Dear Anger: Thanks For Making Me A Better Man

Everyone gets angry, that’s just life. The real question is, are you blindly reacting to your anger? Or are you using it as a guide for personal improvement?

I, like other men around the world, grew up believing that anger was black and white. I could either stuff it down, or explode when I couldn’t hold it in anymore. If a friend made me angry, I would either distance myself, or marinate in bitterness until I burned a bridge. I came to feel there had to be a better response to my anger.

Through my own mental health journey, I’ve learned by experience that eliminating anger is not the goal. Instead, getting to know anger and using its signs holds the key to growth as a man and as a person.

Investing in “getting to know” your anger has tremendous benefits that can unlock your full potential–whether that’s at home, at work, or with friends.

What is anger and why shouldn’t we ignore it?

We all know that anger is obviously an emotion. But what’s less obvious is that anger is one of the four most fundamental human emotions (along with sadness, fear, and happiness). It’s so fundamental to the human experience, that it becomes intertwined with our other feelings and perceptions. Ignoring it is near impossible.

As most of us have experienced at one point or another, ignoring anger makes it come out in other ways–usually without our planning or permission.

If I ignore my anger at a coworker, I may accidentally say something nasty when there’s pressure on a project. If someone insults me and I stuff down the anger, I may find myself withdrawing from everyone in a depression spiral.

Without taking your anger seriously, there may be unintended consequences down the line.

Why does anger exist in the first place?

To look at it a different way, anger is a feedback signal that can help us draw conclusions and make decisions. Our mind-body is a complex and fully connected system that attempts to adjust itself via feedback signals–anger being one of them.

According to Raja Selvam, Ph.D. and Lori A. Parker, Ph.D., “anger, you might say, is a biological imperative. Sensing anger is the way we know something is wrong…It can be a message that we are being hurt, that our rights are being violated, that our needs or wants are not being adequately met, or simply that something is not right. Sometimes our anger alerts us to the fact that we are not addressing an important emotional issue in our lives, or that too much of our self — our beliefs, values, desires, or ambitions — is being compromised in a relationship.”

Anger is a helpful guide. How can you use it as the tool that it is?

As with other emotions, knowing your anger helps you get a handle on it and use it productively–better than exploding, blindsided by its unchecked effects like damaged relationships and abusive behavior.

There are two main goals when it comes to anger:

1. Go from ignoring, to observing it
2. Go from reacting to calmly responding, so your anger can serve you instead of you serving it

If you tend to ignore your anger, first consider identifying it so that you can calmly respond to it.

Identifying anger instead of ignoring it

For men who want to use their anger productively, but don’t know how to recognize it, I’ve been there. A lot of us were never taught to notice when the signs of anger arise.

How can you identify the signs of anger in the moment? What has worked for me is honing in on the sensations of anger. What does it actually feel like in your body?

Examples of how anger looks and feels for men

• Tingling sensations, especially in your hands and forearms
• Clenched abs, jaw, hands, or feet
• Upset stomach
• Feeling hot or even breaking into a sweat
• A sensation of pressure moving up from your chest through your head
• Racing thoughts or noticing your thoughts have disappeared altogether
• Wanting to cry (even if you don’t often do so)

Aim to notice the warning signs before anger has fully set in

• Suddenly feeling like you don’t like the person you’re talking to
• Noticing pet peeves that you can usually ignore
• Getting distracted by the sensation of your clothes, seatbelt, things in your pocket
• Wishing that someone talking to you would just leave you alone
• Not wanting to do things that you’re responsible for
• Literal or figurative “tunnel vision”
• Realizing that your breathing is restricted or shallow

And, keep an eye out for the signs of repressed anger

Repressed anger can cause a numbing reaction, keeping you from exploding in aggression, but also keeping you from feeling positive emotions fully.

“When a person suppresses anger, they may find many of their other desirable feelings get numbed out too. They find it difficult to get excited or passionate; they may be disconnected from their own needs and desires. They may even find it hard to feel or express affection for others.” — Eggshell Therapy

Know what reacting to anger looks like, so you can stop yourself in the moment

Whether you notice your anger or not, many of us, men, have a habit of reacting when we feel angry.

Reacting to anger (instead of calmly responding) often looks like lashing out or even abusing others. That’s understandable if you only ever learned to react to or ignore anger (which was the case for me in my upbringing).

It’s not your fault if you’re only familiar with unhelpful or harmful responses to anger. However, if that’s the case, your first step is to stop reacting in the moment.

Here are some potential reactions to anger, which I’ve noticed in both myself and others at times. Next time you get angry, make sure you’re not:

Giving the silent treatment without explanation

It’s ok to need a break and some space. On the other hand, it’s not ok to use the silent treatment as punishment.

Slamming doors and physically expressing anger

Physical expressions of anger can help us calm down, but should only be used when we’re away from others–and in a way that doesn’t cause lasting damage. Even if you’re not directly threatening the other person, it doesn’t feel safe to be around someone who is physically explosive.

Invading others’ privacy due to your angry suspicions

Checking their text messages, tracking their location, or opening mail addressed to them. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Shaming others because they made you feel angry

If you need to discuss an event that made you angry, speak in terms of *your* emotions beneath your anger (e.g. feeling scared, feeling overwhelmed by responsibility, feeling unliked or unwanted)

To stop yourself from reacting to anger, take a break

If you’re on the verge of reacting in any of the above ways, stop yourself by immediately taking a break.

Was it your partner bugging you about a to-do list item? Share that you’re feeling overwhelmed by this demand at the moment. You won’t be productive or pleasant while angry, so you need to take 15 minutes of solitude or distraction before you tackle the task at hand.

Did someone say something irritating at work? Maybe they “earned” your anger, but angrily blowing up won’t do either of you much good. Excuse yourself for a restroom break, or buy yourself some time to cool off by pointing to a must-do assignment. Once you’re more calm, you can point out the issue from a more productive headspace.

How to let your anger serve you once you’ve noticed it

The first step is to start noticing anger. The second step is to stop yourself from impulsive reactions to anger. But once you’ve noticed your anger and paused to cool down, how can you move forward to use your anger as a guide?

Consider the context

First, take a moment to consider what happened before you felt this way. Someone might have done something to really justify your anger, but it’s also important to consider your personal context.

What kind of mood did you wake up in? Did you have a rough commute? Maybe something was already ticking you off in the background?

Once you’ve identified what came before your anger, you can use that information to adjust your course. Or, take a break and write yourself a note about what made you angry, to revisit later. Either way, you’ll be using your anger as a guide for reflection. Personal reflection, in turn, is a powerful driver of growth.

Avoid the anger-control connection

We, men, often learn by example that anger means aggression or confrontation. When you’re angry, you want to change the situation you’re in. That’s a productive impulse. But how you go about changing the situation is important.

You might want to make others or your environment change in order to fix your anger. But that will never work as well as you hope, and can easily veer into harming others.

You can’t control others, even if they’re “in the wrong.” So you’ll be more productive by taking action on your side of the equation.

Focus on what you can do

A lot of the time, we get a bad rap for being angry, when our anger is a normal response to circumstances.

Say your wife has anxious attachment and gets possessive when you try to enjoy moments of solitude. Her anxiety creates anger in her, which she then lets out on you. Your instinct may be to get angry in response–after all, it’s not fair that you can’t have a little alone time. However, meeting anger with anger will never solve the problem. What will?

1. Logically describing what’s going on.

Offer the benefit of the doubt. Acknowledge the other person’s intent (usually trying to get some need met), but call attention to the difference between their intent and their actual impact.

2. Removing yourself from the situation (temporarily) where possible.

As mentioned above, it’s hard to shut off anger once it starts. While you’re angry, your rational, logical capacity is diminished. So if you can, temporarily seek solitude until the storm blows over.

3. Setting boundaries.

Remember that setting boundaries is about what you’re willing to accept from others. Boundaries are not about forcing others to change. Instead, the goal is to let them know how your behavior will change if theirs doesn’t.

4. Venting without real world consequences.

When you’re angry, your thoughts go a mile a minute, and sometimes they go into territory you’d prefer to avoid. Personal attacks, bitter assessments of those we love, etc. If your mind is going to those places, consider letting it out in a way that won’t come back to bite you.

Consider venting in an anonymous peer support chatroom. Studies have shown that online peer support can help men feel comfortable disclosing vulnerability, and can help men “validate and normalize the full spectrum of their emotions and sometimes re-frame a sense of hopelessness.”

If other men have tried and found it helpful, it can’t hurt to explore your options.

Preventing uncontrollable anger

If you’ve been in the habit of stuffing down your emotions like anger, they may come out so strongly that they’re uncontrollable. If that’s the case, here are some considerations for making your anger more controllable.

Giving your emotions airtime

For a lot of men, a big source of anger is unresolved past emotion. We aren’t socialized to talk about emotions in the same way as women, so our feelings may get buried and then come out sideways.

I want to encourage other men to go back and try to process emotions from the past, before those emotions start to dictate the present. This way, a lot of the signs of anger and resulting harm can be prevented.

Think about these ways unresolved emotion can influence your current anger:

• Have you felt deprived of respect, resources, or even love in the past?
• Did you feel insulted by something someone said?
• What are some of your most difficult memories, and how might they trigger your anger in the present?
• Have you felt overburdened or under-appreciated?
• Was there lack of fairness in your past?
• How many instances of bullying did you stuff down or bury?
• Who made you feel weak, worthless, or powerless?
• Which experiences left you feeling threatened or fearful?

How might these feelings cause or contribute to your signs of anger in the present?

When anger is inflamed by physical health

Discussions of anger fall flat without recognizing the impact of the physical body on our emotions. Pain, for instance, is a huge cause of anger in men. When you feel pain, you also usually feel muscle tension and a sense of threat. These feelings contribute to the experience of anger.

Often, when we men are in pain, we express it as anger. Making matters worse? Anger can also contribute to pain, creating a runaway feedback loop between pain and anger. According to a citation of pain management doctor Germaine Rowe, MD, anger “puts the body into a state of stress, which causes the release of substances such as adrenaline, cortisol, and C reactive protein, and these chemical mediators cause a chain of events that end up worsening the pain.”

How can you strategize to break out of the pain-anger cycle?

Find ways to reduce stress in the body. This can include exercising, avoiding nutrient deficiencies, and reaching out about resolving your pain–chronic or acute.

When exercising, know that both cardio and strength training can help create calming chemicals and clear pain and anger-causing substances from the bloodstream.

We, men, are often told to “focus on our macros” and get enough protein. However, a lack of other nutrients such as magnesium and B vitamins can cause alterations to how your body processes stress, pain, and threat.

Another physical habit that can inflame anger? Ignoring pain. Feelings of discomfort are signals to be dealt with. It’s not “weak” to acknowledge your pain, and in fact, seeking solutions can be seen as an act of strength. You’re taking care of business, so that you can be a better version of yourself.

How does testosterone affect anger?

I personally never paid attention to my testosterone levels and always associated the hormone with toxicity. I always thought the less of it I have the better.

Especially going through hair loss struggles, I came to believe that testosterone made things worse (one byproduct of testosterone, DHT, is known to contribute to male-pattern baldness). I just considered it a bad hormone that wouldn’t serve me in my goals–especially not in my goal of minimizing anger.

Turns out, I was wrong. And I can’t be the only one who has had such a stigmatized attitude toward testosterone.

Testosterone’s effect on stress and anger is more complicated (and potentially helpful) than we tend to think. Testosterone doesn’t always make you more stressed and reactive. In fact, according to research done in Europe, “The effects of testosterone in stress depend on the social context.”

In response to physical pain, testosterone can increase blood pressure and thus, anger. However, in situations of social stress (aka situations that can cause anger), testosterone actually lowers blood pressure, moderates stress responses and, in the end, may make one’s anger less explosive.

The study’s authors explain testosterone’s role eloquently: “Testosterone’s ability to flexibly influence the response to stressors may be an important mechanism through which the hormone promotes adaptive behavior. Our results are also in line with research showing that testosterone decreases social anxiety and suggests it may help to modulate the effects of stress in socially challenging situations.”

Another team of researchers published in The International Journal on the Biology of Stress found that testosterone can make men more responsive to “nudges”–meaning that testosterone may enhance cooperation, which you could call the antithesis of anger. This team also cites previous “work which has argued that those likely high in testosterone are more likely to give their partners romantic gifts (Nepomuceno et al., 2016), and work which has shown increases in testosterone enhances collaboration and empathy within a team and competitiveness toward the opposition (Cook & Crewther, 2014; Crewther et al., 2016).”

From my experience, this research bears truth. After learning about testosterone’s bad rap, supplementing my testosterone levels has left me feeling more at peace than I can remember. I haven’t gotten into a single fight or tense argument since. (Not exaggerating.)

Since getting my testosterone levels closer to normal, I feel like I have more internal bandwidth to deal with conflict peacefully. I can’t say for sure that this can help every man’s anger, but based on my experience, it’s certainly worth considering.

To take away…

“A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance — unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” — Marcus Aurelius

Treat your anger like your teacher, let it tell you what you need to do to build a better version of yourself. Observe yourself in anger and turn your anger into a meditation device. When you calmly observe your anger and use it to take healthy action, you reveal the path to a better version of yourself. This better version of yourself uses the signs of anger to grow toward a calmer, stronger mindset.

That said, there are times when you will struggle to get a handle on anger or the emotions beneath it. For moments like those, consider sharing the burden with someone else who understands your situation. Turn to friends, or to anonymous peers online to keep things private. There’s no prize for going it alone.