What are you really feeling?

One thing I often see in sessions is the misrepresentation of emotions. Expressing emotions can be challenging, understanding what you’re actually feeling can be even more difficult. Often times, children and adults will come in due to needing assistance with anger. While one may be expressing anger through their actions our outburst, it generally has a deeper rooted emotion. From jealousy, to sadness, to fear, to worry, there are many other emotions one may be feeling but is showing anger due to it be an “easier” or “more natural” response.

One description I have always loved on this is the representation of an iceberg. As one may know, only about ten percent of the iceberg is shown above the surface. Underneath the surface, however, is the other 90% of the iceberg or the majority of the iceberg. While we only see the small piece above the surface, there is more more underneath. This is the exact same way with our anger. On the outside, others are viewing an anger outburst. Maybe this is yelling, hitting, throwing items, or more. If one saw these actions, they would of course assume there is a large amount of built up anger. When taking time to examine, one has the chance to see the root cause of this or the true emotion at hand.

There are many emotions that we can cover up by showing anger. But why? I often see that the “root” emotion is very vulnerable. Maybe the root emotion is jealousy, feeling as though their older sibling is most loved. Maybe this root emotion is hurt due to the negative words that were said. Or maybe this emotion is fear of rejection and therefore we are going to reject the other. Vulnerability is challenging. One thing I often ask when seeing this arise is “does anger help heal these emotions?”. More often then not, the answer to this is no. Next time we are showing large amounts of anger or maybe we are seeing this expressed in our children, let's take a step back and ask “what could they really be feel?”.