What To Do When You’re Really Angry At Someone You Care About
This post is about anger: when it’s justified, primary vs. secondary anger, why it can be so corrosive in relationships, and what to do about it.
The headlines: Anger makes sense and can be helpful to act on when someone’s rights are violated, someone is threatened/hurt, or an important goal is blocked (think: true injustices are occurring). In these moments, anger can drive us to take effective action (e.g., standing up for someone who is in danger). However, in relationships (especially relationships with people who have been chronically dysregulated), anger is often a response to other emotions (e.g., fear for your child’s safety leads you to be angry at them). Perhaps more importantly, even when it’s justified, anger is very rarely helpful to act on in a relationship with someone you care about.
To quote Alan Fruzzetti, “Anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Think about when you have been really angry at someone you love — did it help you feel closer to them, resolve the conflict, or act in line with you wise mind? More likely, it drove you to act in ways you later regretted and made YOU feel worse in the short- and long-term. Enter: skills for managing anger!
The goal in managing our anger is NOT to invalidate yourself. Your anger makes sense (all emotions make sense in some way!) AND we don’t want it to drive you to unhelpful action or damage your relationship with the person you care about.
Hopefully I’ve sold you that anger (especially when it’s prolonged or very intense) is typically not so helpful in relationships with people we care about.
So, what do you do about it? Here are a few of the top ways to manage and address your anger towards loved ones:
Nonjudgment: “Judgments” are what we call interpretations in DBT. Personally, I prefer the term “interpretations” because I find it to be a bit less charged (ironically, I think folks often feel that the word “judgment” can itself be a bit judgmental). Moving away from interpretations about what’s going on and towards a “just the facts” approach really helps alleviate unhelpful anger.
TLDR; judgments lead to anger; being descriptive alleviates it.
Fun fact: nonjudgment and describe are two of the main mindfulness skills we teach in DBT.
Curiosity: Curiosity is like an antidote to anger. It’s hard to be really angry at someone while you are also truly curious about their experience. Ask yourself: what might be going on with my loved one that led them to do that? What’s it like to be inside their brain right now? How might this have come to happen for them?
Benign interpretations: This one can be more difficult, but in my experience, can also be really helpful. Try to come up with an interpretation of your loved one’s behavior that is explicitly compassionate and good-natured. Assume good intentions.
For example, if my child just screamed at me and called me a lot of names, a benign interpretation could be that they are really suffering, don’t want to be doing that, don’t mean it, and will regret it when they’re back to their emotional baseline.
STOP: Stop, take a step back, observe, proceed mindfully. Use high anger as a cute to pause, take a break, observe your own experience, and then make a purposeful choice about what to do next.
Self-validate: Remind yourself that your anger makes sense and is understandable. Don’t judge or criticize yourself for feeling the way you do.
Primary emotions: Identify your primary emotion (i.e., the natural response to the situation that anyone would feel) that is leading to anger. Soothe the primary emotion, rather than focusing on the anger. In there words, go to the “root” of the problem. If you’re angry with your child because they did something dangerous, notice and address your underlying fear, rather than getting caught up in the anger.
Practice: Try noticing your anger (ideally in the moment, but after the fact works as well) and then try 1-2 of the strategies above to address the anger. Have a goal of separating out how you feel (angry) from how you act.