– Understanding Anger in Marriage Counseling in Nashville TN

Last Updated on January 26, 2014 by Chris Roberts

LOOKING AT HOW ANGER AFFECTS YOUR MARRIAGE OVER LONG PERIODS OF TIME

Anger is a tricky emotion.  It shows up all the time in marriage therapy.  It is more typically associated with the male in marriages, but it rears its ugly head in females as well.  The difficulty with anger is that it is so obvious, but it also just as cunning and complicated and difficult to unpack and understand.  Most often, anger expresses itself as yelling and cursing and fighting.  But anger can also look like stonewalling and pouting and shutting down.

The two most important questions in marriage counseling in Nashville TN concerning anger are: How did it get here? And: How do we make it go away?  Both are just as important and need similar attention.  If a marital couple simply focuses on making it go away, then the angered party will become bitter and resentful that their anger was never addressed for the value that it could have.  If the marriage just spends countless hours on understanding the anger, then they can get swallowed up in an abyss of endless circles.

A great marital therapist in Nashville, TN will work on the aspects of both categories and keep the focus of marriage counseling on moving forward and changing.  At its core, anger is simply a defense mechanism.  It is a core emotion and therefore needs to be honored for the value that it brings.  However, anger is typically a secondary emotion that occurs after a preliminary emotion has happened, even if the angered party is unaware of the original emotion.  Anger also serves to protect.  Anger is a protective emotion, because it carries all the balley-hoo of Power and Strength.  Anger says, “Don’t mess with me, because I am dangerous and I will hurt you.”  And oftentimes, anger is used to hurt another person.

The complication of anger, especially in a marriage counseling setting, is that usually a marriage partner has felt hurt or disappointed, and in that space they feel powerless.  Whenever we have been hurt, we are implicitly stating that we have made ourselves vulnerable enough to be affected by another person.  In that vulnerable state, if we feel hurt rather than connection, it can get really raw and uncomfortable, i.e. powerless.  In that brief moment of powerless, we can reach out to our marriage partner in true strength by calmly communicating our hurt and asking for reconciliation….or we can reach out to partner in anger.  Anger is typically not calm and not looking for reconciliation.  Anger says, “I want you to pay for the harm you have caused me.”  Almost certainly, those involved in this unhealthy dance of anger aren’t aware of these implication communications I have just described.  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.  In fact, they only true way past anger is to go through and recognize these implication communications.

In marriage counseling with couples who have been entrenched in these patterns of anger for many years, this is a difficult process primarily because these implicit communications have become so buried.  Not only have these implicit communications become buried, but the path to anger has become so automatic and involuntary, it seems impossible that there could be anything valuable within the anger.  The anger is awful and people just want it to be gone.  This is understandable, no doubt.

In reality, if you are looking for marriage therapy in Nashville, Tennessee, it is not going to be a quick and simply process.  It is going to take awhile.  In order for true change to occur within a marriage, a therapist must help couples learn to unpack and reorganize their communication processes.  These current communication processes have become so automatic and fast that it takes time for couples to believe that there was ever a time when this way of relating wasn’t the status quo.  Especially regarding anger, the patterns of anger are basically saying, “You have hurt me too deeply and I don’t trust you with my vulnerability.”   This is a very difficult pattern to break.

If you are searching for marriage therapy in Nashville, TN, then Chris Roberts at Two Trees Counseling Nashville would love to be a resource for you to help you get started and moving in the right direction, either through therapy with Chris or with a referral.