Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions (15 page)

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Authors: June Hunt

BOOK: Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions
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7
BLAST FROM THE PAST
How Childhood Hurts Kindle Current Anger
“Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil”
(PSALM 37:8).

 

HOLLY CALLED ME at
Hope in the Night
the day she got a startling ultimatum from her husband, Tim. He said she had to get help for her hair-trigger temper or he was going to take their two daughters and stay with his parents for a while. They needed a break from her frequent tantrums.
“I know I have a short temper, especially where Tim is concerned,” she told me. “I’m not sure why. He just pushes my buttons, and I go off without even thinking. I convinced myself it’s a good thing—particularly as a woman—to stand up for my rights and needs, even if it means a fight. ‘Never give an inch,’ my mom used to say. But for the first time, I saw real pain and desperation on Tim’s face, and I knew I was hurting someone I love—and who loves me. Something has to change, but I have no idea where to begin.”
Holly’s “short fuse” was characterized by slammed doors and thrown objects. She confessed to being the “queen of the silent treatment” and to using stinging sarcasm. Knowing anger always comes from
somewhere
and usually is signaling some kind of underlying issues
,
I asked Holly to tell me about her husband and their relationship.
Tim was a high-ranking sales manager for a prosperous electronics company. He supervised employees in five states, which meant he was away from home two or three nights a week, sometimes more.
Between trips, he was a reasonably attentive father to their daughters. He did his share of household chores. He was conservative with their money, but not stingy. He hardly ever drank and never gambled. However, Tim had an “annoying” fondness for watching sports on television, and Holly thought he spent a little too much time and money restoring an old motorcycle he rescued from a salvage yard. He wasn’t the best listener in the world, though he was making a concerted effort to improve.
After Holly told me all this, I responded, “Sounds like a pretty good guy. He may not be perfect, but who is?”
Holly chuckled in agreement. Then I asked, “So what triggers your temper?”
Holly thought for a moment. “It gets under my skin every time he chooses something else over spending time with our family. It’s like he’s got a secret life he’d really prefer. If the phone rings around the time I expect him home, I’m angry even before I pick it up. I know it’s him saying he has to work longer. But does he really? He goes to the gym a few times a week, and I just seethe. I accuse him of being prideful about how fit he is. He says it’s a good thing to stay in shape, but I can’t help it—I get angry. It just comes over me.”
The stress and anxiety were steadily rising in Holly’s voice. Clearly, we were coming close to whatever was fueling her anger. She had trouble trusting that all was as it seemed in her marriage. She doubted Tim’s word and suspected he had a secretive side. Certainly I was in no position to say whether or not she had adequate cause for her feelings. But one thing was certain: Holly was angry, and the unhealthy way she expressed it was making matters in her marriage that much worse.
I gently explained to Holly that anger is a
secondary
emotion, meaning it doesn’t arise by itself, but is a natural response to anything we perceive as painful or threatening. It is our body’s way of preparing us to do what is necessary to protect ourselves from harm. We most often get angry when we are hurting, afraid, frustrated, or confronted with an injustice. It seemed obvious which of these was the primary source of Holly’s present anger.
Prisoner of Past Pain
“I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to answer with the first thing that pops into your mind,” I told her. “In your opinion, what is the worst thing that could happen in your marriage? What do you
fear
the most?”
“Betrayal,” she blurted out instantly. “Infidelity.”
“And has Tim given you tangible reasons to believe he is unfaithful to you?”
“I’m not sure,” Holly said. “How would I know?”
I suddenly heard Holly gasp on the other end of the line. Then there was a long pause, during which I silently asked God to reveal the healing truth to Holly so she could take steps toward freedom. Finally, when she spoke again, it was apparent she had begun to cry. I realized she was experiencing “a blast from the past.”
“Oh, June, I
do
know where my anger comes from,” she said quietly. The pain was choking her voice to nearly a whisper. “How could I have not seen it before? What I fear most is that Tim will turn out to be like my
father
.”
For the next few minutes, Holly poured out the story from her childhood that had been feeding the flames of her anger at Tim. By all appearances, her father was a loving husband and a good dad. He never missed one of Holly’s gymnastics meets, and helped her design the winning science fair project two years in a row. He was a church deacon and served on the board of the local retirement home. No one in the family noticed there had been a sudden increase in board committee meetings or that they lasted longer than before. And no one gave it much thought when he spruced up his wardrobe, lost 20 pounds, and changed his hairstyle.
It’s a Family Affair
By now you’ve probably guessed the truth: Holly’s father had an affair—with a member of the retirement home staff. His act of betrayal devastated her mother and cast a dark shadow over the whole family. When the truth came out, her father terminated the illicit relationship immediately. There was no divorce, but neither was there true reconciliation. Peace and trust never returned to the marriage, or to the household in general.
“I remember being so angry at him for how he had deceived us all, and for what it did to my mother. But I didn’t realize until just now how mad I was at Mom for letting it happen and for not doing more to hurt him. She just withdrew into her shell…distrustful and removed. I swore it would never happen to me.”
The more we talked, the clearer it became to Holly that she had indeed achieved her goal: Her husband had not been unfaithful. It had not “happened” to her. But neither was she free to fully commit to the relationship and be happy. She was fearful that she was being fooled, just like her mother.
Holly’s chronic anger was a legitimate attempt to keep those fears at bay by showing she was not someone you could hurt without paying a price. The problem was, none of it had anything to do with Tim. Holly’s wounds predated his presence in her life by 15 years. He was just an innocent bystander and the victim of her unresolved childhood wounds.
“I’ve been angry at Tim, making him serve a sentence for crimes he didn’t commit,” Holly concluded.
In doing that, she was certainly not unique. Christian counselor Gary Chapman tells us,
Whenever we have experienced a series of wrongs over a long period of time, our emotional ability to absorb these wrongs is stretched beyond capacity…We begin to express this anger not toward the people who perpetrated it through past years but toward other people in our present setting. The purpose of our anger is to motivate us to take constructive action with the person who has wronged us, but if we fail to do this, unresolved anger becomes a dark cloud over our lives.
1
For Holly, the cloud finally lifted, and the path to anger resolution and peace was suddenly clear to her: She would free Tim from unfair judgment by working to free
herself
—by God’s grace—from unforgiveness and bitterness toward her parents.
By the time our conversation ended, Holly had not only emptied her anger bowl, but she had given her life to Christ. In her voice I heard lightness and hope, which I suspect had been missing for a long time. I assured her that God would not fail to provide a new heart in place of her old one. As the apostle Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
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When it comes to childhood wounds, it is common to have smoldering embers of which we may not even be aware.
When it comes to childhood wounds, it is common to have smoldering embers of which we may not even be aware—remnants we would never suspect could actually spark present-day anger. But when it comes to anger,
out of sight
definitely is not the same as
out of mind
. In fact, hurtful childhood emotions can smolder for decades, be stoked by a current circumstance, and then engulf the unsuspecting in seething rage long after the events that triggered them are forgotten. Let’s look at some reasons this happens.
Bonfires from the Beginning
By the time we come of age, most of us have forgotten what a vulnerable state childhood is. At birth we are a bundle of insistent needs and wants, but without the means to meet them on our own. From day one, our dependence on others is absolute. Gradually, we gain both the abilities and the skills we need to fend for ourselves, but our needs are no less real as we grow older. If anything, we become more complex, progressing from simple needs like food and shelter to the need for significance and self-esteem or for moral certainty in the world.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow identified specific needs he found common to all humans, and subsequently developed a “hierarchy of needs” consisting of five categories: physiology, safety, love and belonging, esteem and respect, and self-actualization.
3
The higher up Maslow’s ladder a particular need lies, the more psychological and even spiritual in nature it becomes—but no less vital to our well-being. There is something that rings true about admitting people need—really
need
—more than just the basics of survival in order to thrive. We also need acceptance, affection, and the freedom to be who God created us to be.
Here’s the most important part of Maslow’s ideas: If
any
of our needs go unmet, even the more abstract ones, we suffer harmful psychological and emotional effects. To a child who endures chronic verbal abuse, for instance, it simply does not help to say, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The hurt takes the form of an unmet need for safety, dignity, and respect. In other words, many of the deepest wounds we receive in life, especially in childhood, are not just a matter of what was done to us, but also what was
withheld
as a result.
To a child, such “crimes of omission” can be just as damaging and threatening as overt acts of abuse or oppression. Why? Because in our state of extreme vulnerability to those who have been called by God to care for us, unmet needs add up to the possibility we might be abandoned altogether. If we grow up carrying these childhood hurts and fears, we can easily become fearful and angry adults.
Incensed for the Innocent
Never will I forget walking toward the exit of a large store and noticing a mother—probably in her late twenties—walking with a shopping cart a few feet in front of me. Toddling along behind her was a cute, curly-haired tyke obviously trying his best to keep up with her. But his little legs were far too short to match her long stride.
Suddenly she whirled around and barked at him in a hateful voice, “If you don’t hurry up I’m going to chop your legs off!” With a look of terror, he rushed to get beside the cart.
I was shocked…stunned…I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. Of course, the little fellow’s frightened face said it all.
Immediately, I felt angry that any parent would use such an unjustified fear tactic—or in this case, terror tactic—to motivate a child. I picked up my pace and approached her. “Excuse me,” I said, intentionally speaking slow and quietly, “I don’t know if you realize that children are literalists and what you just said could be terrifying.”
My face was flushed and my eyes were wide open from the adrenaline rushing through my body. I was definitely in a fight-or-flight mode, with flight being the furthest thing from my mind.
I had no idea how the woman would respond, and it didn’t matter to me. I could no more hold my tongue than she apparently could hold hers.
As we stood there looking at one another, her countenance communicated surprise but also showed genuine embarrassment. She apparently heard my words and hopefully “got it.” To my surprise, she sheepishly took the toddler’s hand and, without saying a word, turned and walked off toward the exit.
As I watched them leave, I prayed the Spirit of God would work in the woman’s life and fully convict her of the need to permanently change her parenting style. I knew if the mother did not change, that precious little one would carry fear and anger into his adulthood. But then it would be detached from its true origin so that even he wouldn’t know where it came from.
It would become what psychologists call free-floating anger—it’s disconnected from its cause and purpose. Childhood pain can stoke smoldering embers into a raging blaze in adulthood.
As we attempt to discover why we stay trapped in patterns of anger, it helps to know where the skeletons from our childhood may be hidden. Here are the most common burial grounds:

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