Avoid the Danger of Misunderstanding Anger

October 01, 2020

In our inaugural podcast, On AIR with Elk River challenges your thought process about anger. Penny Baker, Clinical Director for Elk River Treatment Program for adolescents, explains that anger is not an emotion. Once you understand that, you may realize that your raging teenager feels hurt, scared, disrespected, or treated unfairly.

Parenting Teenagers with Anger Management Issues

Selina
Hello, and welcome to On AIR with Elk River Treatment Program for Teens, the residential program at Pinnacle Behavioral Health. I'm Selina Mason, the Director of Marketing and Outreach. Today, our guest is Penny Baker, Director of Clinical Services for Elk River. Penny’s here to talk about “Anger Danger.” Welcome, Penny.

Penny
Well, hello, Selina. And thank you for having me here today. I look forward to talking to everyone a little bit about “Anger Danger” and what that really means.

Selina
I'm really interested to hear about that, but first, tell us about your background in counseling.

Penny
I started counseling in 1992. I have worked at a variety of treatment programs from inpatient, outpatient, hospital programs, juvenile justice, group homes - pretty much the spectrum of counseling programs that there are out there -, but my heart has always been working with adolescents and their families.

Selina
Why is that?

Penny
Adolescents gives you just a prime opportunity between childhood and adulthood, where they're really developing how they think and feel, and being able to address emotionally their intelligence, as well as, behaviorally, how to be respectful and learn the concepts of accountability, integrity, and responsibility, are really critical in long-term development to become responsible adults.

Selina
Is that where the name of the podcast comes from?

Penny
Absolutely. Our premise really is, as I was just talking about, the importance of teaching kids the concepts of accountability, integrity, and responsibility. Those are skills that last a lifetime, not only to help you survive adolescence, but into adulthood, into your job performance, school performance, your family relationships, and just overall healthy mental health.

Selina
Well, if you've been working with adolescents and their families, then you probably do know a lot about Anger Danger. I think I'm getting an idea of what you're going to talk to us about.

Penny
Well, first I may surprise you a little bit, because when I'm talking about anger, a lot of people have the concept that anger is probably the most common word that's used when you ask people, how do you feel? And, it could be anger. It could be really, if you think of any other word that we use instead of anger, it could be anger, angry, mad, upset, pissed off, you know, a variety of things, irate. And when we have, really looking at anger or any of those words that we use, the danger that comes with that, is that people only go that far when they're expressing their feelings. And my challenge to everyone today is I want you to look at - and I'm going to challenge your thought process - that anger is not an emotion.

Selina
What do you mean: “not an emotion?”

Penny
I'm going to try to prove it to you. Because I'm sure there are a lot of people out there right now thinking, “Okay, that's crazy. I get angry all the time. I’m mad all the time. I have things going on.”

Selina
Are you going to throw something at me?

Penny
No, I'm going to throw anything at you, but I do want you to define “angry” for me.

Selina
I think of it as a physical feeling, like my heart rate gets up. I don't necessarily think straight. I might shout. My behavior would be more unpredictable when I'm angry.

Penny
You're right on track. And that actually proves my point. Most people, when you ask them to define angry, usually they just give you another synonym that means angry: like mad, or irate, or upset. But if someone is really, truly honest and they look at and they observe whenever they use that word to describe how they're feeling, they're actually describing a physical reaction and that's a little bit different for everyone when it comes to when they use that word anger to describe how they feel. And usually it is, and you described several things from, you know, people's face will turn red, their muscles will tense up. They'll clench their teeth. Their blood pressure will go up. Heart rate will go up.

Selina
And as a woman, sometimes I cry and I really hate that, when I'm really angry.

Penny
Right, it's just this release, but it's a physical reaction to an emotion that's going on. So my challenge to everyone is we really need to rethink the word “anger” and the concept of anger because often you have, over and over again, whether it's programs, self-help, books, even other podcasts that really focus on anger management. And they'll talk about some wonderful, great coping skills. But all of those coping skills, if you think about it, are really about how to kind of de-stress that physical reaction that's going on. But if you truly want to address where the anger is coming from: that core of why you're having that physical response, even up to, as you described, sometimes even up to a loss of control of your physical reaction to an emotion, is you've got to look deeper. And here's my challenge for you: I can almost guarantee you that if you think in your mind of the last time you were angry are anytime you were angry, or use that to describe how you were feeling, that if you are really honest with yourself of how you were really feeling and what was going on, I guarantee you it would fit more in the definition of you felt either hurt, scared, disrespected, or treated unfairly. Well, can you think of any, the last time you were angry,

Selina
Three out of four of those is correct, yeah.

Penny
Okay.

Selina
And it was a work situation. So I don't want to get into that in detail, but you know, when you, when you started talking I was thinking: “When is the last time I was angry?” And I did feel disrespected. I did feel, hurt.

Penny
Right

Selina
But, I was angry.

Penny
Right. And that's the Anger Danger that we have, because so often, and we're socialized in this for over years and years where, you know, we're when we are hurt, scared or disrespected, we have a physical reaction, which is really just our brain responding to fear that we're having. And we're going into defense mode. It's a natural response, but we get so caught up in that physical reaction and trying to control that, that we completely get lost in really dealing with what the issue is. So if we really want to learn how to manage that anger and manage that physical response, you've got to dig deeper. You have to be honest with yourself when you're in those situations. And when you're starting to feel those physical reactions, have that moment where you're asking yourself: “Okay, right now, am I feeling hurt, scared, disrespected, or feel like I'm treated unfairly?” because those are things that you can address in that moment. You can address the situation. So if you, let's say, you do something that I feel is disrespectful, and I just have a physical response to what you say, are you going to listen to me? If I try to talk to you?

Selina
No, I'll be defensive. I'm sure.

Penny
If I just come at you with, “I'm angry with you,” are you going to listen to what I have to say?

Selina
No, I wouldn't. I would not listen to you.

Penny
And now, if I was able to tell you in this particular situation, I felt hurt. Would that be something we might be able to work through or at least increase our chances of being able to work through?

Selina
We would have a discussion at that point, I think.

Penny
Absolutely, because you're taking it away from the physical and getting back to the true depth of what's going on emotionally.

Selina
Well, that can sort of pertain to today's society and how polarized we are as Americans. You know, whether it's religion or if it's sexual orientation or if it's politics, and people get so angry when someone else doesn't agree with them.

Penny
But are they angry or are they feeling hurt, scared, disrespected, or treated unfairly?

Selina
Right.

Penny
So it's really, it's looking at, we're going to be able to increase our conversations. So whether it's as a society, when we have disagreements, being able to increase our conversations and have real conversations about real feelings, whether we're in families, or that parent, and you have a kid who just seems angry all the time. If you look at how you approach your child, and if you're approaching it, your kid comes at you as irate and angry and is having a physical response, our tendency is to have that physical, angry response back. But if you can take a moment as the parent and even look at their child a little bit differently, and whenever they're showing that those physical signs of what we call “anger” of in your head, ask them, ask yourself and contemplate, “My child right now is feeling hurt, scared, disrespected or treated unfairly,” then you can address that specifically with them. And again, you can have a conversation and it's not a physical reaction leading to another physical reaction that just grows and escalates to the point of no return without any conversation.

Selina
Well, and I would think as a parent, it would help to see that behavior as an emotion, rather than disrespecting you. If, if a child is -or a teenager, let's say- is moping around or angry or slamming things and you stop and question, does this child feel disrespected, hurt, or all the other things that you said, it would de-escalate me as the parent. And maybe take me out of the picture. Like, “I'm the problem? What did I do?” You know, what can, what can I do to help my son, our daughter, who is not speaking at this time? And I can't get through to them? What are some tips on how to get that conversation going when the other person is not participating?

Penny
Well, I think you start with what you just talked about is you ask the question, you open the dialogue. You also try to catch it early. You know, when, if you've let that kind of physical reaction, that physical, emotional reaction, again, that we call anger, build and build and build until it’s at a dangerous point, and sometimes you have to wait it out for it to come back down again to those conversations. But if you pay attention, when you first see that physical reaction building up and ask those questions, whether it's asking of your child, your wife, your husband, your partner, your boss: of really taking it from the physical and bringing it back to the true emotion to figure out what is that root cause, what's going on? And in that moment, you get to do a couple of things. One: you're validating that other person, that there was something that was said, whether it was intentional or not, their perception is there was something that was hurtful or something that scares them. And when I talk about hurt, scared and disrespected, I want to make sure I clarify that hurt could be: “Emotionally I feel hurt,” or even “Physically I've been hurt.” I may have a reaction. It also can be scared, that I am scared for myself, or I'm scared for someone else that I might have a physical reaction that looks like anger.

Disrespect, you know, if you feel you're disrespected or even if you see someone else being disrespected, that can create those feelings. So you want to keep that in mind when you see any behavior from any other person. And I think, especially when we're talking about people, we care about people. We want to build relationships with, increase our understanding, and to build that relationship, you have to go a little bit deeper. And that means sometimes asking the difficult questions of, not just staying in that anger, not just dealing with that physical response, but really looking at, you know, what's underneath that. What's causing that. If you have an anger response to me during this interview, then I need to ask myself, “Have I said, something that she could perceive was hurtful, or that might frighten or scare her, or that was disrespectful?”

And if I'm approaching situations and conversations with that, I'm making myself more aware of being attuned in this conversation and relationship. And then it also helps us build to have a deeper relationship.

Selina
I want to address gender. I'm the mother of an adult son now, and he was a teenager at one time. And something I learned when he was in these development years, where there was some mood, mood swings, and a book I read. And I believe it was recommended from the folks at Elk River was: “How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and How to Listen so Kids Will Talk.” That gave some really good tips on how to communicate or have a conversation. And the other one was “Raising Cain” and it was about raising boys. And one of the that I took from that book and it made a big difference in the way I viewed my son was, boys are often brought up to not show emotions like tearfulness or something that's not anger.

A lot of times when boys feel pain or they're disappointed, they are taught to show anger instead. Does that make sense?

Penny
Yes. And I think it's probably most prevalent in adolescent males and even adult males. There is a socialized aspect to that where it's not okay for males to show emotion outwardly other than physically, which usually is what we interpret as anger or showing that. That's the most socially acceptable way for males to show anger. But it's also a little bit more complicated than that. Although there's more prevalence with males as far as showing that external display or that physical reaction. Typically females have more of an internal display or a delayed display of that reaction. But you can still have across the board, with all, all genders and age groups, depending on their family culture, the learned behavior, what was socialized and appropriate in that family at that time: was it taught to (whether it's the teenage girls or boys) in their parenting, was it made okay that they could use feelings or express feelings other than anger, or there's certain models that they had where they saw anger displayed in a certain way that they learn from.

So there's a lot of different complications in that, and right now, and kind of my motivation of really wanting to talk about this subject, is whether it's a family culture that created a person's tendency to really act out their emotions in what we would describe as anger in a physical way, whether again, family culture, a learned behavior from somewhere else, or just they have such pain or hurt - maybe that's the only way they feel safe, to display those feelings. That as a culture we have to do better, we all need to commit to really learn how to better socialize our children and how to, even as adults, make some changes in how we communicate with each other. Because if we all stay in anger and all stay in that physical reactive mode in trying to communicate, we will never be successful. And we will continue to have children that become angrier and angrier in their physical responses and never deal with any hurt or sadness or fear that they actually do have.

And you never have those conversations that help us gain a better understanding of each other, and really learn how to have healthier relationships with everyone. So when I talk about Anger Danger, I'm really talking about us revisiting the definition of “anger” and how we communicate with each other at a level that's not based in a physical reaction.

Selina
Well, that's great information, Penny, thank you for your time today.

Penny
Thank you.

Selina
Thanks for listening to “On AIR with Elk River Treatment Program”, the residential program of Pinnacle Behavioral Health.