Dipping Beneath Your Anger

We’ve all been there—you’re feeling angry at your partner or loved one. It can be difficult to know how to express your anger so that the other person can hear you. Sometimes you express yourself too harshly and it’s difficult for the other person to stick with you and try and understand. Maybe they get angry too. Or you may shove your anger down and not express it, but it remains there within you. In this struggle, you begin to feel a distance between the two of you.

This sort of thing happens to everyone in varying degrees. When it does, working through the conflict with your loved one—expressing what it was that was difficult for you, talking it through and feeling understood—can close this distance and end up making you and your loved one feel even more intimate and connected than you did before.

But sometimes your angry feelings are difficult to figure out and move beyond, either on your own or together with your loved one. Sometimes your anger, or the anger between the two of you, spreads until it seems woven through your relationship. Or your anger arises more than you are comfortable with. Or you no longer can express your anger in ways that your loved one can hear. Or you don’t even know why you’re feeling angry, but the feeling is there, again and again.

A pattern can develop between you and your loved one—with you feeling angry, either expressing it or not, and the other person responding with anger, or turning away from you and creating distance in order to avoid your anger. In time, this pattern of anger and distance may become ingrained and difficult to transcend. You may begin to feel that you are so locked into this pattern that it is hopeless to get back to a feeling of closeness.

When this pattern develops, it can be difficult to dip into the feelings that lay beneath your anger, such as hurt, sadness, or grief. Anger tends to be a secondary emotion that covers over deeper feelings. But when it becomes entrenched like this, the anger can feel primary. It can be difficult for you to understand what it is that you are really feeling underneath your anger, much less to communicate these deep feelings or longings with your loved one in a real and vulnerable way.

In therapy, working together in a safe and caring space, we can explore your experience of anger—the anger itself, what happens between you and others when you feel it, and the feelings that lie underneath your anger that are difficult for you to feel and to express. This process can be profound and freeing. None of us want to be trapped in anger or in the distance that it can cause in our close relationships. In therapy, as you allow yourself to feel and express what’s going on for you when you are angry, you can start to shake anger’s hold on you. In turn, the pattern of entrenched anger and the distance it has caused in your relationships can begin to ease.

While everyone feels angry from time to time, our work in therapy can support you to experience and navigate anger in ways that are more constructive and less damaging to your relationships. We can help you to dip beneath your anger, and to feel more comfortable talking with your loved ones from a more grounded and connected place.

If anger is making your relationships difficult or getting in the way of feeling close with your loved ones, give me a call at (510) 500-9722 so that we can talk about how relationship counseling can help.