Uncovering Anger

Uncovering Anger

As we spend time at home, we have an opportunity to focus on, and put into practise certain parenting strategies to effectively address emotional responses. For the purpose of this post, I would like to draw our attention to anger. Anger is often used as a defence emotion, and it becomes essential to then explore what the vulnerable emotion is, triggering the child or individual to put up this defence in the first place. Is the child feeling jealous, lonely, hurt, embarrassed, or frustrated? Opening up the vocabulary of vulnerable emotions can be an important first step to this. It may be obvious what the underlying emotion is, or it may need to be investigated further. This investigation is imperative, as most would respond to anger very differently than they would to emotions such as hurt or fear. If you are responding to the anger in a certain way, your actions may be causing the root emotion (such as hurt) to grow, which may intensify the defence (anger) or increase future outbursts.

During an outburst, identification and validation of the vulnerable emotion separate from the behaviour can move one through their struggle, and quickly de-escalate behaviour. It is important to note that at the height of an outburst, it is not always the time to investigate, as emotion can take over the rational brain, making it more difficult to discuss, identify, and problem-solve. Emotion may need to come down. Circling back and talking about what may have occurred that brought anger on, can build the child’s emotional awareness and problem-solving skills. This can then prevent future outbursts while increasing communication skills and emotional intelligence to address the actual emotion at hand.

Emotion is not wrong, so it is important to validate how a child is feeling even if you disagree with the reasoning of why they are feeling that way. For example, if a child tells you what is wrong by saying: “you love my sister more than me” the goal is to understand what action caused them to think this way, and validate the feeling that came up for them. You can then discuss the circumstance and address the statement. You are challenging and countering the statement, not disqualifying or challenging the emotion they opened up and voiced to you. For example: “It sounds like you’re feeling really hurt. What happened that made a thought like that come in?” Now you are opening up a dialogue to counter or challenge the thought, while allowing them to feel heard. Versus: “that is not true, and is silly to be upset about.” By listening, validating, and even empathizing, you are fostering new skills within the child while strengthening communication and openness within the relationship.  

Written by:

Stacey Boe, M.A., R.C.C.