Ask yourself this question: What function is your anger serving in this situation? What is it protecting? You are angry because something is happening that is threatening to you in some way. What is it that’s threatened? Is it your integrity? Your need to be heard and/or understood? Your respect? Your health? Your time?

This one is tricky because we’re used to focusing on the negative aspects of anger and we realize that it also serves this protective function. We humans are vulnerable people, and we all feel hurt and afraid, quite regularly. Threatening things happen and we are afraid, and we get angry. The anger is our protector. So when we’re angry, an important question is, “What is my anger protecting?”

For example, one place where I get angry is when I feel like people aren’t listening to me or accepting me. When people distract the conversation from something I’m saying and is important to me, or when they interrupt me in the middle of a sentence, I feel rejected, and it pisses me off.

So in this case, rather than dismissing my anger as immature or weak, it helps me to understand that the intelligence behind my anger is valid. I feel a vulnerability and a need to be accepted, and when that is ignored I experience rejection and I get angry. (Thanks to all the work I’ve done over the years I do this less and less all the time.)

So look closely at your own situation and ask, “What is the vulnerability or basic need that my anger is protecting?” Write down what you discover.

By Craig Mollins