Discover how anger often masks deeper emotional wounds—and why recognising the hurt beneath can be the first step toward healing and freedom.
Sometimes in our seminars, we ask people to raise their hand if they think they are an angry person. Usually, one or two in the group will raise their hand; sometimes no-one does. Then we ask if they know someone who is an angry person; every hand goes up. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Angry people must be very popular, because there are so few of them yet everyone seems to know them!
Surprisingly, many people aren’t aware of their anger, or at least not to the extent others see their anger. Maybe you have trouble admitting your anger, but can you acknowledge that you’ve been hurt? Probably.
Consider this fact: Most experts consider anger a response to hurt.
Our anger can be good in that it musters up the energy to act in the face of our hurt. Anger is the source of energy needed to assert our self and defend our rights. Yet most people are not comfortable with their anger, so they deny its existence. One of the many concerns is that anger mimics stress; anger is both a cause of stress and an indicator of stress’s presence.
The anger pool
Why is it that some people seem to explode when something goes wrong, and others simmer much longer?
Could it be that we all have a pool of anger built up inside that gets tapped into from time to time? And could that reservoir of anger cause us to be more upset than the current circumstances call for so that we explode at unexpected times? It’s important to understand that anger cannot be stored. What is stored are the memories, and every time a memory is recalled, the anger attached to it bubbles back to the surface. And when you have been hurt deeply, it’s hard not to think of that event over and over again. But by doing so, you become your own worst enemy. While the other person may have caused you the initial hurt, you alone are keeping it alive today.
You see, anger is not only a result of stress, it’s an additional stressor itself that you have to deal with. Anger elevates heart rate and blood pressure just like stress and, if left unchecked, can have the same significant negative consequences upon your health. The real problem is not with the anger itself but rather the retention of your anger. For if anger is not adequately dealt with at the time it occurs, it will come roaring back when you least expect it.
If you are experiencing anger or hurt in some way, pay close attention to this lifestyle strategy. You may be among the 20 per cent of the general population that has levels of hostility high enough to be dangerous to your health.
The science behind anger
To help you understand the mechanisms of how anger works, the following cascading events illustrate what can occur in your body when you are upset:
- Anger is a high-energy emotion associated with stress. Since you are likely to be motivated to engage in some action when angry, you’ll need energy in the form of glucose delivered quickly to your muscles and other tissues.
- Cortisol and adrenaline trigger a rise in blood sugar, while at the same time adrenaline increases blood pressure so the sugar can be rushed to its destination.
- Cortisol is formed in the adrenal glands from cholesterol, which is made in the liver. That means the cholesterol must be transported in the bloodstream to the adrenals. To facilitate the easy movement of cholesterol through the blood, the cholesterol binds to low-density lipoprotein, or LDL.
- For short intervals, the body can manage an increase in blood pressure without damaging your health. But if you are angry most of the time and your blood pressure remains elevated for months or perhaps years, eventually the sides of the blood vessel erode, much like the banks of a river when the current is strong.
- These hardened blood vessels can trigger inflammation, causing blood-clotting platelets to accumulate along with LDL cholesterol. As a result, plaque begins to form on the lining of your blood vessels.
- Over time the plaque accumulates, restricting blood flow until eventually the blood stops flowing. If it happens in the coronary arteries it will result in a heart attack. If it happens in the brain, a stroke.
Not a great picture for good heart and vascular health. But the good news is you can do something to reverse it, and the intervention will not require you to pay any out-of-pocket expenses.
What forgiveness is
The old saying “forgive and forget” does not accurately describe what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not forgetting; rather, forgiveness is remembering in a different way. If your memory of the event changes, your emotional response to that memory will change as well. You may think of forgiving as benefiting the other person or letting them off the hook. But forgiveness is really about you. It brings closure, release and freedom.
Why it works for you
When someone has hurt you deeply, you end up thinking about that person a lot, and the repetitive thinking determines your physiologic response. Holding onto that grudge also holds onto that thought and thus keeps you in a stressed response (i.e., high blood pressure). Forgiveness is a way of letting go of that thought because you’re reframing it. When you think about it differently, your response is going to be different.
To determine how best to reduce the physiological side effects of anger, we conducted original research that demonstrated something astounding: By practising forgiveness, individuals with high blood pressure may lower their blood pressure and actually reverse the disease of hypertension.
How to do it
The forgiveness approach has helped thousands of people. It can help you too.
1. Express your anger in an appropriate way
It is better to express your anger than to repress it. If you repress it, the anger will eat you alive from the inside out. That’s not just a figure of speech; the chemicals released because of chronic anger will literally eat away at your stomach, arteries, brain cells and more.
While rage is the most observable aspect of anger, it’s not the most common expression. The most frequent way people deal with their anger is to hold it in. This retained anger can convert to resentment, which often takes on a life of its own. Feelings from the past can become so real they feel like the old event just happened again, triggering the stress response again and again. As a famous saying goes: “To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by a single bee.”
There are three primary ways of expressing anger:
- Aggressive which lashes out toward others. This expression rarely works and often makes things worse.
- Passive which tries to bury the anger in hopes it will go away. The problem is that anger is never buried dead; it is buried alive only to come back at another time in inappropriate ways.
- Assertive which states the concerns with a desire to resolve the issues and move on.
In this video, psychologist Collett Smart teaches you how to release some of the pain that you are holding onto and stop being the victim. You will also learn the role of forgiveness in healing, steps to forgiveness and the forgiveness process.
When expressing anger, be assertive. Stay focused on the issues, but avoid being accusatory. Calm yourself so you can move into a higher level of processing and carefully weigh the options. The following tips may also help:
- Write out your thoughts before you speak them. This will help you express your anger assertively rather than aggressively. Taking time to think through your words puts you in control rather than your emotions.
- Before you express yourself, you may have a hope or a wish for how the other person will respond. Identify what that is, and be prepared to not get that response. Why? If you expect that response, you may be disappointed, which can then turn to anger. The purpose of expressing yourself is not necessarily for resolution of the grievance but for you to appropriately let the feelings out so you can move forward.
- Remember that you’ve likely been thinking about the situation for a long time and in a great amount of detail. That is not usually the case for the other person. It may be helpful to provide the context of the situation and/or explain the sequence of events involved.
- Be prepared to listen to what the other person has to say. They may fill in some blanks or give you information you didn’t know about. With this new information, your initial assessment of the situation may change.
- When confronting, use “I” statements to express your point of view rather than “you” statements. “You” statements are more likely to trigger a defensive reaction because they are heard as blame. No-one should be able to argue with “I” statements, which simply state how you feel and think about the problem.
- Establish consequences and appropriate boundaries where necessary. Behaviour has consequences. You want to choose those consequences wisely and not just react to the situation.
2. See the person causing your pain as a mixture of good and bad
You’ve heard the expression “love is blind”. When someone is in love, all they can see in the other person is their good characteristics. They are “blinded” to the other’s faults, only to eventually discover the person was not as good as they thought they were.
The same is true with anger: It is equally blind. When we are angry, we tend to see only the faults of the person we’re angry at. However, it’s also true that the person has some good qualities as well. That is how your worst enemy can be someone else’s best friend. In fact, we are all a mixture of good and bad. How we see each other depends on what characteristics we focus on. We always see what we look for in the other person. Seeing the other as a mixture of good and bad will help reduce the intensity of the anger you’re experiencing.
3. Reframe your anger
Just as stress is amplified by how we interpret the event, so too anger is amplified by how we frame the situation that gave rise to it. Think of it this way: We all frame our life experiences. We choose at some level what to retain in our picture of life and what to leave out. You probably don’t think about this much, but your brain does. It needs categories or drawers in which to place memories. And let’s be honest, we don’t remember everything. We selectively remember events from our past.
This was illustrated when Dr Dick and his sister recently visited the town where they grew up. They shared their memories of the home, the neighbourhood, and, most importantly, the friends and family that impacted their childhood so much. But while he and his sister grew up together in the same home and neighbourhood, their memories of those experiences were quite different. (Dr Dick’s wife was so amused by this that she questioned out loud if they truly grew up in the same home.) How do your childhood memories stack up against those of your siblings? Our guess is they are quite different as well.
This is what we call framing your memories. It is your frame of reference from which you then interpret life around you. If you felt safe as a child, you tend to see life from this perspective. But if your childhood life was scary, you may easily view life as a scary place with uncertainties around every corner.
Once you recognise that life is how you frame it, you can start to reframe your life by adding elements that were left out of your picture or by reducing details that have become dominant in your picture. For example, not every person is abusive, even though some are. So you learn to put the past in perspective. This is not easy work, but it is necessary if you ever hope to escape from your resentment and engage the world in a different way.
4. Take ownership of your feelings
You’ve heard the expression “You make me so angry!” Sound familiar? You are held captive by someone else’s past actions when in fact you are choosing to stay there. The other person has moved on and may not even realise you’re holding a grudge against them. Why would you place your future happiness in the hands of a person who has demonstrated that they don’t care?
On the other hand, when you accept your anger as yours, you can control how you will act on it. In this instance your anger will flow as follows:
- I am responsible for how I feel.
- You do not determine my feelings.
- Therefore, I will choose how I wish to respond and live life my way.
By following this new pathway, you have moved your life from being a victim to being a victor. Don’t live a life that someone else has made for you; live the life of your choosing. Take the journey from bitter to better.
5. Forgive to live
Perhaps the most powerful way to find relief from chronic resentment is to practise forgiveness. Forgiveness begins with the choice to forgive. No-one can make you forgive; you must decide for yourself that forgiveness is the best course of action to pursue. You need to know you’re doing this for yourself. While most people resist forgiveness because they don’t believe the other person deserves it, the truth is that forgiveness benefits the one who forgives far more than it benefits the one forgiven. Forgiveness is necessary for your healing.
Excerpt from The Stress Recovery Effect: Powerful tools to reduce anxiety, stress less, and perform your best by Dr Nick Hall and Dr Dick Tibbits.
