The Iceberg: What Else Is Underneath Your Anger? From St. Louis Counselor and Author Kelsey Torgerson Dunn
This week, I’m doing something different!
I’m sharing Chapter 1 from my book, When Anxiety Makes You Angry. I loved writing this book, and kept in mind my favorite kinds of teens to work with here at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis - those teens that seem so angry and disrespectful on the outside, but on the inside, they’re feeling stressed and anxious and just ready to burst.
Read below to access Chapter 1 - and you can also learn more about my book over here - and buy it from my local bookstore over here!
When it comes to emotions, what you see isn’t always what you get.
We can look one way on the outside and be experiencing something totally different on the inside.
If you consistently get labeled as angry, this probably sounds pretty familiar to you. Teachers, parents, and even other kids at school might avoid you, or say you have a temper. You might get in to trouble for things that feel small to you, and even get blamed for things that you don’t think are your fault. This is frustrating, especially when it feels undeserved. While others might call you angry, aggressive, or mean, you probably haven’t always identified that way. “I’m not angry,” you think to yourself. “I’m just ____.”
In Chapter 1, we want to fill in the blank. We want to dig into what else is going on, underneath what people have labeled as your anger problem. The first step to solving a problem is understanding it, and even if you’re not 100% sure that you have an anger problem, you’re probably pretty tired of people telling you that you do. Wouldn't it be nice to move past that and have people see you for who you really were? Let’s figure out what’s going on so that you know what to do about it; so that you can move forward, and everyone else can, too.
Inside/Outside Anger (and Other Stuff)
In my many years as a therapist, I’ve never worked with a teen who’s just angry. There’s usually something else going on, right underneath the surface. Getting labeled as angry comes down to how you express these other emotions and stressors. People might be reading into your external expressions of your internal emotions. You might have been thinking about the bad grade you just got on your test, and your teacher tells you to keep your temper in check. Or you’re just focusing on your coach, and your teammate later asks why you seemed so upset. We’re not always aware of what our body language is telling others.
There are two components to help us identify emotions, external clues and internal clues. External clues are how we look on the outside. People observe our facial expressions and body language, and from this data they label how we’re probably feeling. Internal clues are how we feel on the inside. These are the physiological components of emotions that we experience internally, but that others observing us wouldn’t necessarily notice or correctly identify.
Since you’re reading this book, my guess is that you express external anger clues that other people notice or make a big deal of. When you’re upset, your body represents it in a certain way that an outside observer would code as an expression of anger. At a smaller level of emotion, you might be crossing your arms, clenching your jaw, and rolling your eyes. At a bigger level we might add in yelling, forming your hands into fists, or even punching, kicking, and breaking things. If you observed someone with these external clues, you’d probably label that person as angry, too.
The thing is, our external clues don’t always match up to our internal experiences. Our internal clues may be telling a different story; one that we have to listen closely to in order to actually understand it.
The Anger Iceberg
You’ve probably heard the expression “the tip of the iceberg.” The image of an iceberg is a helpful way to think about the relationship between your external expression of emotions and the internal feeling of them. If you’ve ever seen pictures of icebergs in class (or if you’ve ever seen them in person, which, hi, can I go on your next trip with you?) you know they look massive – and there’s even more underneath the water.
On the surface, you see just the tip of what’s going on. About 10% of an iceberg is above water, and the remaining 90% is down below in the murky depths. When we talk about our anger iceberg, the tip represents our external anger clues. The tip of the iceberg is what people see when you’re yelling, or shouting, or tensing your muscles. Because these clues are right on the surface, it’s what most everyone pays attention to. It’s easy for someone to label you as angry, since that’s how you look.
In fact, many people only pay attention to that surface level. They only notice the tip of the iceberg. When people think of anger, they describe how it looks on the outside. When your body language reads as angry, and that’s the only thing to which they’re going to pay attention. Perhaps it’s the only thing you’re really paying attention to right now, too, because those external behaviors are the ones getting you into trouble. But if you only pay attention to that 10% - to what you see on the surface - you’re absolutely missing out on the bigger picture.
Maybe you’ve noticed that when people say you’re angry, it doesn’t really fit with what you’re experiencing. Yes, you feel that frustration, but you feel a lot of other overwhelming things, too. Maybe you notice some anger, but you also start to notice a lot of stress about doing well. Or you feel angry, and sad, and really nervous about whether or not people actually like you. Your parents may have anger issues that you’ve noticed your whole life, and you always feel like you need to be on edge, too. Of course you’re going to explode when something doesn’t go your way.
These other co-occurring emotions - that stress, sadness, and nervousness, along with our background and history - comprise the hidden 90% of our iceberg. They’re under the surface, meaning people often won’t take the time to notice that you’re experiencing something in addition to that anger you seem to be showing. Perhaps you’re not fully aware of these emotions underneath the surface, either. It takes work to dive deeper, rather than just accepting what’s going on at surface level.
Fight, Flight, or Freeze:
To understand your personal experience when it comes to anger and all the overwhelming stuff underneath it, we need to explore how our bodies and brains prime us for dangerous situations. Many of us have heard of “Fight or Flight” before. There’s a third option, “Freeze,” that explains that frozen response people experience during an overwhelmingly stressful situation. These healthy automatic responses are designed to keep us safe. It’s a reaction that occurs before we can even really stop and think about what’s going on.
Here’s how it works: Let’s say you’re walking in the woods, and you come across a bear. You almost sense it before you even see it, noticing a slight prickling along your neck, and suddenly, that big brown bear is right in front of you. Your brain feels like it doesn’t have time to think, it just needs you to REACT! And quickly!
Immediately, your brain and body are going to be activated by this stressor. Your brain tells your body to release stress hormones. Your body floods with adrenaline and cortisol. Your muscles tense up, your heart rate increases, and your breathing feels fast and short. Your brain tells you that you have three options and no time to think about them! You can:
Fight that bear
Fly away from the bear, running as fast as you can
or
Freeze and play dead
Ok – yikes! Stressful! Let’s take a step back – thankfully, we’re not in the woods with a bear. Looking at these automatic responses, you can probably understand the survival instinct running underneath. Rationally, though, these options that our brain throws out may not be the best choice. Can you really take on a bear in fist to fist combat? Or run away from the bear when the woods are covered in mud and you actually don’t know where you are? This is actually the main problem with our fight, flight, or freeze reaction. We don’t have the time to think through the pros and the cons of what we’re doing. Our stress response has taken control of the wheel.
To take this a step farther, a lot of the time our brains activate the fight, flight, or freeze response even when we’re not in a life or death situation. That same part of your brain that says, “It’s a bear, danger!” is also telling you, “Dad seems mad, danger!” or “That kid looked at me weird, he must be talking about me, danger!” Your brain is just trying to protect you, but it’s getting in the way of really thinking through what’s going on.
People often get labeled as angry because they tend to respond to stressful, overwhelming, or fearful situations with a fight response. That fight response is just as valid as flight or freeze, but it’s often the response that gets us in the most trouble. We get into a stressful situation and we yell or shout or scream because, underneath it all, our brain is telling us that we’re in danger and we have to defend ourselves. This is normal, healthy, and from a biological perspective, understandable. But it doesn’t mean that people are going to like that you’re doing it.
Want to do some St. Louis Counseling with Kelsey, or another awesome therapist here? Click over to our contact page for in person Missouri counseling.
We have to re-train our brains, and build up impulse control skills, so that we’re not reacting so automatically. Let’s check in below and see if your brain normally selects the fight, flight, or freeze response. This will help a lot when it comes to figuring out our next step: what do we do about it?
Fight/Flight/Freeze Check In:
Read each of these situations below, and think about if you’re more prone to having a fight, flight, or freeze reaction in these same scenarios:
You’re at the end of the lunch line and waiting to pay. A kid behind you bumps into you and you drop most of the food from your tray. It seems like people are laughing. Do you…
Fight: Push the kid back and tell him that if he does it again, you’re happy to take it outside?
Flight: Drop the rest of the tray, leave the lunch line immediately because people are OBVIOUSLY laughing at you, and go hide out in the bathroom?
Freeze: Stay in line, not knowing what to do next, until a staff member comes over to ask what’s wrong?
You’re in your bedroom doing your homework. You get to a ridiculously hard math equation, that you have no idea how to solve. Do you…
Fight: Start breaking pencils, toss your books to the ground, and yell (so loudly that your mom comes in to check on you), “This is freaking impossible!!!”?
Flight: Feel so overwhelmed that you have to get out of your room ASAP, and run outside to your car to just drive away and get some space?
Freeze: Stare at the problem until you realize you’ve been looking at it for over an hour and haven’t done any other work?
You almost always do your chores, but your dad is really getting on your case about emptying the dishwasher tonight. You’re planning to finish up your episode of tv first, but he comes in, turns off the tv, and says you’re obviously not listening. He’s grounding you. Do you…
Fight: Shout at him, “That’s so unfair! Why don’t you ever give me time to relax before you make me do all of your stupid chores?!”
Flight: Try and leave the room as fast as you can without talking anymore, because you’re afraid you’re going to freak out?
Freeze: Totally shut down and ignore him until he goes away?
It’s finals week. You’re teetering right between a B+ and an A- in Spanish class, and you really want a good grade since you’re applying to college next year. You’ve reached the portion of the test where you’re supposed to have a one-on-one conversation with your teacher, fully in Spanish. After your first few sentences, she jumps in and says, “Let’s start again. You’re making a lot of small mistakes already.” Do you…
Fight: Blurt out, “Why are you being such a jerk?” and feel the impulse to rip up all of your notes?
Flight: Feel a panic attack starting up, and say you need to use the restroom ASAP?
Freeze: Go totally blank. Your words can’t even come out anymore because you’re afraid you’ve already ruined everything?
You’re at your school’s homecoming dance. You were supposed to meet your friends here, and then they text the group chat to say they’re out getting ice cream first. They don’t invite you. It seems like everyone at the dance is watching you while you’re just standing by yourself. Do you…
Fight: Text them back to say they’re being so rude that you don’t even want to be friends with them anymore?
Flight: Call your mom and tell her she needs to pick you up NOW, and start walking home before she’s even on her way?
Freeze: Watch everyone watching you, stay in this one spot with your heart pounding, and feel tears pricking up in your eyes?
You may have different responses in different situations. Ask yourself, is there one that you use more often than the others? Do you notice any patterns? If you do, how do you feel about having these responses? What would you like to change?
There are no wrong answers. The first step to solving any problem is identifying it. We want to build up your understanding of yourself and your reactions.
Our Feelings, Ourselves:
Underneath all of these fight, flight, and freeze reactions is a sense of danger, which makes us feel anxious or fearful. A lot of times, though, when we react with fight, flight, or freeze, we don’t always catch that we’re feeling anxious underneath it all. Much like we all have an idea of how anger is supposed to look on the outside, we also have a pretty good idea of what we expect anxiety to look like.
I like to call these expected anxious reactions “’Classic’ Anxiety,” meaning your typical outside observer will quickly identify that you are experiencing anxiety. It’s easy to empathize with these classic signs. You know what they look like, and what to expect, and so you feel compassion for the person going through them. You see flight or freeze, and you get what they’re going through.
The other side of anxiety, fight, is not as expected. It’s harder to empathize with anxiety that looks more like an anger response. We don’t like when people are angry, and we expect people to control their anger. But what about when their anger is hard to control? What about when that anger is actually due to anxiety?
Let’s go through these common anxiety diagnoses and look at them from both sides – the “classic” or expected reaction (flight and freeze), and the unexpected fight reaction.
“Classic” Anxiety Symptoms from St. Louis Counselor Kelsey Torgerson
Fight Reaction Symptoms
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Feeling nervous, anxious, and stressed in a variety of situations.
Sometimes this anxiety feels present even when there’s not a specific situation or thing that is causing it.
Can also look like perfectionism and just being easily overwhelmed.
The underlying stress makes someone more prone to having blow-ups and big reactions.
May experience over-control, an urge to control oneself or to be really controlling of others.
FYI, “anger and irritability” is an actual symptom of GAD in the DSM 5 (the official diagnostic book a lot of therapists use).
Social Anxiety Disorder
Fear of new people, social situations, and judgement.
Avoidance of social settings and of people, less talking out in class, and general shyness.
Severe social anxiety means that person may avoid all interactions with others, even running away from a social event when feeling overwhelmed.
Fear of new people and judgement leads one to pre-emptively judge others
Will continue to avoid others.
May put on a mean face to keep others from approaching them.
An attitude of, “I don’t have to worry if they don’t like me, because I already don’t like them first.”
Separation Anxiety Disorder
People generally just expect to see Separation Anxiety in young children.
Avoidance, nervousness, or tearfulness when leaving parents or other attachment figures.
Observed during transitions, such as leaving for school or having a babysitter come over.
Actually, Separation Anxiety Disorder can happen at any age.
Avoidance and tearfulness plus explosive anger.
Anxious minds have figured out that they get more attention from others when they’re having a huge outburst, so when faced with separating, this person might fight and argue.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Obsessive thoughts that get stuck and play on a never-ending loop.
Compulsive behaviors – feeling compelled to do things in a certain way, for a certain amount of times.
The brain uses a lot of magical thinking, such as, “When I turn the light on and off three times, my family will be safe.”
You may hear people saying, “I’m so OCD,” when really, they just mean that they like things tidy. Actually, people with OCD experience significant distress if they can’t complete a task that their brain tells them is mandatory.
Distress when unable to complete a compulsive behavior or engage in an obsessive thought.
This distress can look like irritability, anger, and frustration.
You might see people who are kept from completing a compulsive behavior yelling or screaming at others once they reach their overwhelm point.
Frustration about this can also be directed inward, and the individual with OCD may be hyper critical of themselves.
Panic Disorder
People with panic attacks suffer from panic disorder.
Leads to hyperventilating, anxious meltdowns, crying, and even a sense that they might die.
Fearfulness around when the next panic attack might happen.
Fear of the next panic attack makes people feel constantly on edge.
This leads to more irritability.
People with Panic Disorder may also blame the person or situation that seemed to have started the panic attack, leading others to think that they’re being rude or mean.
Phobias
Fear of a specific thing or situation.
Extreme avoidance of the stressor.
People expect to see panic, tearfulness, or even running away from the situation or thing that causes the anxiety.
Avoidance continues to reinforce itself – the more you avoid the thing that makes you anxious, the harder it is to ever confront it.
Anger at people who suggest, unintentionally or not, that they need to experience what they’re afraid of.
A quick note about this list: just because these symptoms may sound like you, it doesn’t mean you necessarily have it. Any diagnosis has to come from a licensed mental health professional. It’s super easy for people to say, “Oh my gosh, that’s me!” If you’re really concerned, you can’t diagnose yourself from this book, but you can talk with your doctor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or another mental health professional.
Body Clues Activity:
Most of us are so used to paying attention to what’s happening on the outside that we don’t always take the time to think through what’s going on inside. You might not know if anxiety is underneath your emotional outbursts, either. We need to dive deeper and explore what your internal emotional experience is telling you. What’s happening in your brain? What’s happening in your body? These are the crucial questions to help us broaden our understanding of ourselves, so that we can actually figure out what’s going on instead of just feeling like we explode all the time.
Everyone experiences feelings a little bit differently. There are some expected physiological reactions, but I want you to get really clear about your own individual experience. Until you learn how to really clue in and listen to your emotions, we won’t have the best plan to deal with them. So, pull out a piece of paper, and let’s get to work.
If you’re artistically inclined, get out a few colored pencils or pastels, and start drawing an outline of your body. I usually stick with something basic - a circle head, a couple of big arms, a torso and some legs. Don’t get caught up in making this look perfect – it’s just for you! You’re also welcome to just take notes as we walk through this exercise, jotting down your ideas as you consider the prompts below.
(The Body Clues Activity and Free Printable Can Be Found Over Here!)
First, think about the last time you felt angry. Really bring the details into this situation. Think about your 5 w’s: Who was there? What happened? Where was this? When did it occur? Why do you think this happened – and why do you think it made you so angry?
When you’ve found that angry feeling, notice where you experience it in your body. If you’re using your body drawing, color in those areas with a color that really represents anger for you. If you’re journaling, note where you experience this and how it feels. Do you notice tightness anywhere? Does your heart beat faster, or slower? Maybe your breathing picks up or even feels like it stops. Note any places that seem hot or cold, and any reactions your body wants to have - kicking, punching, ripping. Where are those reactions being held in your body? Does that impulse to kick something start mostly in your foot, or your leg, or do you really just feel it in your heart? Make sure you mark down every place in your body, even if it’s a small part of the bigger picture.
Next, let’s think about the last time you felt anxious. Maybe it was before a test, or walking into a party, or coming home when you just knew that you were going to be in trouble. Once you’ve found that feeling, do the same thing. Color where you notice it on your body with a color that represents anxiety for you or write down where you experience that feeling in your body. Note the physical sensation of that feeling.
For me, when I get anxious, I notice my heart beats a little faster, my breathing becomes shallow, and I almost feel sick to my stomach. If I’m especially nervous, I might also get sweaty palms. Remember, emotions are individualized experiences, so you may notice this nervousness in the same cluster that I do, or you may experience it in other areas of your body.
You may already start to notice an overlap between where you experience anger, and where you experience anxiety. It’s ok if you don’t! But for many, this anxiety and anger overlap is actually super common, and it’s the main reason it’s so easy for our wires to get crossed about what emotions are actually underneath our outburst.
Now let’s look at stress, which can be a third factor in this anxiety and anger relationship. For some, stress and anxiety feel the same, and for others it’s a little different. What does stress feel like for you, and how do you know your stressed rather than anxious? No matter how you experience it, let’s pick out a stress color or pick up our pen, and identify where that feeling is in our body. What are the clues? What’s the physical experience? What urges do you notice in your body? How can you tell that you’re stressed and not something else?
Looking at your picture now, does stress overlap with your anxiety and with your anger? What feels the same? What parts of your body get activated by all three?
Feel free to continue this exercise with other emotions, too, as more feelings come to mind. Some other important emotions to explore and identify are sadness, grief, boredom, and happiness, and you’re welcome to dig further as you broaden your emotional repertoire. Once you’ve finished, it may look something like this:
Let’s take a step back and observe. Ask yourself:
What do you notice about your picture or your journaling?
What emotions seem to overlap?
What emotions seem to have similar physiological responses for you?
As you observing anger and anxiety, where do you notice these emotions clustering or starting in your body?
How can this activity provide information for your future anger and anxiety management plan?
As you dive into your picture or writing, you may notice certain patterns emerge. Many people notice an increase in heart rate, shallowness of breath, and increase in muscle tension for anger, anxiety, and stress. Because we’re experiencing the same type of reaction for three different emotions, our brain can have trouble sorting out how we actually feel.
This is also why, hello, I’ve written this book for you, the angry teen who is actually probably pretty anxious, too. Your anger and your anxiety can fuel your body into reacting in ways you don’t really like, especially when that anxiety and stress and anger reaches overwhelming proportions.
St. Louis Counseling For Anxiety-Driven Anger:
Sometimes when we feel angry, we feel anxious, too. We can feel anxiety about how we’re going to respond, how the other person is going to respond, or the potential negative consequences of our anger-driven actions. Anger and anxiety can feed off of one another, and the heightening of one emotion can lead to the heightening of another.
Consider the last time you had a big school project. You may have felt anxious about finishing it and getting a good grade. Perhaps you just had a few more pieces to put together the night before it was due. It’s at this moment, when you’re feeling a lot of anxiety about completing the assignment, that your mom comes in to tell you that you forgot to take out the trash.
Normally, taking out the trash is a small inconvenience and a minor stressor. This time, because of the anxiety you’re already feeling about the school project, you just explode. You start yelling at your mom - who probably doesn’t deserve it, even if it feels like she does in the moment. That anxiety you were experiencing about school increased your stress level, and that extra stressor of your mom’s reminder led to you reaching your explosive tipping point. Your mom is going to label your reaction as angry. You yelled at her! That’s so disrespectful! How could you?! But we really know that it wasn’t just anger. It was anxiety about school that lead to this huge reaction.
Anger and anxiety lead to a few expected physical responses. With anger, your brain sends information to a few key areas in your body. Your muscles tense up. You feel a burst of energy. Your heart rate increases as more blood pumps through your body. Your breathing rate typically increases, in order to get more oxygen to your muscles. Your attention narrows, making your brain feel super focused on whatever is causing your anger, or making your mind feel like it’s totally blank.
It may surprise you, but anxiety creates the exact same heart pumping, muscle tensing, breath quickening, attention narrowing physical reactions. If your body is doing the same type of thing when you’re angry and when you’re anxious, doesn’t it make sense that your brain might get confused about interpreting how you’re feeling?
You, of course, feel both anger and anxiety. Sometimes, though, your brain gets confused about what emotion is happening. When it gets used to interpreting reactions in a certain way, you end up having to retrain your brain to stop and think, and figure out what is actually going on with your emotions.
Your brain is connected by millions of neurons, with electrical currents passing through them at lightning fast speed. Neural pathways that we use again and again get strengthened. It’s like a ravine that’s been carved through stone during the millennia. Even the Grand Canyon started as flat lands with a river running through it. As that water continued to flow down that one path, it carved out more and more. Your emotional reactions work exactly the same way. When your brain is used to interpreting, “This information means I should have this response,” the reactions you have become second nature. Your brain is so used to taking in one piece of information and choosing one response to that info.
You’re not always in charge of what happens to you. Your teacher corrects you in front the whole class, your mom makes you do chores when you have a huge essay due, or your friends all decide to hang out without you. These things happen outside of your control, and they’re upsetting.
We’re not in charge of what happens to us, but we are in charge of how we feel and how we react. If your brain always interprets your emotional response to these stressors as anger, or other people in your life are always telling you that you seem so mad, you go through life assuming that’s it.
Sometimes we’re mad. Sometimes we’re stressed, but it looks like we’re mad. Sometimes, we’re anxious, but our brains think that we’re mad. Sometimes, we’re mad and anxious and overwhelmed all at the same time. It’s important to take a pause and figure out what emotions are coming up for you, instead of just assuming it’s the thing you always feel.
It doesn’t often feel like it, but we’re in charge of our emotions, not the other way around. We get to decide how we feel. We get to decide how we react. And we get to decide how to move forward when stuff doesn’t go the way we want. We respond to the fallout from our reactions and choose a different response for next time.
Further St. Louis Therapy Resources and Next Steps for Helping Yourself or Your Teen:
Stop and Think: Impulse Control and Anxiety Management
Talk with your child about how their body feels before, during, and after they do something they know they shouldn’t, to help build up their impulse control skills.
CBT for Teens: How to Address Unhelpful Thoughts
Have you heard about the cognitive triangle? Learn more about how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all impact one another!
Emotions Elevators: BrainWise Lesson for Anxious, Angry Kids
Best next step: Talk about different LEVELS of your emotions (big, medium, and small).
Read “When Anxiety Makes You Angry: CBT Anger Management Skills for Teens With Anxiety-Driven Anger”
Kelsey’s book, being published in 2022, includes this walkthrough. Sign up for our newsletter so you know when you can pre-order!
Also a great idea? Talking with a teenager therapist. Our anxiety therapist love working with kids, teens, and families. If you’re located in Missouri, we’d love to help.
Kelsey is the owner and founder of Compassionate Counseling St. Louis and author of When Anxiety Makes You Angry.
Our therapists and counselors specialize in anxiety and anger management for pre-schoolers, elementary schoolers, middle schoolers, teens, and college students. In addition to CBT, our amazing team of therapists also incorporate trauma-informed care, EMDR, art therapy, and play therapy. Families come from Clayton, University City, Ladue, Creve Couer, Town and Country, Brentwood, and surrounding St. Louis areas. Email us to learn more at hello@compassionatecounselingstl.com or 314-339-7640.
