Why Not Anger?

Most of us have some understanding of what depression looks like. You are staying in bed all day, scrolling through your phone for excessive distraction, exhausted with just the thought of getting up, and spiraling down the bottomless pit of self-loathing. But there is another side of depression that we don’t talk about: anger.

Anger is not given much space in our society. It is often hushed away, considered unproductive, undignified and scary. And yet, every one of us feels anger. I might even argue that most of us feel angry most of the time. Life is incessantly, unbearably unfair. We are forced to go to work, to school, and put on that cordial face because so much is at stake. Our defenses are really clutch here too. Denial, projection, humor, and sublimation kick in to hide our vulnerabilities in the nick of time. So what do we do? We become irritable. The smallest things send us over the edge. Suddenly, the way your partner chews food is infinitely irritating. The way your sister looks at her phone during dinner makes you want to flip a table. It leaves you wondering why in the world you’re “overreacting” to such a small thing.

But when you’ve held in all this anger for weeks, months, and years, can you blame you? Can you imagine packing a year’s worth of luggage into a personal item? Your bag will rip open.

There was a recent study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry that showed that irritability in childhood and adolescence were really really common (Copeland eta l., 2015). In fact, irritability is so common in kids that psychiatrists felt the need to differentiate clinically problematic and “normal” irritability. So in 2013, they made up a name for it: disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (APA, 2022). This is when kids are chronically irritable, with bouts of temper outbursts. Putting aside the debatable topic of whether this “disorder" actually exists as a categorically separate entity, it has been observed enough times that even insurance companies started reimbursing psychiatric hospitalizations for it! When money gets involved, that’s when you really know something is up. But the most fascinating part of this paper, was that irritability decreased in adolescence (Copeland eta l., 2015). Meanwhile, we know that rates of depression and anxiety skyrocket in adolescence. What does this say about anger in kids?

It just might be the first sign of clinical depression.

So we have to talk about anger. We have to talk about the different layers of anger, because at the very bottom is always vulnerability. We all want to be seen and loved for exactly who we are. When we are not, we feel indignant, unworthy, and confused about our very existence in this life. This can lead to depression and despair. So anger is a siren. Anger tells you something is burning, and if you don’t pay attention to it, it will destroy your personhood. When this happens in childhood or adolescence, it changes the entire trajectory of our lives.

So anger must be handled with the most gentle, loving hands. Because at its root, anger protects immense vulnerability. Some of the vulnerable emotions underneath anger are:

• Shame

• Emptiness

• Unworthiness

• Loss, grief

• Rejection

• Loss of control

The trick is, we cannot get to these vulnerable emotions without listening to anger. Here are some phrases you can say to someone who is angry to validate them.

“That is infuriating.”

“I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“What do you think happened? I want to understand.”

“Where are you in all of this?”

“How are you coping with all of this?”

The main message you want to convey to the person who is angry is that it is okay to be angry. It makes total sense, because you have carried so much for so long. We are allowed to be angry at others, the situation, and ourselves. Who has time for a society championing the ever-so-optimistic hero who just moves on? It’s really lame. And it’s really okay to be angry.

The most important part of all of this, is that we must be able to sit with ourselves in anger. This allows us to sit with others in anger. And if we can’t, then we must do our own inner work. If we are triggered by someone else’s anger, we must take a pause to reflect on ourselves. When we do this for ourselves and others, there is a natural progression to the next step, which is how do we deal and learn from the anger. That is when we truly grow. Out of our own accord. But we cannot get there without giving anger enough space to run out of its fuel.

References:

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Depressive Disorders. In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://dsm.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787.x04_Depressive_Disorders

Copeland WE, Brotman MA, Costello EJ. Normative Irritability in Youth: Developmental Findings From the Great Smoky Mountains Study. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2015;54(8):635-642. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2015.05.008