This article is part of All the Rage, an editorial package that digs into the science of anger. SELF will be publishing new articles for this series all week. Read more here.
It can hit you before you even know it’s happening: The simmering irritability you’ve been walking around with for hours reaches a boiling point of no return when, say, your significant other comes home without the recipe ingredient you definitely asked for. Or perhaps your child leaves that toy in the middle of the living room again even though you’ve repeatedly asked them to pick it up. Or, on a really bad day, maybe your loved one is simply existing in your space in a way that manages to infuriate you. Within minutes, you’ve said (or screamed!) something harsh…only to realize—on your own or after they called you out for it—that they didn’t deserve your outburst.
Whether this is a fairly new pattern or one you’ve lived with for most of your life, misdirected anger can have a poisonous effect on your most important relationships. The mix of shame and regret that often comes after the rage has cooled is a toxic brew for you to be consuming over and over again too.
To be clear: Anger itself is not a moral failing or something that needs to be eradicated. “We tend to socially reject anger, especially in women, who are socialized to suppress it, but anger is an energy that can help you feel emboldened and legitimized to take action,” Lisa Marie Bobby, PhD, LMFT, therapist and founder of Colorado-based Growing Self Counseling & Coaching, tells SELF. “Whether it’s setting boundaries with a family member, saying no to harmful behavior, or breaking off a toxic friendship, our anger is often the fuel.” It becomes a problem, however, when unexamined anger feels out of control and reactive, thus scorching whoever’s standing closest to you.
Learning to stop taking your anger out on loved ones requires getting way more familiar with your inner emotional landscape and how it drives what you do and say. Dr. Bobby calls this “emotional-regulation skills training.” “Many people who get lash-y aren’t really connected to their feelings,” she explains. “If you imagine a 1 to 10 anger scale where 10 is throwing a chair out the window, productive communication really happens at about a 2. Many times, people who act out aren’t starting to talk about how they feel until they’re at a 7 or 8.”
At that point, you’re much more likely to spew things in the heat of the moment that you don’t really mean. And when you’re stuck in a pattern where you can’t stop saying or doing things you then regret, Dr. Bobby cautions, “You’ll eventually either damage or irreparably destroy your relationships with the people you love.”
As for why you may be misdirecting your rage toward someone undeserving, such as your significant other, family member, friend, or child, there may be a combination of underlying reasons. Below, experts explain how identifying them is part of breaking the cycle—and offer strategies to help you do that.
Check in with your mental health.
Unaddressed mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or borderline personality disorder (BPD) can play a big role in a cycle of misdirected anger, according to Dr. Bobby. “People will beat themselves up over how they’re treating their partner and not understand that they require treatment,” she says. “This should be ruled out first because it’s important to see what issues self-resolve with the proper care.”
Even if you don’t feel like you’re experiencing obvious symptoms of a mental health disorder (like hopelessness in the case of depression or restlessness from anxiety, for example), or if you don’t quite remember being the jerk your friends said you were acting like last night, listen to those around you too. If someone you trust says you’ve been extra snappish lately, try to hear them, since they may have a clearer picture of your behavior than you do, Sadaf Siddiqi, LCPC, a therapist based in New York City who works with clients on emotional regulation, tells SELF.
“It's not easy for anyone to admit anger issues,” Siddiqi says. “Start by admitting it to yourself, and then admit it to a therapist if you can.” If you don’t have access to a therapist (here are some tips for finding an affordable one), Siddiqi suggests talking to your primary care doctor about your anger first to see if they can help by screening you for depression or anxiety, for example, or referring you to a therapist or psychiatrist.
Learn to recognize your patterns.
Whether you seek professional help or not, both Dr. Bobby and Siddiqi stress that learning what’s setting you off—and what it feels like on a visceral level when you’re just beginning to get worked up—is crucial. “The things that make you angry will make you angry again; it’s rarely a one-time incident,” Siddiqi says. By identifying what provokes your anger and noticing the early signs of an outburst—say, tightness in your chest or a quickening heart rate—you’ll be better equipped to manage your feelings in the future.
Siddiqi offers this example of addressing a known pattern with a strategy: If you know that you tend to bring stress and suppressed anger home from work, asking for 15 minutes of alone time once you get in the door can help you process some of those feelings in a healthy way. Whether you use that time to write in your journal, listen to a chill playlist, or simply take some deep breaths while sitting on your bed to calm your nervous system, it may prevent you from snapping at dinner—and cumulatively improve your anger-digestion skills over time.
Alternatively, try working out or going for a brisk walk. Because anger is so physiological, physical exertion can help you reduce your agitation, Dr. Bobby says, adding that it can be especially helpful if you’re dealing with an underlying mental health condition: Research suggests that exercise can reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, for example.
If lashing out at loved ones is a regular issue for you, Dr. Bobby says cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) may be able to assist you in identifying why your anger barges in when it does. Both of these common therapy models can help you untangle your anger from other emotions and unpack why certain things get you stewing, so you can start developing coping strategies or setting boundaries. Psychology Today’s therapist directory features a search filter that can help you find a CBT- or DBT-trained therapist or look for a mental health professional who specifically mentions those treatments in their bio. Inclusive Therapists is another great place to start, especially if holding one or more marginalized identities makes finding a therapist who “gets” you particularly challenging.
Determine if your angry outbursts are situational.
When you’re dealing with a challenging situation—a health issue, grief, burnout, an awful new boss at work—unexamined emotions around your tough circumstance will find their way to the surface. Unfortunately, they may take the form of a seemingly out-of-nowhere tirade at home, or an uncontrollable urge to give someone the silent treatment over a perceived slight. Siddiqi says psychologists call this “displacement,” and it’s a defense mechanism. “You redirect your anger about something that you can’t control toward another thing that’s way less threatening,” she explains—like your unsuspecting parent or partner.
The good news, according to Dr. Bobby, is that situational rage is the least complicated type of misdirected anger to work on. “The first step is recognizing, I’m not myself right now; I’m going through something difficult that’s making me think and feel in angry ways,” she says. “Instead of following your feelings, it’s much more helpful to say to yourself, I'm not going to get tricked into believing this narrative is true.”
Take this scenario: You’re healing from a surgery and the pain is making you irritable to the extent that it’s clouding the lens you view life through: A slightly messy home looks hopelessly squalid to you. Whether or not you’re partly to blame for said disarray, you’re now furious with your partner for “never” cleaning up. Dr. Bobby recommends asking yourself, “How are my emotions coloring this story?” before you accuse your partner of chronic disrespect, which will likely leave them hurt, confused, and/or defensive.
In other words, rewriting your anger-provoking narrative may create some space between you and the hot feelings that seem to be whispering, “Slam the cabinet doors real loud and just go OFF!” in your ear.
Examine the patterns you learned from your family.
The behavior and beliefs you’ve learned from your family of origin can majorly inform how you handle most things, including anger. “When we’ve watched them either raging or bottling stuff up and then exploding, we unconsciously absorb that as how to be in the world—particularly in relationships,” Dr. Bobby says.
This can be uniquely complicated for those raised within a non-Western family culture, Siddiqi says. “A lot of first-, second-, and third-generation children grew up in families where anger wasn’t really talked about because it was a collectivist culture,” she explains. “It was never about their individual needs, but about what’ll keep the family unit happy.”
Ultimately, Siddiqi says, this can lead to “a lot of cognitive dissonance” and pent-up frustration that people never learned to express directly. “Some clients that I work with will be totally fine with their parents on the surface, but actually be really angry at them about something and then take it out on their partner,” she explains.
Siddiqi works with clients from a variety of cultural backgrounds to help them unlearn family-modeled patterns of destructive behavior through reflection and devising new “scripts,” meaning clearer language that lets them express their true emotions. “You'd be surprised at how many times people tell me, ‘I want to express my anger, but I don’t even know what to say,’” she says. “A lot of people don’t have the emotional education to know the difference between healthy and defensive words, or that a ‘you’ statement versus an ‘I’ statement can have a really big impact on the other person.”
For example, when you’re asking for that alone time after work, Siddiqi recommends saying something like, “When I come home, I need time by myself before I share about my day. I feel overwhelmed when you ask me a lot of questions at once. I’d like to talk in 15 minutes so I can decompress. Does that sound reasonable to you?”
Or, if you feel your blood pressure ticking up and you’re afraid you’re about to say something mean, Siddiqi suggests hitting pause while offering a show of good faith. That might sound like, “I’m noticing myself becoming defensive. Can we restart this conversation? I’ll try to be more mindful of my words this time.” You don’t have to say these lines verbatim, as long as you try to stick to “I feel” framing and steer clear of “you [always do this],” which will probably hurt and/or piss off the other person.
Know that managing misdirected anger takes time and practice.
While in-the-moment strategies like going on a rage run can be a valuable part of your anger toolkit, Dr. Bobby says your ultimate goal should be learning how to manage and communicate your feelings—whether with a therapist or on your own—long before you explode, and practicing those skills continually.
Siddiqi agrees that patience and practice are essential, and emphasizes the importance of focusing on progress versus perfection. We’re all going to encounter rough patches and curveballs in life at some point, she says, so giving ourselves the compassion and space to assess how we react to these stressors is all we can really do for ourselves—and for each other.
No matter who you want to stop taking your anger out on—a significant other, a parent, a child, a friend—learning to handle your feelings in a healthy way is a gift that’ll keep on giving, according to Dr. Bobby: “If you do this work well, you’ll feel so much better, and you’ll strengthen your relationships too.”
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