Someone who feels and/or expresses only anger probably has frozen hurt, fear, shame, guilt, or sadness. One way to look at this is that “frozen” feelings are often at the root of depression. Usually, as long as a person sticks with the anger, they are stuck in the depression. When anger is helpfully expressed and begins to resolve, it almost always dissolves into tears and more vulnerable feelings. In fact, anger almost always covers or is accompanied by hurt, sadness, or fear. Even people whose parents used them for their own needs, without concern for their child’s emotional needs, may carry chronic anger that covers the hurt, sadness, and fear. Police officers can have a similar experience, as can people who grow up with angry or sadistic parents who repeatedly abuse them. Coming home with all of this, it’s not hard to understand why a veteran would be depressed, or why they would express it through domestic violence, picking fights, or even just caustic cynicism. It’s probable the anger develops this way in order to protect the person from further abuse and from the painful feelings of sadness, hurt, and fear that were also a part of the traumatic experience.Ĭlassic examples of depression expressed as anger include veterans who come home from combat with the experiences of terror of imminent death, sadness from losing friends who were killed, and systematic emotional training to channel all these feelings into anger, revenge, and warfare. When that happens, people feel angry a great deal of the time, and the anger isn’t just anger anymore-it becomes a way of life. So anger may linger as a symptom of posttraumatic stress or may become incorporated into a person’s personality over time. When someone has been abused or traumatized, they certainly have reason to be angry and often don’t have a chance to express it when the trauma occurs. The other is a protection against feeling something more vulnerable.One is a response to something hurtful or unfair happening to or around the person who feels angry.This too may go undetected because sometimes, only their children see it, and children rarely call a therapist for their mother. Often in women it comes out as irritability, particularly with their children. Women are certainly not immune to experiencing depression as anger. ![]() Self-hate may grow inside as depression festers, and the consequences of anger create more and more to hate. These consequences can be extreme, like jail or chasing a high, but they may also take the form of loneliness and isolation after alienating people. When men are depressed and express it as anger, violence, or addiction, the consequences may further distract from getting the help they need. ![]() I believe this is the main reason women are diagnosed with depression nearly twice as often as men are: many men who are depressed aren’t getting the help they need. So while we associate crying with depression, men may not cry and yet be just as depressed as those who do. Men may also feel more pressure to not feel anything, and so turn to drugs and alcohol when they’re in emotional pain to try to numb themselves. Many men feel a great deal of pressure not to cry or express vulnerability, so when they get depressed, anger can be a more acceptable way to experience the emotional pain they’re feeling. ![]() I believe men and women may express this experience differently. How to Send Appointment Reminders that Workįind a Therapist for Depression Advanced Search Irritability and Anger in Men and Women.Rules and Ethics of Online Therapy for Therapists.Practice Management Software for Therapists.
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