The Anger Iceberg: Anxiety-Driven Anger and Looking Underneath the Surface
Therapy for Teenagers with Anxiety and Anxiety-Driven Anger in St. Louis, MO
If you’ve spent any time at all on the Compassionate Counseling STL website, specialty pages, or on my book site, you already know - anger can often mask other emotions, like anxiety.
There’s a whole overlap between stress, anxiety, and anger - and if we don’t have the full picture, we can’t really treat the problem.
Anxiety Counseling and Anxiety-Driven Anger
One of our favorite areas to work on at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis is identifying and treating anxiety-driven anger. Anxiety-Driven Anger is anger that’s due to an underlying anxiety disorder. The way that you’re feeling on the inside (stressed, tense, anxious) looks a little different on the outside than what people normally expect to see with anxiety (instead of being nervous or shy or running away, you’re yelling or being rude or trying to punch something).
The internal anxiety mechanisms are totally the same for people with “expected” anxiety and people with anxiety-driven anger.
When your anxiety has overloaded you, your brain puts you in survival mode. Your heart is pounding, your muscles are tense, your pupils are dilated, and you’re primed for a Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn reaction.
Image Credit: Priscilla Du Preez
“Typical” Anxiety and Anxiety-Driven Anger:
If you have a “typical” anxiety response, you’re going to want to run away from the scary event, or freeze and look really shy and quiet. Outside observers don’t always notice that people pleasers are experiencing anxiety, too (that fawn reaction). And they DEFINITELY tend to miss that it’s really anxiety when that FIGHT reaction comes out.
I want to emphasize that “typical” is just another word for “expected,” but it’s not a stand in for right, correct, or even preferred. There’s no such thing as a right or wrong reaction to anxiety. Your internal experience and external reaction are your own. They’re valid! But it’s important to explore why you may not have 100% realized that your angry overreactions are actually due to anxiety.
Looking underneath the surface of your anger response:
What we’re showing people on the outside - the punching, the yelling, the fawning, the ‘disrespectful tone,’ etc. - is only the tip of the iceberg.
As you may already know, icebergs are massive. They’re huge! And we only see the top 10%. 90% of an iceberg is hidden underneath the water, way down deep in the murky depths.
We don’t always want to dive down into those cold waters. You, honestly, might not want to think about what’s really going on when you have an angry reaction (or overreaction). Anger can feel like a really protective mechanism. It may feel more comfortable to tell yourself that you’re just angry, or that so and so deserved your ire. And you may be right. But what if you’re not reallllllyyyyy angry? What if you’re ignoring the bigger picture to your detriment?
This is where The Anger Iceberg comes in.
Even if it feels a little scary, I want you to think about what’s really happening underneath the surface. Maybe think about the last time you had a big reaction to something, even a reaction that got you in to trouble. What were you doing on the outside that other people could observe? And what was really going on for you on the inside?
The internal stuff, underneath the surface of the water, could both be what you’re experiencing in the moment (anxiety, sadness, stress), and past, historical things you’ve had to go through (trauma, grief and loss, parents with anger management issues, etc.)
We’re all a product of our upbringing and our environment, so keep both of those factors in play.
The Anger Iceberg and Anxiety-Driven Anger
Once you’ve completed your anger iceberg, you want to ask yourself a few follow up questions. Do you like how you respond on the outside? Are you surprised by what’s coming up for you on the inside? Does any of it feel really vulnerable or scary or overwhelming (in which case, it might be a good idea to talk with an anxiety therapist?)
If you’re someone who has anxiety-driven anger, you might notice that you have a lot of internal and external stress happening on your iceberg. Maybe some thoughts about how you need to be perfect. Or potentially some overwhelming fears about what could go wrong in the future.
Remember, knowledge is power. Just KNOWING that your external response isn’t really just anger can be helpful. From here, you can get help that’s a little more targeted than just general anger management strategies. And you can start to shift your responses, so that you’re not getting so overwhelmed, and you’re not looking so angry all the time.
Does this sound a lot like you?
Check out Kelsey’s self-help book for teens with anxiety-driven anger, filled with concrete strategies for taming the anxiety that gets you in trouble.
Kelsey Torgerson Dunn is the author of When Anxiety Makes You Angry: CBT Anger Management Skills for Teens With Anxiety-Driven Anger.
Compassionate Counseling St. Louis treats kids, teens, and college students with anxiety and anger management issues. You can book a free consultation on our website to learn more.
