Anger at Your Children: Who Has the Power? by Steven Stosny

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Anger at Your Children: Who Has the Power?
by Steven Stosny

Every parent since the beginning of time has been painfully aware that children can do a great many things to irritate, frustrate, and otherwise turn the pleasant feelings of their caretakers into moods from hell. Those same creatures who look like little darlings when they sleep can, without a moment’s notice, produce headaches, jangled nerves, strained muscles, aching bones, and overloaded emotional circuits.

But there’s one thing that even the most exuberant or obstinate of children cannot do. They can’t make us angry. They cannot force us to give up internal regulation of our emotional experience. To understand this scientific fact that seems to fly in the face of common sense, consider the psychobiological function of anger.

Why Anger is a Problem in Families
An automatic response triggered whenever we feel threatened, anger is the most powerful of all emotional experience. The only emotion that activates every muscle group and organ of the body, anger exists to mobilize the instinctual fight or flight response meant to protect us from predators. Of course, our children are not predators. For the vast majority of problems in family life, anger constitutes overkill and under-think. Applying this survival-level fight or flight response to everyday problems of family living is like using a rock to turn off a lamp or a tank to repair a computer.

Is anyone really stupid enough to turn off a lamp with a rock? When angry, everybody is that stupid. The problem has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with how hurt we are. Anger is always a reaction to hurt. It can be physical pain, which is why, when you bang your thumb with a hammer while trying to hang a picture, you don’t pray.

Far more often, though, anger is a reaction to psychological hurt or threat of it, in the form of a diminished sense of self. Of course, vulnerability to psychological hurt depends entirely on how you feel about yourself. When your sense of self is weak or disorganized, anything can make you irritable or angry. When it’s solid and well-integrated, the insults and frustrations of life just roll off your back.

For instance, if you’ve had a bad day, if you’re feeling guilty, God forbid, a little bit like a failure, or just disregarded, devalued, or irritable, you might come home to find your kid’s shoes in the middle of the floor and respond with:

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Posted on: February 22,2006

Email: stosny@compassionpower.com
Website: compassionpower.com