Anger and Depersonalization: Part One

In my marriage counseling Raleigh NC I work with couples who are struggling in relationships and looking for a deeper connection.

Marriage counseling can help you learn how to meet your needs in a way that works for everyone in the family.

One of the major issues in my clients’ marriages is anger. So many of us can relate to anger on so many different levels.

Suppressing Anger

In most cultures, anger, especially for women, is unacceptable. Most women have been taught from early childhood that they must not express anger and be confrontational.  For many girls, expressing anger when they are frustrated and unhappy is a big no-no. We were taught to be good girls, friendly and polite.

So, we learn to internalize our fury and bottle up our verbal and non-verbal expressions of anger.

Women who show anger tend to be perceived as insensitive, moody, or difficult. So, many women suppress anger or turn it inward, resulting in self-harming behaviors, alcohol and substance use, or mental health issues.

However, for men is the opposite. It is more common and expected for a man to get angry and externalize their feelings.

Masculine norms and male stereotypes expect men to keep it in and be tough without sharing their feelings with others.

Research shows that men, when compared to women, more often internalize mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. They then externalize their symptoms through anger, violence, and substance abuse.

Challenging Your Idea of Anger

In today’s society, anger is typically looked down upon. This is because we consider anger a bad emotion, believing that we are not supposed to get angry if we want to fit in the society.

I always encourage my clients in marriage counseling Raleigh NC to look at anger as the invitation to make changes.

Anger is a messenger showing us that there is something that is going on and not working. Our anger may mean that there is something within ourselves that is struggling and needs help.

To cope with this challenge, we either shut it down or externalize it and burst out.

Depersonalizing Anger

In marriage counseling sessions, I encourage my clients to depersonalize anger and remove themselves from the equation.

In other words, practice not to take it personally in the moment when your child or your partner get angry with you. So, try to depersonalize your anger in the moment. Then, outside the moment, you can discuss, make decisions, and react.

If your partner continues to abuse you, you will make decisions whether to stay and make changes or leave. But here, we are talking about the moment of anger.

Learning to depersonalize anger can help get out of the negative pattern that most of us fall into in our relationships.

What we really need is to slow ourselves down and remove ourselves from the equation so we can observe the situation more objectively.

So, for example, if your child gets super angry in front of you and says things like, “I hate you, you are the worst mom ever!” we can look at it and react from the place of love, understanding, and comfort.

So, instead of losing your temper, you would answer something like, “Wow, I can see that you are really struggling and need help right now. You are in pain.”

There is a reason why most challenging children and most difficult behaviors need the most love from us.

It is the same with adult patterns where our anger and outbursts are just signs of our internal struggle. When your partner becomes loud and screams at you, it just shows the depth of their pain and their inability to cope with it.

So, they are doing what they were taught to, and instead of reacting, we can slow ourselves down and be supportive.

Marriage counseling Raleigh NC can help you understand that you have a choice when it comes to handling anger. Instead of following the old, unproductive pattern, you can choose to say things like, “Okay, I see that you are struggling right now. You are in pain, so let me be with your pain right now. I am not going to make it about myself and get defensive. Instead, I am going to make a different choice.”

Summary

Depersonalization is the first step in learning how not to get reactive and shift the pattern in your relationship so that you can actually hear one another. While this may sound like a cliché or super easy, it is actually not easy at all.

Depersonalizing anger takes a lot of practice, compassion, discipline, and self-control. To learn how to remove ourselves from our anger, we need to do a lot of inner work.

This is something I work on with my clients in marriage counseling sessions.

I hope this information was helpful. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment in my Wake Forest or virtual office, do not hesitate to schedule your free of charge 15-min phone consultation by clicking here.