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Key points
- Anger has an important survival function, and it often shows up in our closest relationships the most.
- Vulnerable feelings underlie anger in close relationships, but the way people express anger often prevents them from getting their needs met.
- Introspecting and unpacking the emotional experience of anger can help people express anger in a helpful way.
The emotion of anger exists for good reason. You’ve evolved to feel it, as it activates your fight-or-fight response to threats—which kept your ancestors safe when fighting predators off was a necessary survival skill. But what about when anger shows up in your relationship and you find that it's hurting, rather than helping, your connection?
Anger often shows up in our closest relationships the most. This is because, as humans, our attachment bonds are extremely important to us—we are all very sensitive to threats to our relationships as well as sensitive to threats to our sense of self as worthy of relationships. The threat of disconnection from close others can give us a sense of our very survival being threatened. The truth is, humans don’t survive for long when isolated from others (books such as Into the Wild and TV shows such as Alone come to mind); having others who look after us and care about us really does mean safety and the ability to live another day.
There is nothing wrong with feeling anger in your relationship—it means you care. Anger becomes a problem, however, when it makes you act aggressively. Aggression sends the message “back off!” which is counterproductive to addressing the root causes of anger.
Root Causes of Anger: Vulnerable Emotions and Needs
When feeling anger in our closest relationships, deep down, what we really want is to feel that we are connected and worthy of connection. Not only does expressing aggression in the context of close relationships keep us from getting our true needs met, but the impact of aggression on close others can also be very damaging. This is why it’s important (and your responsibility) to learn more about your anger, how to keep from hurting your partner, and how to keep from damaging the safety of your relationship. At the same time, you can honor anger as a natural emotion, work to understand it fully, and use it to ensure your true needs are met.
You can think of anger as an emotion that pushes you to fight for your needs to be understood and heard. You raise your voice as a way of conveying, “Hear me! This is important!” In my practice, I view anger as an attachment protest: a way of protesting against the threat of disconnection. There are attachment needs and vulnerable feelings that underly the anger. There is a sense of hurt, fear, or pain underneath anger. However, anger is what you express when you don’t feel safe being vulnerable with the hurt, pain, or fear that is underlying your anger. When you don’t feel emotionally safe, you feel that you have to protect yourself, and anger motivates you to take action to do just that. Anger elicits responses that protect you from vulnerable feelings, responses such as defensiveness or criticizing your loved ones (which keeps you from internalizing blame and thus keeps your sense of self intact).
What’s So Scary About Vulnerability?
The literal definition of vulnerability is “susceptibility to injury or attack…defenselessness.” It's a risk to share pain, hurt, fear, and your deep-seated attachment needs, as lowering your defenses makes you susceptible to real psychic injury. You could be rejected, unaccepted, or hear that something is "wrong" with you when sharing your vulnerable feelings. To share vulnerable feelings, you have to feel safe. You won’t show your true self if you are afraid you will not be fully accepted—as this could be damaging to your sense of self as worthy of connection. There are many factors that go into how safe you feel to express your vulnerability in a relationship, including your view of the current relationship as well as your own personal experiences (e.g., family of origin influences, trauma).
When you don’t feel safe to share vulnerability and your underlying vulnerable needs, you may (often unconsciously) turn your vulnerable feelings into anger to protect yourself from expressing those vulnerable feelings. Anger, as an emotion, elicits action tendencies that protect the self from sharing vulnerability and thus being vulnerable to feelings of rejection or shame. The problem is, when you show anger and aggression toward your partner, you trigger their lack of safety, and thus no one feels safe to share vulnerability. As such, more anger shows up, more protective responses emerge, and the cycle goes round and round—damaging the safety that both partners long for in the relationship.
How to Express Anger in a Helpful, Rather Than Harmful, Way
If you are struggling with anger, get curious about it. You’ll need to unpack your triggers, how you experience anger, and the vulnerable feelings that are underneath the anger, along with the impact of what you do with your anger.
1. Trigger: What is it that triggers you? Is it when you feel your relationship is threatened in some way (e.g., when you are afraid your partner is attracted to someone else or they may leave)? Is it when you feel your sense of self as worthy of love is threatened in some way (e.g., when you feel put down or criticized by your partner)?
2. Here and now experience of anger: How do you experience anger? What is it like emotionally? How does anger feel in your body? (e.g., I get a sense of the walls caving in. I feel hot, and I get tension in my chest.)
3. Meaning-making of your anger: What are you telling yourself when you are angry? (e.g., my partner doesn’t care about me or my needs). What does it feel like will happen if you don’t express anger? (e.g., If I don’t get louder, I fear nothing will change. My partner will never care about my pain/hurt or understand my needs to know she loves me).
4. Action you take when angry: What do you do with your anger? What does it look like on the outside? You can understand this as how you protect yourself (e.g., I raise my voice and throw my hands in the air. I tell my partner she is a selfish person).
5. What vulnerable emotions are at the core that you protect yourself from by going to anger? Unpack what is underneath and driving your anger (e.g., I feel hurt that my partner didn’t call and I'm afraid that she doesn’t love me the same way anymore).
6. What are the underlying attachment needs that you are yearning to have met? (e.g., I really want to know that my partner loves and cares for me, and I’m important to her—it's painful to think that maybe she’s more important to me than I am to her.)
7. Assess the impact and what is unhelpful: Lastly, seek to understand the impact of what you do on (1) your partner and (2) getting your own needs met. Are you handling your anger in a way that builds safety or ruptures it? (e.g., When I raise my voice at my partner, she usually feels attacked and gets defensive. When my actions trigger her in this way, she doesn't give me the reassurance that I need that she really loves me and that I’m important to her).
When you unpack your anger in this way, it can clarify what you really need in your relationship and help you get those needs met instead of getting you trapped in unhelpful cycles. When you understand the pain, hurt, and fear underlying your protection, you can share this with your partner, which is more likely to help you get your underlying needs met.
You might share that, “Underneath my anger, I’m really afraid that you don’t care about my pain or my needs to be close and it hurts, it’s sad to feel alone. When I shout at you, deep down, I’m really wanting to know that I matter to you. But when I react like that, it makes it so that you can’t give that to me, and it’s been a part of a pattern that’s made our relationship feel insecure.”
When you do the work to understand your triggers, how you experience anger, and the vulnerable feelings and needs that are underneath the anger, along with the impact of what you do with your anger, you can share with your partner. Sharing in this vulnerable way is the best bet when you want to feel understood and build a secure, intimate connection. Make anger work for your relationship by sharing the core of what it is really about.
To start your journey on learning how to express vulnerability under anger, I recommend Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight
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