Roots of Anger

This blog concentrates on boys growing up and how they are taught to deal with emotions and why they can have issues/problems with anger. John Hawes, (https://www.jameshawes.org) who has worked with men for a long time and run AWARE Workshops , identifies the following 4 areas, as the root of men’s anger.

Family

Like all things we learn how to deal with anger when we are children growing up in our families. We see how our parents and others in the family deal with things and we copy them. We do this unconsciously (modelling).  If nobody talks about how they feel then we don’t learn any “feelings” vocabulary and when we get older we find it very hard to express ourselves because we do not have the words. On the other hand, if your parents flew off the handle and started shouting and screaming when they were angry then you learnt that this is the way to react.  Have a think back, how did your family show anger?

If children feel secure in their attachment with their parents then trust and love will devop naturally. However, if the attachment is more hit and miss, e.g. a father being away for a long time and then back and forth with no real pattern then children will grow up with issues about trust. The child does not feel secure because he never knows when his father will be there. When a boy grows up this can become an issue in a relationship. He may not trust his girlfriend when they go out. He may have control issues and want to know where they have been etc. This will cause problems in the relationship and it’s likely the man will get angry with his girlfriend.

When children are abused they feel shame and feel it is their fault and feel too ashamed to tell anybody. They come to believe it is “all their fault” anyway. Any anger about the situation is stuffed deep, deep down inside never to come out.

“The 3 most destructive words every man receives when he’s a boy is when he is told to “be a man”.”  Joe Ehrman

Peers

“Proving your “manhood” is linked to the “man rules” which has been reinforced by their real man discourse. Being biologically male is not enough to be a man you have to fulfil a list of conditions. At the root of the “real man” discourse is the fear that it is not enough to be biologically male you have to prove which gender you belong to.” (James Hawes – The Secret Lives of Men)

For boys/men there is a great pressure to fit in, to be a man. Men learn early on in life that they have to be masculine. They have to act like a man and although they may not think this consciously they will have imbibed it from the society in which they live in and they then feel they have to live up to these expectations and be a “proper man”.

They will pick up subliminal messages that to be a man is to be strong, hard and not to show any vulnerability or softness. A boy cannot show or be associated with anything that could associate them with being weak or feminine. For example, if a boy falls over in the playground and starts to cry the other boys will call out “sissy”, “cry-baby” or “stop being a girl”. Boys are learning at a very early age not to show any emotion.

So when boys go to school (more in secondary school) there will be some form of bullying and this is when they are trying to find their place in the “pecking order”.  Who is the “top dog” or “hardest” kid in the school? This leads to aggressive behaviour and boys fighting. Boys/men constantly have to assess in their head their status within any hierarchy – family, work, sport group.

Societal Rules

Religious rules/beliefs can tell us that it is not good to get angry but anger is a good thing and needs to be expressed appropriately.

There are societal rules that we must all keep but it seems that men are more aggressive and take out their anger on others – fights in pubs; partners/wives; they lash out – property can be broken. So they end up breaking more of societal rules than women.

As a child grows up there are certain societal rules that pervade a household, e.g. boys should play with cars and build things with Lego whereas girls should play with dolls. Society even influences what colour you should dress your child in – blue for boys, pink for girls. (Although in the Victorian age it was the other way round!)

It even influences how we speak to a baby. We may say that a boy is “sturdy”, “strong” or “a little fighter” whereas we may say a girl is “beautiful”, “so lovely” or “cute.” We are already conditioning the baby to hold masculine traits even while he is only a baby. He is being conditioned from a very early age.

Gender

When children are growing up they are conditioned to “fit” in to their gender roles so boys learn not to show their emotions because this is seen as being feminine. They squash down their emotions and never learn to explore or express them because to do so would not be “manly”. Often their fathers will not be able to say how they are feeling and so boys don’t either.

From an early age boys are introduced to language and media which will give them strong hints as to what it means to be a boy. The gaming industry, films, magazines and toys have generated a powerful message for boys; these include what a boy should enjoy and what they should do to be a “proper” boy. There is even chocolate specific to men – remember the “Yorkie” advert. A hunk of a man driving a bit lorry and the slogan was “Not for girls.”

“Boys will be boys” – they are expected to be aggressive and play roughly. It is the way boys are.

For men to feel safe in their manhood they need to feel big in any way they can. This will help them to feel more secure in their masculinity.  So men often want everything big,  a big car, a big house, a big bank balance, a big penis. Again it is down to their “man-ness”. The bigger the better! Anything to do with smallness in any context for men is usually perceived as a negative and possibly a shaming thing.

In this blog I have tried to explain the reasons why men find it hard to express any other emotion than anger. Their anger may have its roots in shame. Shame at not being a “good enough man;” not being able to sustain the man rules they have conditioned with as they have grown up. That family, teacher, peers, society (including media) and religion have “told” men how they must behave and act.

Anger can be seen as a way of protecting ourselves and for self-compassion. In effect our first reaction to our inner anguish may be to focus our attention on the person or situation that we perceive as being responsible for our suffering. Through directing our attention outward, we distract ourselves from feeling the real pain within us. The way we think and feel can lower our threshold for feeling threatened and this leave us vulnerable to increased anger arousal.

Boys have learnt certain ways of thinking about themselves which are often negative and about making sure they are never shamed. They are battling inside with a mixture of emotions and this turmoil is directed outward when they feel threatened. The root of men’s anger then is because:-

1. It is the only emotion they know;
2. They don’t have the emotional vocabulary to express other feelings;
3. They are not expected to show any sign of weakness – being vulnerable is not allowed;
4. They have never been helped to explore/express their other emotions and what they are really feeling.

Is it no wonder then that men struggle with controlling their anger when there is a lifetime of emotions stuffed down inside them?

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