist and behavior analyst Steven C. Hayes says, “The motivation underneath wanting to avoid ‘bad’ emotions, is a yearning to feel.” But we only want to feel good emotions. Most of us suppress what we see as “bad or unacceptable” ones. When we do that either we don’t feel at all—numbing ourselves to the world--or the emotion gets expressed in unhealthy ways, like anger.
The rage inside me at my unsuspecting co-worker so many years ago—I realize now—was that I was tired. I had young children, was working all day and was trying to do it all without taking care of myself. I saw having to train him as a burden added on to my rapidly expanding responsibility list. I wanted to take it out on him, but it was me I needed to take care of.
What feelings are you suppressing and too difficult for you to deal with right now? Do you experience episodes of anger or rage (a strong word, I know) inside? How about a numbness to what’s happening around you, what friends and family are experiencing? Can you identify a pattern of when it happens?
I suggest as a first step that you sit with that feeling, feel it, be okay with it. Ask yourself: Is there something else there, another feeling that is more painful, more shameful, more uncomfortable for me to experience? If so, acknowledge it and sit with it.
If it’s sorrow, be okay with the sorrow. If it’s loneliness, be okay with the loneliness. If it’s lack of self-love, be okay with the need for self-compassion. At least for now. It’s the first step to healing the emotional instability you may be experiencing.
