The Root Causes Of Anger

The root causes of anger are:

• Dysfunctional childhood programming
• Childhood emotional invalidation
• Low self-esteem
• Strong beliefs challenged by outsiders
• Betrayal
• Lack of power
• Fear
• Desire for control

The root causes of anger depend upon what you are experiencing.  There are 12 types of anger each of which we’ll describe in this article. I’ll also introduce you to the 3 simple steps to calm an angry person in seconds. If you want to skip to the bottom of this article, feel free to do so. If you want to master the skill of listening anger into existence, enroll in our bundled courses here.

Anger Avoidance

Anger avoidance occurs when people are angry, but repress it. They go to extremes to be “nice” all the time. The root cause lies in childhood programming that teaches that being angry is bad, evil, and wrong. The problem with anger avoidance is that the stress causing the anger in the first place is not getting resolved. This will cause severe health problems as the cortisol levels begin to break down the immune system and digestive efficiency.

The other problem with anger avoidance is that built-up resentment may result in a destructive massive explosion of anger.

Passive-Aggressive Anger

The next anger is passive-aggressive anger, which occurs when the passive-aggressive person says “yes” and does “no.”

The root cause of this anger is lack of power. The passive-aggressive can’t express anger appropriately, fearing punishment or rejection.  You see passive-aggressive anger in relationships and in workplace conflicts. They display their anger with a smiley face and backstab in the background.

Betrayal Anger

The third kind of anger is betrayal anger. The root cause of betrayal anger occurs when someone has breached trust with you and injures you. Betrayal anger is deep and intense because you feel violated; your identity has been threatened; the rock that you thought you stood on has turned out to be sand.

Imagine you are unfairly accused of betrayal by someone who is very angry. Your immediate response may be to defend, justify, excuse, explain, or problem-solve. Engaging in one of these common strategies just makes things worse because the person who is accusing you of betrayal anger doesn’t want the problem fixed; they want to be heard and validated.

Disrespect Anger

The fourth type of anger is disrespect anger. The root cause of this anger occurs when somebody has disrespected you.

Maybe they haven’t listened to you; maybe they have ignored you; maybe they have called you names, insulted you, or diminished you in some way. Disrespect and anger can also be deep-seated and intense.

The secret to dealing with disrespect anger, whether you’re experiencing it yourself or are accused of disrespect, is to focus on the emotion. For example, if you felt that anger arise, you would say something yourself like “I feel angry and disrespected.”

You may not respect yourself if you find that you’re being frequently disrespected. You can only be respected by others to the degree you respect yourself.

Paranoid Anger

The fifth anger is paranoid anger, the feeling that everyone is out to get you. It arises from a fear of harm by others.

The solution to dealing with paranoid anger is not to deny it, such as,  “Oh, you’re crazy. What are you thinking about?  Why are you accusing me of this? Why do you think I’m going to harm you,” and so forth.  These are the typical responses that escalate the problem even further.

Sudden Anger

The sixth anger is sudden anger, which occurs in highly reactive, impulsive people.

This anger is self-protective arising from childhood that, when triggered, causes you to explode at people suddenly and without provocation. What makes sudden anger scary is that you never really know when it’s going to happen.

If you live with someone who has a sudden anger trigger,  you feel like you are walking on broken glass. You are tiptoeing around a spouse, partner, or parent because you never know when they’re going to go off.

When somebody reacts and explodes, don’t take personal responsibility for their anger. Don’t try to problem-solve or fix things. The only response is to listen to them into existence. We’ll get that in a moment.

Shame Anger

The seventh anger is shame anger.

Shame anger occurs when we feel embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed, or embarrassed. Like most other anger, shame anger originates in childhood. Shame is painful so people will become angry rather than admit to being shamed.  12 Powerful Benefits of Emotional Awareness

Deliberate Anger

The eighth anger is deliberate anger. Deliberate anger is also called instrumental anger because it is used to manipulate, scare, intimidate, and coerce others to do their bidding.

There are manipulative and exploitative people who use deliberate anger as a way of conveying information, such as, ” I’m tough. Don’t cross this line.” “Do what I say or else!”

With deliberate anger, the solution is not to justify defend, appease, rationalize, or defend. The key is to acknowledge the anger and reflect back the anger with these simple words: “You’re really angry. You are disrespected. You feel like you haven’t been heard.”

Addictive Anger

The ninth anger is addictive anger. For some people, anger is pleasurable because it provides a feeling of power and superiority. However, it’s a fleeting sense of power and comes with a heck of a hangover. Nevertheless, there are people who are addicted to anger because they feel good within themselves. It’s their way of dealing with an intractable problem that they otherwise do not have the capacity to solve.

Habitual Anger

The tenth anger is habitual anger. These are people who have gotten into the habit of being grumpy and mad all the time. They’re probably not even aware that they’re grumpy and mad.  Of course, people start to avoid them because they’re unpleasant to be around, and that just makes them even grumpier. They become more lonely and feel abandoned which just feeds their anger.  Why Am I So Angry

You can help people break out of habitual anger by acknowledging it. “You’re angry. You’re really frustrated. Life didn’t turn out the way that you thought it should.”,

This kind of reflection will help people who have habitual anger move into a place of calm. Once they start experiencing that calm state again, their anger will tend to go away.

Moral Anger

The eleventh anger is moral anger caused by moral indignation, violations of deep-seated values, violations of our sense of right or wrong, or attacks on important personal identities.

People hold on to strong beliefs, regardless of their actual validity. When those beliefs are challenged, they become righteously indignant. The indignation can pull them back into other kinds of anger, like addictive anger, because it feels good to be outraged.

The experience is something like, “I feel like I’m powerful because I’m angry. I’m standing 10 feet tall because I’m angry. I’m justified because they can’t get away with it. They’re bad people for what they do.”

To address moral anger, reflect the emotions. “You’re angry. You feel like there’s been an injustice. You are really pissed off, that somebody is challenging your beliefs. You feel like there’s been a wrong that can’t be righted.” By reflecting the emotions underneath the anger, you can calm a morally indignant person.

Hate Anger

The lastanger is, of course, the most intense kind of anger, which is hatred. The root cause of hatred is usually betrayal and is intense; it’s deep and can’t be mitigated.

Hatred is difficult to deal with because it’s so embedded and so deep. People with this anger are using hatred as a way of dealing with the pain of betrayal or the outrageousness of a moral violation.

How To Calm An Angry Person In Seconds

There are three steps to claiming these different types of anger

Ignore The Words

First,  ignore the words.

If you ignore the words you’re not likely to get triggered. You’re going to free up bandwidth that will allow you to do the next two steps. Learning how to ignore the words takes some practice and coaching because we’re conditioned to listen to words and ignore feelings.

Studies have shown that the verbal content of human communication is less than seven percent of the overall information being conveyed by one person to another.

93% of all communication is non-verbal, so we can afford to ignore the words for a few seconds.

Read The Emotions

The second step is to read the emotions.

You might think to yourself, “Oh, I could never read the emotions of anybody. I’m really horrible at that. I don’t even know what I’m feeling.” Well, the truth is that we have an innate ability to read and understand the emotions of other people. Long before there was language, humans had to communicate with each other non-verbally. Human brains evolved to understand the emotions and motivations of others quickly and efficiently.

When humans met strangers, they had to decide whether those people were friends or foes. If they misread the emotions, they were cleaned out of the gene pool. As a result of this evolutionary pressure, we are sensitive to reading the emotions of other people.

The problem is, we’ve, never been trained how to use this innate capability. For thousands of years, we’ve been taught that emotions are bad, emotions are evil, and we should ignore our emotions and try to be rational. However, our innate ability to read emotions is still within us ready to be used.

Reflect The Emotions With A “You” Statement

The third step – and this is also counter-intuitive – is to reflect the emotions of the angry person with a simple “you” statement.

“You’re angry. You’re pissed off. You’re anxious. You’re scared. You feel disrespected. You feel like you’ve been treated unjustly.”

In a few moments, the angry person will say “Yeah!” or “Exactly!” while nodding, sighing, and dropping shoulders in relaxation. You have de-escalated the anger in less than 90 seconds.