You Didn’t Cause Their Anger
When my daughter Sydney was in sixth grade, she really cared what her friends thought about her. She would come home and say fretfully, “Lily is mad at me!” Her friend Lily somehow had all the power on the playground. If she didn’t like what another kid was doing, she let them know, and they would feel compelled to stop. Sydney had learned one of the main rules of social engagement: don’t have anyone mad at you.
At our core, we want connection with other people. We think that having someone dislike us disconnects us from others, and this seems dangerous. Our brain believes that when someone is mad at us, we are not worthy of love, connection, or approval. We use approval from others as evidence that we are worthy and lovable. Even if the person mad at us is not someone close to us, it still bothers us. We believe that being approved by and included in our tribe is the only way we can survive.
This is our lower brain’s response, but we have the ability to manage our mind and access our higher brain. This article will examine what is going on when someone is angry with you — where the anger comes from and what is the best way to respond.
What causes someone else to feel mad at you? It is natural to believe that what we did or said caused their anger. But we know from the Model that this is not how emotions work. Our words and actions are the circumstance in their Model. Their thoughts about our words and actions create their feelings of anger.
Our words and actions are the circumstance in their Model.
We are not as powerful as we think we are. We cannot control the emotions of others. This is important to remember. We want to be our best selves and act accordingly, but we do not need to be overly concerned about how others are feeling. They are in charge of their emotions; we are in charge of ours. People’s opinions of us are none of our business.
Here’s an example. Tracy was home from college for winter break. She and her sister were in the kitchen, and she assumed they were alone. She started telling her sister about her frustrations with their mom. She complained that her mom was overbearing and always in her business. Tracy felt that her mom had too many opinions about her life, especially her love life, and she was sick of hearing them.
Unbeknownst to her, Tracy’s mom was in the other room, listening to the whole conversation. If you’re like me, you’re getting nervous just imagining this scenario. Tracy’s mom was hurt and angry that Tracy would be so ungrateful and so rude as to gossip with her sister about her.
Most of us in this situation would definitely believe that our unkind words had created the other person’s negative emotion. That seems logical, and it is what we’re taught as we grew up. So it may come as a shock to understand that Tracy did not produce her mom’s angry feelings.
Believing that Tracy’s words created her mom’s emotions is essentially saying that people don’t have control over their own feelings. If outside forces generate negative emotion, then we are at the mercy of whatever circumstances surround us; whatever other people say or do causes feelings in us that we can’t regulate. This doesn’t make sense and is disempowering.
If outside forces generate negative emotion, then we are at the mercy of whatever circumstances surround us.
If we believe that we are control our own feelings, then we have to believe that others don’t generate them or force us to have certain emotions when they do or say certain things. The corollary to that is we can’t create any feelings in anyone else.
To believe that we can hurt people is to believe we have a lot of power. If this is true, then we have to be careful and attentive in conversations and interactions. We might say something wrong. We might cause them to feel upset. If this worry becomes prominent, we start to experience resentment toward the person and want to avoid them.
But guess what? We can’t produce anger in other people. Their thoughts create their emotions, even if they don’t know or believe that. We didn’t cause their anger, and we don’t need to be overly concerned about it.
We don’t have to worry about hurting other people’s feelings because that isn’t possible! Our brain will tell us that if we believe that, we’ll go around being rude all the time. But it’s the opposite. Do people act rude because they love and accept themselves? No. They act rude because they see things wrong with themselves and their lives, and they take those frustrations out on others. If we look inside and try to be our best selves, without worrying or paying attention to anyone else’s thoughts or feelings or actions, that is where kindness and love will grow and shine.
Similarly, someone expressing anger at us does not affect us until we have opinions about them being mad. Their frustration doesn’t automatically construct emotions inside us. If they were mad and we weren’t around them, we wouldn’t even be bothered. Their anger doesn’t jump out of them and into us. It only bothers us when we think something about it.
What if instead of being bothered by their anger, we simply believed that they could be mad and it’s okay? Knowing we didn’t cause their anger can help us get to this place. This is a crazy concept to our lower brains. The primitive part of our mind will say it is not okay for anyone to be angry. But, when we think about it logically, we realize that it is okay. It’s not that big of a deal. Other people are allowed to feel however they want. We can thank our lower brain for looking out for us and remind it that other people’s emotions are not dangerous for us.
If people choose to be angry, that’s okay. We don’t have to make it mean anything about us. Their emotion says something about them and their beliefs, nothing about us. If we can’t handle that they choose to be angry, then we give them our power.
They may want to be mad; they choose to be angry because their thinking generates that feeling. They’re even supposed to be mad. If they believe their thoughts, then anger seems like a logical reaction. If we had their same ideas, we’d be mad too. We may not agree with their thoughts, but when we ask what emotion that viewpoint would produce, the answer is anger. So, they are supposed to be mad.
If they believe their thoughts, then anger seems like a logical reaction.
What if instead of reacting, we just allowed them to be mad? People can and will do whatever they want. We’ll find peace when we choose to give them permission to be mad at us, to hate us even!
Our initial reaction might be to get defensive and be mad back at them, but if we permit the person to be mad, we don’t have to feel frustrated. We can say to them (out loud or in our minds), “I understand your thoughts are your own, and you are allowed to have them. And if you want to be angry at me, you absolutely can.”
We can have compassion for the angry person–it’s hard being them, always looking for problems; what a sad way to live. That they notice negative things and comment on them says a lot about them and their perspective and nothing about us.
As I mentioned in the article about handling criticism from others, instead of disparaging those who criticize us, we can think, “It’s okay for that person to be wrong about me.” Our mind says it’s dangerous for others to not like us, but it’s not. We’re not for everyone. Another helpful idea is “It’s okay that they’re confused.”
In the criticism article we also considered this response: “That person might be right. I may have that weakness, and I love me anyway.” It’s okay to have shortcomings; we are not expected to be perfect.
If someone chooses to be angry with you, that’s okay. You did not create their anger and you are not responsible for it. As the receiver of the anger, pay attention to your thoughts, separate yourself from them, and try to play with them a little bit to get to a different, calmer place. You don’t have to feel any negative emotion in response if you don’t want to.
Consciously decide whether to take their words and make them mean something or not. You can give them implicit permission to experience whatever emotion they want to, and all the while you can love yourself and be content. It takes practice to have your own back and be okay with other people feeling upset, but if you master that skill, you will be one step closer to creating the life you want.
Try this on: “If you want to be angry with me, you absolutely can.”
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“Disappointment comes in the gap between expectation and reality.”
