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old anger-in/anger-out theory, which states that letting it all hang out offers protection from the psychological hazards of keeping it all pent up, is simply not true. Feelings of depression, low
This is especially true in our closest relationships, where, if we do not learn to use our anger first to clarify our own thoughts, feelings, priorities, and choices, we can easily get trapped in endless cycles of fighting and blaming that go nowhere. Managing anger
Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self. This book is about having both.
De-selfing means that too much of one’s self (including one’s thoughts, wants, beliefs, and ambitions) is “negotiable” under pressures from the relationship.
There are few things more anxiety-arousing than shifting to a higher level of self-assertion and separateness in an important relationship and maintaining this position despite the countermoves of the other person.
No matter how skilled we become in dealing with our anger, we cannot ensure that another
person will do what we want him or her to or see things our way, nor are we guaranteed that justice will prevail. We are able to move away from ineffective fighting only when we give up the fantasy that we can change or control another person.
First, “letting it all hang out” may not be helpful, because venting anger may protect rather than challenge the old rules and patterns in a relationship. Second, the only person we can change and control is our own self. Third, changing our own self can feel so threatening and difficult that it is often easier to continue an old pattern of silent withdrawal or ineffective fighting and blaming. And, finally, de-selfing is at the heart of our most serious anger problems.
overeats. A woman whose lover becomes cooler when she angrily presses him to express feelings presses on even harder, her problem being not that she is unable to get angry but that she’s doing something with her anger that isn’t working and yet keeps doing it. Even rats in a maze learn to vary their behavior if they keep hitting a dead end. Why in the world, then, do we behave less intelligently than laboratory animals? The answer, by now, may be obvious. Repeating the same old fights protects us from the anxieties we are bound to experience when we make a change. Ineffective fighting allows
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Rather, self-observation is the process of seeing the interaction of ourselves and others, and recognizing that the ways other people behave with us has something to do with the way we behave with them. We cannot make another person be different, but when we do something different ourselves, the old dance can no longer continue as usual.
In the majority of couples, men sit on the bottom of the seesaw when it comes to emotional competence. We all know about the man who can tie good knots on packages and fix things that break, yet fails to notice that his wife is depressed. He may have little emotional relatedness to his own family and lack even one close friend with whom honest self-disclosure takes place. This is the “masculinity” that our society breeds—the male who feels at home in the world of things and abstract ideas but who has little empathic connection to others, little attunement to his own internal world, and little
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The majority underfunction in the realm of emotional competence, and their underfunctioning is closely related to women’s overfunctioning in this area. It is not by accident that the “hysterical,” overemotional female ends up under the same roof as the unemotional, distant male.
Rather, it is simply to say that we don’t have the power to change another person who does not want to change, and our attempts to do so may actually protect him or her from change. This is the paradox of the circular dances in which we all participate.
If, however, our goal is to break a pattern in an important relationship and/or to develop a stronger sense of self that we can bring to all our relationships, it is essential that we learn
to translate our anger into clear, nonblaming statements about our own self.
Our very definitions of “masculinity” and “femininity” are based on the notion that women must function as nonthreatening helpmates and ego builders to men lest men feel castrated and weakened.
that my blaming stance was preventing
me from gaining an understanding of my heated reaction.
Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.
Learning to use our anger effectively requires some letting go—letting go of blaming that other person whom we see as causing our problems and failing to provide for our happiness; letting go of the notion that it is our job to change other people or tell them how they should think, feel, behave. Yet, this does not mean that we passively accept or go along with any behavior. In fact, a “live-and-let-live” attitude can signal a de-selfed position, if we fail to clarify what is
and is not acceptable or desirable to us in a relationship. The main issue is how we clarify our position.
to take her anger seriously—to use it to clarify, first to herself and then to her husband, that she was unable to live with the status quo and go about business as usual.
When we use our anger to make statements about the self, we assume a position of strength, because no one can argue with our own thoughts and feelings.
Too often, anger propels us to take positions that we have not thought through carefully enough or that we are not really ready to take.
Our anger can be a powerful vehicle for personal growth and change if it does nothing more than help us recognize that we are not yet clear about something and that it is our job to keep struggling with it.
Acknowledging our unclarity is, in itself, a significant step.
strive to achieve a lower degree of emotional reactivity and a higher degree of self-clarity.
we do not know about our own family history, we are more likely to repeat past patterns or mindlessly rebel against them, without much clarity about who we really are, how we are similar to and different from other family members, and how we might best proceed in our own life.
just to sit with their feelings and
Our society undervalues the importance of close relationships for men and fosters their emotional isolation and disconnectedness. Women, on the other hand, receive an opposite message that encourages us to be excessively focused on, and fused with, the problems of others, rather than putting our primary “worry energy” into our own problems.
At the same time we are doomed to failure with any self-help venture if we view the problem as existing within ourselves—or within the child or the child’s father, for that matter.
When we learn to stay in our own skin and avoid assuming an overfunctioning or “fix-it” position, children—whether they are four or forty—demonstrate a remarkable capacity to manage their own feelings, find solutions to their problems, and ask for help when they want it.
Triangles are present in all human systems. When anxiety mounts between two people or conflicts begin to surface, a third party will automatically and unconsciously be drawn in.
It is the intensity of our reactions toward another person’s problem that ensures not only the escalation but also the continuation of the problem itself.
the only way a family handles stress is to focus on a “problem child,” the outcome will be a severely troubled child. If the only way a family handles stress is through marital fighting, the outcome will be a severely troubled marriage.
Birth order is an enormously important factor in determining how our parents perceive and label us and how we do likewise with our own children.
confuse our children with ourselves and with other family members. We project onto our children who we are and what we unconsciously wish, fear, and need. This process of projection gains steam from our unfinished business with siblings and parents.
because children are the carriers of whatever has been left unresolved from the generations that went before.
Yet all of us are vulnerable to intense, nonproductive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family—in particular, losses and cutoffs.
The three essential ingredients of extricating oneself from a triangle are: staying calm, staying out, and hanging in.
Staying calm means that Sarah can underreact and take a low-keyed approach when stress hits. Anxiety and intensity are the driving force behind triangles. Staying out means that Sarah leaves Jerry and Julie on their own to manage their relationship. Therefore, no advising, no helping, no criticizing, no blaming, no fixing, no lecturing, no analyzing, and no taking sides in their problems. Hanging in means that Sarah maintains emotional closeness with her son and makes some emotional contact with Julie, as well.
If you are directing your primary emotional energy toward an underfunctioning family member, have you ever wondered where all that worry energy or anger energy would go if that individual was off the map? When Sarah stopped busying herself with her son’s life, she began to worry about her own. Jerry, in turn, began to worry about his.
There is no shortage of advice about what you can do with anger in the short run. Some experts will tell you to get it out of your system as quickly as possible and others offer different advice. In the long run, however, it is not what you do or don’t do with your anger at a particular moment that counts. The important issue is whether, over time, you can use your anger as an incentive to achieve greater self-clarity and discover new ways to navigate old relationships.
Begin to observe your characteristic style of managing anger.
seek emotional distance or physical space when stress is high. • consider themselves to be self-reliant and private persons—more “do-it-yourselfers” than help-seekers. • have difficulty showing their needy, vulnerable, and dependent sides. • receive such labels as “emotionally unavailable,” “withholding,” “unable to deal with feelings” from significant others. • manage anxiety in personal relationships by intensifying work-related projects.
may cut off a relationship entirely when things get intense, rather than hanging in and working it out. • open up most freely when they are not pushed or pursued.
respond to anxiety with emotional intensity and fighting. • have a short fuse. • expend high levels of energy trying to change someone who does not want to change. • engage in repetitive cycles of fighting that relieve tension but perpetuate the old pattern. • hold another person responsible for one’s own feelings and actions. • see others as the sole obstacle to making changes. As
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good or bad, right or wrong. They are simply different ways of managing anxiety. You will have a problem, however, if you are in an extreme position in any one of these categories or if you are unable to observe and change your pattern when it is keeping you angry and stuck.
Observing is a skill that is definitely worth developing before you attempt to perform a daring and courageous act!
you have been emotionally cut off from a family member, it can be an act of courage simply to send a birthday card or holiday greeting. Keep in mind that people—like other growing things—do not hold up well in the long run when severed from their roots. If you are emotionally disconnected from family members, you will be more intense and reactive in other relationships. An emotional cutoff with an important family member generates an underground anxiety that can pop up as anger somewhere else. Be brave and stay in touch.
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