Do you have a healthy relationship with anger? Or do you see anger as a dangerous emotion? If you're recovering from a relationship with someone with narcissistic traits, chances are good you struggle with anger.
If you feel scared or guilty about even feeling angry, it might be because someone in your childhood hurt you (physically or emotionally) or someone you love when they were angry. Maybe you were told that “it’s not ladylike to be angry.” Or you may have had the experience of getting angry yourself, then hurting someone you love. If the people who raised you didn't know how to manage their anger, or didn't know how to teach you to manage your own anger, you may find anger a difficult emotion to experience, in both yourself and others.
But it’s important to understand anger, because each of the human emotions are valid and important. Although anger can be dangerous to self and others, all of the emotions are problematic in their extreme forms. And because anger happens to be both a unique and powerful emotion, it’s especially important to understand it, and be able to access and regulate it.
Anger is unique in that it creates separation. Other emotions encourage others to get involved. Years ago, while I was standing in line at a dollar store, a man walked in, wearily explained to the cashier that he’d been to several stores already, and really needed to find a particular item because he and his family were headed out of town. The cashier said they didn't carry it, but three different people, including two of the people in line with me, helpfully offered suggestions as to where he could find what he was looking for. You may not have gotten involved the last time you saw a stranger in public who was clearly feeling sad, worried, or hurt. But chances are you noticed, and you probably felt some concern or compassion for them.
Anger, on the other hand, encourages others to step back, walk away, and distance themselves. If that same man had come into the dollar store and shouted angrily at the cashier, I doubt the strangers who did their best to help him would have spoken up.
Think about the last time you saw an angry person in public—say, someone using aggressive hand gestures on the freeway. You were probably not interested in engaging kindly with that driver! Now imagine you drove past them and saw a look of fear on their face. You might not stop, but you’d be far more likely to feel curiosity, concern, or compassion.
In the same way that anger separates us from one another, anger can also separate us from our own emotions. It can be easier to be angry with someone than it is to feel sad about your relationship with them, feel worried about your part in how the relationship is going, or feel guilty about what you said or did.
And unfortunately, many people get stuck in sadness because they fear anger, or feel guilty about it. There’s a saying that depression is frozen rage. When I work with clients who have difficulty accessing anger, we work first on uncovering the reasons they’re uncomfortable with anger. Then they can access their anger and separate from their sadness, fear, or guilt, and step into their circle of control to take action.
That said, separating from your emotions isn’t always an evasive action. Sometimes it's necessary to harness the power of anger, because it gives you the energy you need to separate from your emotions and take action. The powerful energy of anger can be used positively to set and enforce boundaries. Of course, the energy of anger can also be used negatively, and hurt you and others. (We’ll talk more about this in a moment.)
Anger has power in other ways, too. You might feel angry because it’s a way to keep distance between yourself and someone else because of things that happened in the past. If you’re chronically angry, it may be because anger (and the hormonal cascade that the fight-or-flight response triggers) is a familiar experience for you, and it feels safer to be angry than it does to be calm. And I’ve worked with clients who are angry with someone because if they stopped being angry, there wouldn’t be any other emotion left. In this case, anger acts a way of maintaining the relationship. These are all ways of harnessing the power of anger.
Thus far, we’ve looked at understanding anger. How do you safely access and express anger?
To answer this question, it’s necessary to understand that anger can come from love, or anger can stem from fear. Anger that is grounded in love is calm, confident, and assertive. It is knowing that something is wrong, and action needs to be taken to right the wrong.
Anger grounded in fear runs on a spectrum, which starts as irritation or annoyance. As anger increases, it becomes frustration, then anger, and at the far end of the anger spectrum, fury and rage.
Anger grounded in fear is hurtful and aggressive. Depending where you are on the anger spectrum, anger can be as subtle as an unkind or sarcastic comment, or as obvious as physical violence.
There are as many reasons people feel anger grounded in fear as there are people, but often, what underlies those different reasons is feeling unloved or unworthy. If you believe you’re unlovable or unworthy, when people get angry, you’re more likely believe it’s happening because of you personally. In contrast, if you love yourself and see yourself as worthy, it’s much easier to see a person with narcissistic traits as an emotional child who's struggling with their emotions in the moment. That makes it easier for you to stay emotionally balanced when you're communicating with someone with narcissistic traits.
So, how can you identify whether you’re angry out of love, or out of fear? One good gauge is the use of assertive communication. We’ve talked before about how in assertive communication, you maintain a balance between respecting how you think and feel, and being respectful of how the other person thinks and feels. If you’re able to be respectful of the other person, while speaking up for what’s right, chances are good you’re speaking out of love. When your anger is grounded in love, rather than in fear, you can set and enforce boundaries calmly and clearly, respecting both yourself and the other person as a fellow human being.
If you're in relationship with someone with narcissistic traits, chances are good you experience your own anger as grounded in fear when you interact with them, at least at the beginning of narcissism recovery. If this is true for you, you may find that it's because you don't see yourself as lovable and worthy. If so, working on your self-esteem is essential to narcissism recovery! When you love yourself unconditionally, the actions and attitudes of others, including the people you know with narcissistic traits, are far less impactful. When you love yourself and see yourself as worthy, it's easier to see that things are happening to you personally, but they aren't happening to you because of you personally!
If you’re easily angered or chronically angry, or if you struggle to access your anger, I encourage you to work with a therapist who can help you explore and heal your relationship with anger. You deserve to have a healthy relationship with anger, so you can safely access its power to separate from emotions, and set and maintain healthy boundaries!
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