![]() How to know what’s at the bottom of your anger iceberg “Emotions rarely happen in a vacuum,” says Dr. And while the anger iceberg shouldn’t be used to invalidate someone’s rage-y feels, it is a helpful reminder that there might be other feelings worth exploring too. So, yes, anger is a valid and complete response to something awful. “A lot of the time anger is the primary emotional response to experiencing injustice or having your goals blocked,” says Ryan Martin, PhD, an associate dean and professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, and the author of Why We Get Mad. Other times, it’s legitimately the main character. And your anger at all the social injustice you’re seeing on your newsfeed? OK, that might just come from valid feelings of, well, anger.Īnd that’s the tricky part: Sometimes anger is a secondary emotion that masks a primary one like hurt, shame, envy, sadness, or helplessness. Your rage about the flight delay making you late for your friend’s event may stem from feelings of helplessness and frustration. If the tip of the iceberg is your obvious and visible anger, it can be helpful to consider the whole mess of emotions that could be lurking just beneath the surface.įor instance, your anger about your boss calling out your mistake in front of other coworkers may stem from emotions like embarrassment or shame. But there’s a lot more iceberg hidden beneath the water. ![]() Think of an iceberg floating in the ocean. It’s widely attributed to the Gottman Institute, an organization of psychologists and researchers that focuses on couples, family, and interpersonal relationship therapy. ![]() The anger iceberg is an analogy used to explain all the deeper emotions that can contribute to any particular bout of anger. That’s the thinking behind a psychological concept called the anger iceberg. One of the best ways to get your anger under control is to understand what’s behind it. And when your anger is persistent and has nowhere to go, it can lead to some pretty nasty health issues and other stress-related side effects, which is why we don’t want to just let our anger stew and spiral. Of course, all that physical activation doesn’t really help you deal with your typical everyday stressors like Karen from accounting or politicians stripping away your rights. When you get angry, your sympathetic nervous system is activated, bringing on a fight-or-flight response, speeding up your heart rate, and leading to a surge of adrenaline that makes it easier for you to take physical action if needed. It’s a natural human emotion that actually serves an evolutionary purpose to protect us. ![]() It happens.Īnger gets a bad rap but it isn’t always bad. Or maybe your anger was triggered by yet another enraging headline that made you want to hurl your phone across the room. Or when your flight was delayed…and delayed some more…causing you to miss your friend’s rehearsal dinner. Maybe it was when your boss brought up a mistake you made in front of coworkers, and you could feel the metaphorical (or maybe literal) bile rising up inside you. When was the last time you felt angry? Like, big mad?
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