As you explore your anger, you might notice that it covers other feelings.

These are vulnerable feelings and often painful. They are the upsetting feelings that make you feel smaller and weaker, and thus in need of the power boost that anger brings.

A Sample of Painful Feelings

In the earlier example of my experience in an isolated office, I felt afraid and helpless underneath my anger. Jim, who was passed over for a promotion, felt betrayed and rejected. Anne, waiting impatiently in her doctor’s office, said that she felt devalued. Steve, chasing another car, said he felt powerless. Ben, who had two heart attacks before being willing to work with his anger, said he felt inadequate and ashamed. Shelly, trying to get her errands done quickly, said she felt overwhelmed. Carolyn, needing a break from caring for her mother, said she felt taken for granted and unfairly treated.

Think of the last time you were mad. What else were you feeling? The list in the following exercise is by no means complete, but it is an indication of how numerous and how painful these underlying emotions can be. Use it to help identify what is usually masked by your anger. As you complete the exercise, notice the feelings most commonly present in your own life.

EXERCISE: A Checklist of Painful Feelings

With a past angering experience in mind, complete the following:

1. Review the partial list of feelings that follows and place a checkmark by those that you either recall feeling repeatedly or that elicit a strong response from you as you read them.

2. Add any feelings that seem to fit for you but are not on this list.

• Abandoned
• Afraid
• Ashamed
• Belittled
• Betrayed
• Blamed
• Controlled
• Criticized
• Disrespected
• Made helpless
• Humiliated
• Hurt
• Ignored
• Impatient
• Inadequate
• Invisible
• Manipulated
• Overpowered
• Overwhelmed
• Rejected
• Shamed
• Slighted
• Unappreciated
• Unfairly treated
• Taken for granted
• Vulnerable

3. Looking at the feelings you’ve checked and rate them in order of their intensity in your life, with 1 being the most prevalent.

Now that you have identified one or more primary feelings underlying your anger, include them in your journal. Then you can explore how these feelings summon the power boost of your anger.

How These Feelings Trigger Anger

Each of the feelings on the checklist can be extremely distressing and can diminish anyone’s sense of personal power. Furthermore, everyone experiences at least some of them some of the time. When experiencing one or more of them makes you feel too vulnerable, too much at the mercy of someone or something else, you’re likely to interpret this experience as wrong or unfair, beyond your power to calmly correct, and more than you can either easily accept or let go—the key factors that trigger anger. With this interpretation, you will probably react automatically with the power boost that anger brings.

The fact is that when we feel strong, secure, and confident, we are usually able to accept the reality of a situation and decide how best to respond to it. We may not like the situation. We may even dislike it intensely and commit to changing it, if that’s at all possible. But we do not need to become angry. We only become angry when our underlying feelings make us so vulnerable that we see the person or situation we’re facing as not only unacceptable but also too powerful to face without the protective power boost that anger provides.

Depending on the level of your sensitivity to your underlying feelings, you may have learned to cover those hurtful emotions with your anger so quickly and automatically that you haven’t yet realized that the feelings are even there. Instead, your attention may immediately focus on the object of your anger rather than on what you are experiencing underneath your power boost. If so, the gift-of-anger process will help you to recognize and understand your own painful emotions. The process will also help you explore what causes them and how to heal them. How can this be possible? The next attribute of anger is part of the answer.

excerpt from The Gift of Anger: Seven Steps to Uncover the Meaning of Anger and Gain Awareness, True Strength, and Peace by Marcia Cannon Ph.D., MFT