What Anger is Trying to Tell Us
Some people experience emotions more intensely, or differently, to others. They may have multiple feelings, responses and situations within a single day, and this can be exhausting to navigate.
Emotion and emotional responses are literally energy in motion. Sometimes we only need to look at someone to sense how they’re feeling. It’s frequently quoted that around 90% of human communication is non-verbal, this serves as a reminder that our bodies often speak before our words do.
I realised something about myself when I feel angry: my heartbeat quickens and I feel a strong drive and determination to make myself heard. This is the opposite of my composed, masked self - the version of me that blends into situations and avoids confrontation. When I’m feeling angry, I am more open to confrontation; I want my perspective to be heard and, in that moment at least, I’m not always in the frame of mind to consider anyone else’s.
This response serves a purpose. There are times, both professionally and personally, when we do need to be heard, and other times when we need to listen. The difficulty arises when two people are both feeling angry and neither knows how to moderate their response or remain regulated. Anger tends to narrow perspective; it centres our own experience above all else.
The solution to this is simple in theory, though not always in practice: a pause. For adults, for children - for everyone. A pause allows us to express what we want to say while engaging parts of our brain that help us stay connected to logic and reasoning (we all have them!). Many psychologists talk about the importance of responding rather than reacting.
In the brain, the amygdala: two small, almond-shaped structures, react to perceived threat and motivates us to respond before we’ve had time to think. This was incredibly useful when humans were being chased by dangerous creatures, but it’s something we need to harness carefully in modern life. For those of us who experience anger intensely, learning to moderate our responses becomes especially important.
For me, this means removing myself from the situation and taking a deliberate pause. This gives my body time to settle physiologically and allows me to reflect on what I’m actually feeling, and what my anger response is trying to tell me.
In her book The Source, Dr Tara Swart describes an activity that encourages us to reflect on how much we rely on different parts of our brain, such as the emotional or logical areas. When I’m feeling angry, my emotional response is very high, while my logical thinking is much much lower. The pause helps to reduce the emotional intensity and re-engage the logical brain, allowing both to work together. I wish I knew this a long time ago!
This integration leads to more informed responses: acknowledging that I feel wronged, while expressing this in a way that is more amicable and less likely to alienate others, or lead me to saying or doing something I later regret. Actively choosing to pause, and having the self-awareness to do so, feels empowering. It reassures me that I am safe to experience these feelings, and that I can support myself through them.
When we talk about ADHD and other neurodivergent neurotypes, the term alexithymia often comes up. This refers to difficulty identifying or describing emotions, even when they are felt intensely. It may be helpful to think of this as a build-up of many feelings whose origins haven’t yet been explored.
Language matters here. We need to understand the meaning of words in order to label and validate our emotions, and what lies beneath them. Emotional ‘meters’ are often discussed, but perhaps teaching children a wider range of feeling words and adjectives would better support them in expressing how they feel in the moment.
It is okay to feel angry, just as it’s okay to feel any of the many emotions we experience as humans. The aim isn’t to eliminate anger, but to moderate our response to it: to reduce reactivity, learn about ourselves, and grow in self-awareness and promote integration of the logical and emotional parts of our brain.
So when you (or your child, if you have children) experience strong feelings, try to see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to practise the pause, and to notice what changes when you do.