495 - Anger & Anxiety: The Unexpected Couple Ruining Your Relationships
The anger-anxiety connection
Today we’re looking at how anger and anxiety can work in tandem to wreak havoc in our relationships. Often, anxiety triggers anger as a defensive response to perceived threats. When we feel anxious or threatened, our body's fight-or-flight response can kick in, which can lead to feelings of anger or aggression as a defense.
Additionally, anger and anxiety both involve the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which leads to similar physical sensations. When we experience anger, these physical symptoms can be misinterpreted as signs of anxiety, leading to a heightened sense of unease or panic. For example, feeling your heart race during an argument with your partner, which then triggers anxiety about the state of your relationship.
The body has a role in human stress responses for both emotions as well. The fight-or-flight response is triggered by the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones can cause physical symptoms associated with both anger and anxiety, such as increased heart rate, sweating, and trembling. Chronic activation of your stress response due to ongoing anger or anxiety can lead to long-term issues and be a strain on the relationship.
A few myths about anger and anxiety in relationships:
Myth: Anger always looks like yelling or physical aggression.
Reality: Anger can manifest as passive-aggressiveness, stonewalling, or sarcasm.
Myth: Anxiety always presents as nervousness or worry.
Reality: Anxiety can appear as irritability, controlling behavior, or perfectionism.
Root causes
Sometimes, attachment style and past relationship experiences can contribute to anger and anxiety in current relationships. Insecure attachment styles like avoidant or anxious can lead to maladaptive coping mechanisms, and unresolved trauma from previous partnerships can fuel current anger and anxiety.
Recognizing unhealthy patterns of self-directed anger and shame in relationships is a good skill to cultivate. Internalizing anger or anxiety can lead to self-blame and feelings of unworthiness. Self-compassion and self-acceptance are crucial for breaking negative cycles. It’s also good to remember that a partner should not be responsible for “fixing” or managing your emotions. This can lead to codependency and resentment.
Managing anger and anxiety in your relationship
Some helpful strategies for managing anger and anxiety are:
Couples therapy and individual counseling to develop healthier communication and coping skills. Some options are:
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) can help couples identify and change negative interaction patterns - Sue Johnson.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help individuals manage anger and anxiety symptoms.
Somatic Experiencing.
2. Recognize it. Seeing your partner’s anger or your own can be a cue to inquire about anxiety, lending opportunity to create a softer opening for sharing each other’s emotional world. Anger might be a way for someone to seek space and control, so back off first and reconvene later.
3. Creating a shared "relationship care plan" with agreed-upon strategies for managing anger and anxiety. For example:
Establishing "time-outs" or cool-down periods during heated moments.
Try Repair SHOP 234:
Sharing fears, insecurities, and needs openly and honestly.
Responding to a partner's vulnerability with empathy and validation.
Prioritizing self-care and personal growth to bring your best self to the relationship, like getting enough sleep, monitoring what you consume, etc. Try an “experiment” of stopping drinking alcohol, or caffeine, or taking cannabis, and see how it affects you. (Do it for at least a month). Medication is also an option to consider, especially in combination with therapy or counseling.
Seeking support from friends, family, or a therapist to avoid over-relying on a partner for emotional regulation helps you build a diverse support system to meet various emotional needs. It also encourages a partner to have their own support network and coping strategies.
Addressing both anger and anxiety as a team to build a stronger, more resilient relationship is vital. View challenges as opportunities for growth and connection and celebrate progress by expressing gratitude for each other’s efforts.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're diving into the complex and often misunderstood connection between anger and anxiety and how it can impact your romantic relationships. If you've ever found yourself lashing out at your partner or being passive-aggressive when you're stressed out, or maybe shutting down emotionally when you're overwhelmed, you're not alone.
Today, we're going to be exploring some of the science between why anger and anxiety often go hand in hand. We'll try to debunk some myths about what these emotions look like in relationships, and then talk about some tools and things that you can do to break free from the cycle of anxiety and anger, and some ways that by dealing with both, you actually might make better progress with each of them than you would dealing with them separately. We're very excited to dive into this.
If you out there are interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most widely used communication tools for all types of relationships, some of which can be really helpful when dealing with anxiety and anger in your relationships, and any kind of communication issues.
You can find links to buy it at Multiamory.com/book or wherever you buy books. Also, check out the first few episodes of the podcast if you haven't already, for some of our most fundamental episodes that we reference often on this show. Welcome. Let's start this off. Dedeker, Emily, have you ever been angry?
Emily: Oh, every day.
Jase: Okay. Is it your secrets? You're always angry. Is that--
Emily: Yes, that is my secret. Well, what is it that they say that if you're not angry, you're not paying attention?
Jase: Oh, boy. That does seem to be more and more true every day.
Dedeker: I think you and I, Jase, we've had these conversations before talking about how, for me, I think my anger tends to be much more accessible, and for you, your sadness tends to be much more acceptable, which falls in line with what was modeled for us, in our families of origin of like which emotions were acceptable within the house. What is it for you, Emily?
Emily: I feel like in my 20s and early 30s, anger was far less accessible for me and sadness was definitely pretty accessible. I feel like I've been angry recently. I know that you commented on that, Jase, when we were doing my break-up episode and, yes, I don't know if it's just that I have things that I'm angry about recently or maybe I'm just accessing it now more readily than I once was able to. It's not my favorite thing, honestly. I feel like my fuse is a little shorter these days.
Dedeker: Huh, interesting.
Emily: I want to work on that, for sure, because it's not particularly becoming, but it's also nice sometimes to not just be sad, to instead be like, there are things that I should be angry about, and I am, and it's okay.
Jase: I think that's such a good point you bring up there. This is something that I actually have had two different, maybe even three different counselors or therapists tell me something to that effect of either saying, as we work on this, you might find yourself being more angry and that that's a good thing. You do want to have some of that anger so that you're not just directing everything inward towards yourself that it is, yes, sometimes there's stuff to be angry about and that that's okay, assuming that you're expressing it in a way that's not being really destructive or whatever. I think there's that assumption there, but it's possible to have healthy anger.
We talked about this way back in episode 205, but what's funny is that one of these, if she was a counselor that I talked to, this would've been back in 2008 maybe, and then more recently with my current therapist have also had conversations about anger. I think you bringing that up is a good thing to think about as well, that anger on its own isn't bad, right? Having some feelings of it is part of the natural range of emotions to be feeling, but then in our relationships, anger can show up in these negative ways of being snappy and snarky with a partner when it's not merited.
I think there's a difference between, yes, I feel some anger about some things that happened that makes sense for me to be angry about versus I'm irritated that you're trying to help me like, "Ah, why do you keep talking to me?" I don't know. Those sorts of things that can happen when we're feeling really on edge and that can negatively affect our relationships.
Dedeker: Okay, but hold on, because in the intro, you're teasing this whole anger anxiety package duo combo which--
Jase: Yes, it's a package deal, it's a discount if you buy both.
Emily: Great.
Dedeker: Well, so I wouldn't normally want to purchase them as a package deal.
Jase: Oh, shoot.
Dedeker: I'll just go ahead and give you that feedback, but also, second of all, I don't associate those as a package deal, honestly. I think of anxiety as being more shrinking and frenetic, and anger as maybe more expansive and often targeted.
Emily: I got to say it though, when we were looking at this episode before we started recording, I was thinking back to a relationship where my partner had a pretty stressful job where he was basically one of the heads of it, and I felt like a lot of the anxiety that he felt for that job would come out as anger in our relationship.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Emily: When I heard you say that and talk about it, and when we looked through what we're about to discuss on the episode, it really made a lot of sense to me in terms of my own personal understanding of what was going on there. It made me maybe have a little bit more empathy for the situation if-- yes, and this is something that's fairly common that it will manifest in a way that is maybe potentially fairly destructive if the anxiety or if the anger is not dealt with in some way.
Jase: Right. That was basically the way this episode came about is that I realized it had been quite a while since episode 205 when we've really talked about anger. I do think it's an emotion that doesn't get enough attention in terms of how to deal with it in a healthy way rather than just focusing on it as only a negative thing but in researching it, I found that there's quite a few studies talking about this link between anger and anxiety.
I also, like you, Dedeker, hadn't really considered it before, but as I started looking into it, it did start to make sense, like you were saying, Emily, where I was like, "Oh, yes, yes, there is that." To give you a basic overview of it, one way that it goes is that anxiety can trigger anger as a defense mechanism.
If we're feeling anxious, that comes from our body feeling threatened and it's activating our fight-or-flight response, and that fight or flight, the fight part is anger is a way to do that. This acting out in aggressive ways can be this way to try to regain control. If you think about if you've ever dealt with like an animal that's running away from you, if you're chasing after a dog or something like that, that got away.
Emily: God forbid a cat with claws.
Jase: A cat's actually probably a better example.
Dedeker: Yes, cats are definitely much worse.
Jase: That they're going to run from you usually, but if you corner them, suddenly, running's not an option anymore, and that's when the claws come out, right? That's where, well, I can't flight anymore, so now I'm going to fight. I think that with us humans, all this stuff gets more complicated because of all our social dynamics and things. We're acting less physically and instinctually a lot of the time.
If you imagine this where I'm feeling really anxious, which my body is interpreting as you're feeling threatened, and I'm trying to manage that, trying to figure out what to do, and then my partner comes to try and help me, but the way that they do that comes into my personal space or I feel like is just complicating it. It increases that. Then I might lash out and be like, "Ah get away. You're smothering me", or get angry that you're patronizing me trying to help me, or things like that.
I think that's where some of the anger when people use the wrong triforce can come from, if someone gives you advice when you don't want it, especially if you're feeling emotional and anxious about the thing you're expressing, it can feel like, "Okay, now I need to attack back to protect myself and to keep some safety."
Emily: It's interesting also that anger and anxiety can share a lot of the same physiological symptoms. They can be really similar within your body. They both involve the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and then that leads to similar physical sensations like increased heart rate, and rapid breathing, and muscle tension.
When you go to acting school, at least for me, they talked a lot about complex emotions, and how often emotion isn't just one thing. You're feeling multiple things at once. It's interesting, I guess, when I look at this and think about, yes, if you're angry, you can also feel that underlying anxiety in there as well, and that just can perpetually feed upon each other.
When we experience anger, these physical symptoms can be misinterpreted as signs of anxiety, and that can lead to a heightened sense of unease or panic or, "I got to get out of this situation." You can feel your heart racing when you're in the heat of an argument with a partner. That triggers anxiety, maybe about the state of your relationship, for example, and maybe will make you think like, "Should I even be in this? Is this something that I really want to continue to be a part of?"
Jase: Then that's where the cycle comes in, right? That each one can trigger the other. That's how this anger-anxiety connection comes about.
Dedeker: Also because, essentially, it's the same instrument doing all the stuff, right? It's still your sympathetic nervous system that's activating your heart rate, that's making your palms all sweaty, that's activating your breath rate. Even though fleeing or fighting are two different modes, it's like your body still needs to be prepped for some kind of action, whether it's escaping or whether it's fighting. You're still getting that same release of stress hormones triggered, like cortisol and adrenaline. That's why it's a lot of the same symptoms. It's the same chemical going into the pot, causing the same reaction.
Just like we've covered in previous episodes about how chronic stress hormones being in your body can cause ongoing health issues or chronic health issues, it's the same thing here, whether it's anger or anxiety or this duo package combo of both of them, it can not only lead to long-term health issues but also relationship strain.
Jase: I remember the first time this concept where the physical symptoms of emotions could be the same, and it's only the meaning we put on it that changes how we act about it and how we feel about it. I remember first reading about this in a book on experimental psychology many, many years ago, and it blew my mind at the time. The example they used in that book was fear and infatuation. Actually, some symptoms overlap with what we're looking at here, not quite the same, but that feeling of butterflies in your stomach, maybe your palms are a little bit sweaty. There's a little bit of anxiety and excitement.
Emily and I were in an acting class where we had a teacher who would talk about if you're feeling nervous about an audition, what if you thought about that nervousness as feeling excited because the physical symptoms are basically the same? It's you putting a different meaning onto that. Now I think that's easier said than done, but to go back to that experimental psychology book, there are some studies about having people see someone else that they might be attracted to after they had done something that elevated their heart rate.
I think in this example, it was just running on a treadmill for a little bit. They found that compared to a control group, they rated that person more highly on attractiveness and how much they were into that person because they were experiencing something they would experience with a lot of attraction, but for a different reason. It's like our brain and body doesn't quite know how to determine what the source of a physical thing is. We can try to, but that it's very easy for our emotions to get confused.
Dedeker: If you have a crush on someone, is the idea put them on a treadmill or suggest that you go jog together and maybe that's going to help your chances that they're going to be into you?
Jase: The author of this book's suggestion was to take them to a scary movie on your first date as another option.
Dedeker: Well, I think that's a terrible first date idea. I'll just shoot that one down right out the gate, but yes.
Jase: Yes, maybe it's going for a walk together, actually. That's a nicer first date, I think, to get that heart rate elevated a little bit. Anyway, to bring this back to anger and anxiety, a couple of studies to mention here. One was this one called A systematic review of neural, cognitive, and clinical studies of anger and aggression. This is from 2024 by Richard et al. Basically, the key finding here was that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, so a part near the front of your brain, is a brain region that's involved in emotion regulation, that it activates in a very similar way for both anger control, so when it's trying to suppress anger, and also when it's trying to modulate anxiety, when it's trying to deal with anxiety. Showing that also our system that tries to cope and regulate both of those activates in a very similar way to do that for both emotions.
Then another one is a study by Smith et al., also from 2024, called The Relationship Between Anger and Anxiety. Basically, this one just showed this strong correlation between the two emotions, like we talked about that anger can cause anxiety and anxiety can cause anger. Their key takeaway was about treatment and saying that if you try to treat just one in isolation, that that may actually be less effective than treating both. Rather than, I guess, just going to some kind of anger management or relaxation thing or something about anxiety, that actually addressing both together could be more effective.
Emily: Now, when we look at things like anger and anxiety, there definitely are these preconceived ideas of what both of those things manifest as and look like. For example, anger always looks like maybe yelling or physical aggression. In reality, it can manifest as passive aggressiveness or stonewalling or even sarcasm. Then anxiety, maybe people think that it always presents as nervousness or worry. In reality, it can also appear as irritability or controlling behavior or trying to control a partner, perhaps, or even perfectionism, something near and dear to our hearts.
Dedeker: Yes, definitely. Yes.
Jase: Yes, I do think it's interesting to look at the controlling behavior piece there and to think about that thing we've all heard of before and that we've probably all experienced to a certain degree of a partner who's very controlling and trying to really manage our life, to see that actually might be an expression of anxiety. I think a lot of us wouldn't immediately make that connection between those.
Before we go on, I want to take a quick moment to encourage you to join our Patreon community. We have an awesome community of really supportive, open-minded people who help each other out. That's available to our patrons. If you go to multiamory.com/join, you can find our Patreon page there. Choose a tier that has the perks that you want. Being a part of that community is a really, really cool thing. Then also, if you could take a moment to check out our sponsors, if any are interesting to you, we really appreciate that they support our show. If you use our promo codes, that lets them know that you care, too, and that these are good recommendations for you, so that they can keep supporting our show.
A couple more studies that I thought were interesting, one seems obvious, I guess, but it's nice to have that backed up by a study. This is called Anger and Anxiety in Intimate Relationships: A Study of Married Couples. That's by Johnson et al. in 2023. Basically, their finding was that high levels of anger and anxiety predicted lower relationship satisfaction and made those couples more likely to separate or get divorced. I think that seems obvious, but it is worth noting that there is statistical significance there, too, that anxiety and anger in relationships makes them less happy.
Then the other one, this one, I did think was really interesting. This is called Anger and Anxiety in Older Adults: a Cross-Lagged Examination by Segel-Karpas in 2024. It's a weird title, but basically what they mean by cross-lagged is doing a longitudinal study. They took this sample of almost 7,000 older Americans, and then four years later, surveyed that same sample of people again.
Basically, what they found is this cross-lagged effect, and that means that if in the initial survey, they reported higher levels of anger suppression, of needing to withhold anger in their relationship, or that they expressed a lot of anger in their relationship, that then four years later that person had higher amounts of anxiety that they self-reported. Similarly, if in the first study, they reported higher levels of anxiety, in the second study, they would report higher levels of expressed anger and suppressed anger. Effectively in both directions, they found an equal amount of correlation between one earlier causing more of the other one later on. Showing this balanced, cross-lagged reciprocity, I guess.
Dedeker: That's really interesting because I think that, usually, we associate someone who is suppressing their anger as someone who is not expressing it, and that if you're expressing it, you're definitely not suppressing it. I think that this seems to imply that if people are feeling anger that's not being dealt with in an appropriate way, whether that's through unhealthy expression or suppression, it's like you're going to end up with the same result of this balance out of anxiety that comes along with it, or you're the one who actually looked at the text of the study, were the same people reporting both anger suppression and expression or were those different groups of people that tended to report that?
Jase: What they said specifically was that they found that the amounts of both were increased for the expression and suppression, that both of those were increased, but it didn't clarify if-- I could go back through all the numbers, I suppose, but they didn't seem to find a significant difference if the person expressed more than they suppressed earlier on, if those flipped, or if it was just the same. Basically, the levels of each compared to the levels they were before would go up if they had been anxious at the first point in time, four years before the second point. Does that make sense?
Dedeker: Yes, it does. I feel like my armchair theory about all of this, at least when it comes to the anger, is that even if you are suppressing the anger, that's only so sustainable for so long--
Emily: Exactly, it will come out eventually.
Dedeker: If you're angry or you're resentful at a partner and you think that you can just keep it under wraps or keep it to yourself, it's like you still find ways to express it.
Emily: It'll seep out.
Dedeker: Even if it's you, I don't know, closing the dishwasher door and slamming it a little bit more than maybe you would, or huffing around the house if your partner doesn't do something that you thought they were going to do. It's like you find ways for it to be expressed, and often, it's just not in very healthy ways because you've been spending all your energy trying to suppress it.
Jase: Yes. I think that part of what I take away from this is that it's not a correlation between how you're expressing it or whether you're expressing it, but just are you feeling it? It's like, do you have that anger and resentment that leads to anxiety, or do you have anxiety that leads to that anger and resentment regardless of whether you're really good at suppressing it or not? Just because you think you have it under control doesn't mean that it's not still potentially going to have some negative effects. I think that's the key takeaway there.
Emily: The two of you talked a little bit about your relationship to anger and how your family of origin may or may not have contributed to that, and I'm assuming it probably did. I think that it probably did in my own life as well. That makes a lot of sense. If we're looking at things like insecure attachment styles with anxious or avoidant insecure attachment styles, that can definitely lead to coping mechanisms that may be are maladaptive that aren't great for us.
If you have unresolved trauma or trust issues from previous relationships, whether those relationships are ones with your parents, family members, or past romantic relationships, they can really fuel current anger and anxiety. I think that that has happened for me. Again, my shorter fuse is happening because I'm still processing a lot of what I went through in my last relationship, and that's causing me to maybe have more anger in my life and even in my current relationship to a degree.
Dedeker: I think it's important to go along with what we were saying earlier about how these feelings do find a pathway, eventually a pathway out of you and onto something or someone else that sometimes even if you're so, so, so good at keeping it under wraps that often it means the only channel is to direct it towards yourself. Self-directed anger and self-directed anxiety or shame can also influence your relationships with other people.
If you're internalizing this anger-anxiety combo, at least that self-blame, maybe the feelings of unworthiness, maybe the inability to be able to let your guard down and relax, difficulty accessing things like self-compassion or self-acceptance, which also influences our ability to be compassionate and accepting of others that are around us. I know that it makes me think of my experiences in relationships, especially times when I have, I think, been the most caught in that angry-anxious cycle, which was a lot of the pandemic.
I think that was the case for a lot of people during the pandemic that when I would lash out at a partner or be hypercritical of a partner, it was 100% a reflection of how hypercritical I was of myself. The standard that I would hold a partner to was 100% this mirror of the extremely high standard I was trying to hold myself to for certain things. I don't know, I think I'm just trying to make this point that there's no escaping your feelings is ultimately what I'm trying to say at the end of the day.
Emily: What you're saying is that we should be less critical of ourselves so that we can be less critical of our partners perhaps, or that it all starts with us?
Dedeker: It all starts at home, you know. No, I'm saying we're all messed up and there's no avoiding it and there's no escaping it. It's a little bit more of a less hopeful message, I suppose.
Emily: Oh, okay.
Jase: Oh, boy. No, but I think it's worth acknowledging that they all feed into each other. To go back to what I had said before about the studies showing it's more effective if you try to treat both instead of just one or the other, that I think that's true with a lot of wellness stuff is that if we try to treat it in isolation, which I think is how the traditional western medicine way of approaching physical problems also goes that way. It tends to be like, "Let's try to treat as specifically this one thing as possible."
I think that's starting to change now, but realizing that there's a little more of a holistic approach because maybe you can do this thing to fix your knee pain, but maybe it's actually something about tension in your low back that's changing how your hips move that's affecting your knee pain. That all that's kind of interconnected. Then by favoring that knee, you're now putting more weight on the other side, which is causing shoulder pain up on the opposite side. It's like everything can be interconnected.
I think, emotionally, we have a very similar thing like this link between anger and anxiety, and something that I'm realizing now, I should have looked to see if there were any studies about this, but I think the pandemic was a great example of increased anxiety levels for basically everybody. At least anecdotally, from my experience, I also felt like I witnessed a lot more anger from people toward whoever else they felt they could be angry at during the pandemic. I think some of that's still holding on, although it feels less intense than it did back then. That's an interesting larger population version of exactly what we're talking about here.
Dedeker: I think that when it comes to relationship in particular, it's a tricky thing because, to a certain extent, all of us are living in a certain amount of insecurity. We can spin out about late-stage capitalism and all that stuff. It's like even if your relationship is feeling really healthy and your home life is very stable, your financial well-being is very stable, that we're still living in this situation that does not produce a sense of well-being. I think that that anger-anxiety treadmill can still be very much active for pretty much everybody.
Jase: Certainly to a certain extent. Yes.
Emily: I think it can be really easy to get into relationships to try to fix or save ourselves from ourselves or fill or change some of the past patterns that we've had in other relationships or maybe fix the things that are challenging about ourselves currently. We just did an episode on your partner shouldn't fix your own insecurities, but they also shouldn't fix or save you from your own emotions. Things like emotional regulation.
I think a lot of us want our partners to be the one to help us emotionally regulate, and while they can, and that is a thing that you can mutually do together, ultimately, it is your responsibility and not solely your partner's job to do that. Expecting a partner to manage your emotions, it can lead to things like codependency and resentment.
I think a lot of us just expect our partners to be the ones to fix us. Even if we don't have that at the forefront of our mind, it's still in there and it's still something that is underlying. When they can't do that, because nobody can really do that, it has to come from within, that can lead to resentment and that can just continue to perpetuate this shitty cycle that we're talking about today.
Jase: For sure. I would say, I hope that all of us, as well as all of you listening are convinced. Okay, this is something worth addressing, something worth dealing with. Let's get into the part where we talk about how. What can we do? What can we actually do about this issue? Before that, we're going to take a quick break again to talk about some sponsors of this show. Really do check them out if they're interesting to you. Use our promo codes that does support our show. If you would rather listen to ad-free versions of this show, we have a tier for that in our patreon@multiamory.com/join. You can get information about that.
Dedeker: Probably the first and easiest thing to recommend, although not always easy to execute on, is seeking out some kind of individual counseling or joint counseling with your partner in order to develop healthier communication and coping skills if you suspect that this anger-anxiety binary star is maybe undercutting some of what you want your relationship to actually be. You can take your pick of whatever therapeutic approach works for you.
We like to recommend Emotionally Focused Therapy from Sue Johnson, especially for couples work. CBT is really good if you feel like for you, your angry-anxious cycle is caught up in your thoughts and in your beliefs. Of course, I'm a huge advocate for somatic experiencing as well, because it tends to deal directly with what's going on in your nervous system, especially if you think that it may be related to prior trauma. Ultimately, the best type of therapy is going to be the type that resonates with you.
Emily: If you're noticing that a partner is coming at you with some anger or passive aggression, it might be a good idea to ask them, "Are you anxious about something, or is something going on in your work life or in another area of your life that you're anxious about?"
I think that opening the doorway to that anxiety side of things, rather than the anger side of things, is going to enable you to come at something with a little bit more empathy and softness and not as, I guess, intimidating and defensive as one might be if you're approaching someone who seems really angry or thinking, "Okay, what are they angry about? I also need to get angry back at them." I think coming in instead with that curiosity about what is causing them anxiety, that's a really great way in which to approach a challenging time within their life.
Jase: Maybe don't hit them with that immediately, right when they get angry with you, but a little bit later come in and have that conversation, like during a radar check-in, or something like that.
Emily: Well, yes. Anger also might just be a plea for some space and control, so maybe just back off a little bit as well. That's always a good thing. Give them time to simmer down a little bit and have a moment, halt, or establishing time outs or cool down periods. All of that is a really great coping mechanism. If you create a shared relationship care plan with agreed-upon strategies for managing anger and anxiety, especially if you notice that that's something that the two of you tend to go to often, a pattern that you may get into often, then creating a relationship care plan, I think, is a really great way to go.
Another great thing to look at is our episode on repair shop, or our chapter in our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. In that, it's basically a way in which to come back together after a fight or after a moment of conflict. You take a day, or you take an hour, you take a little bit of time away from it, and then you come back and you look at the stories that were happening between each of you during that argument.
You go back and discuss your histories, why maybe something was so heated, why you were getting really anxious or angry or emotional about something, because maybe of past history that was challenging regarding that specific thing. You take ownership of your part within the argument that you may have had, and then prevention is the last step, and that goes hand-in-hand with this relationship care plan. What are the things that you can do in the future to ensure that something like this may not happen again?
With that, that enables you to also share your fears and your insecurities and your needs, hopefully, openly and honestly in a safe space. We have other things like radar for that as well, so you can definitely go check out our tools. It's great to always be able to respond to a partner's vulnerability with empathy and validation and understanding. I know that can be challenging sometimes, but come first from a place of, "I want to help. I want to tackle this problem with you. It's not about you. It's about something that the two of us can address within the relationship and hopefully make better."
Jase: What you brought up a little bit earlier, Emily, about if you're seeing anger, maybe addressing it as anxiety and trying to find out what kinds of fears might be underlying it, or what sort of feeling out of control might be underneath it, or, I guess, it could go the other way, too, of if you're noticing that your partner is anxious, or they're expressing some anxiety to maybe examine a little bit of like, is there some anger? Is there stuff that maybe you could be angry about that you're not expressing?
I do think that's worth just noting because, like you said, Emily, maybe for that person, it would feel less confronting to deal with the other emotion that's a little less obvious. I don't know that that's always going to be the case, but it just gives you a different option of how to approach it. The same for yourself, right? If you find yourself feeling a lot of anger, maybe inspecting, is there some anxiety here, or vice versa, could just be like, "Okay, if I know I have a problem with anxiety, and I'm not thinking about anger as much, talking about anger and how I might be feeling that or suppressing that could feel easier, I guess, because that's less of the mountain," it's like, "Okay, that's accessible, and maybe that starts to give me some inroads into the rest of this."
On the idea of self-care. I know I stress this one a lot, but things like making sure that you're getting enough sleep is really, really important. Sleep is incredibly important for our mental health. If you're not getting enough of it, doing what you can to try to improve that. If you're struggling with anxiety or difficulty sleeping, I definitely go through phases of that myself.
I can relate to it, and you just got to do the best that you can, but if it's I'm not sleeping because I'm just staying up late or partying a lot or playing games so late in the evening, you've got a lot of control over that, and it's worthwhile that you might not realize the degree to which that can affect your mental state, or even just your ability to examine your own thoughts and your own feelings are really compromised by not getting enough sleep. That's really one to consider.
Another is paying attention to what you're consuming. This is something that if you find you consume a lot of news or a lot of social media, if people are posting a lot of stuff that makes you feel anxious, which is, that's what sells, right? Like, I think that people talk about news really playing into fear. I think it's really anxiety more than fear, that that's the thing that we-- it's like, yes, I'm worried and I'm scared, but I also not sure what's going to happen, so I've got to keep watching. That's what gets us sucked in.
I think a lot of what people post on social media really plays into the same kind of thing, and that anxiety might be contributing to us feeling more angry, or if you're watching a lot of what's going on in the news and in politics, you might feel really angry about it, and that's going to increase your anxiety. Being aware of that and trying to limit some of that consumption can really be important.
Then the last couple here is related to drugs. The first is trying an experiment of stopping drinking alcohol or having cannabis or caffeine, or at least cutting them down. The reason why I say experiment is it's not like, "I'm going to quit this forever," but maybe stop for a month and just see, do you notice anything changing? It's especially helpful if you journal while you do it. This was something my therapist recommended a little while ago, and it was actually surprisingly helpful. Well, it wasn't like this night and day difference, but over time, I was like, "Oh, yes." Also, I don't have stomach aches as often. I noticed these other things that seem to all be contributing to it together.
Then on the other side, it could be that in therapy, you may find that medication is an option to consider if we're talking about anxiety or depression, which also can be connected to each other. Actually having some medication on that, you might be surprised at how much it helps out with another area like anger or passive aggression or difficulty communicating in your relationship.
Emily: Of course, you can always seek support from friends or family or a therapist to avoid over-relying on a partner for emotional regulation. It's always important to build a diverse support system to meet various emotional needs. That's one of the great things about something like non-monogamy, but also just multiple friends, family members, community. We have a great community. You can also really encourage a partner to have their own support network and coping strategies.
I think it's really difficult, and it's something that I've seen in past partnerships, partners who don't have that, it's very difficult, I think, for them to be able to rely on anyone other than the person who is on the other side of the anger and anxiety for ways in which to fix the problem. If you don't have a therapist, and if you don't really have a lot of friends that you talk about vulnerable things with, like who else are you going to go to? Try to find that because your partner can't be the only outlet for that. It's really not fair to them.
When you connect with your partner, or when you connect to other people, take ownership of the anger that you personally have, and I think it's it's easy often when we're talking to people to vilify someone else, other than ourselves, but it's also very important to be able to take ownership in any capacity for whatever part of the challenges that you're facing in your relationship.
Dedeker: I think that this is a difficult topic to give suggestions for because it can feel so big. We've done episodes entirely dedicated to anger and we've done episodes entirely dedicated to anxiety, that these are standalone issues that we deal with and feelings that we deal with. I think there's something about being aware of the link between the two of them that I'm hoping, rather than making it feel twice as overwhelming, makes it actually feel maybe twice as culpable with. Like, I hope that being aware of the link makes it so that you feel like, "Okay, because these two things are related, I can maybe deal with both of them at once to a certain extent since I know that they're a little bit of a package deal."
Emily: Not culpable, but copable.
Dedeker: Not culpable, copable with. Yes, it rolls off the tongue. It's super easy to say. Just knowing that there's a relationship here means that you can look at the relationship instead of being so overwhelmed by, "Oh my god, I have to focus on my anger. Oh my god, I have to focus on my anxiety."
Jase: Yes, maybe it's a little bit like in a video game where there's the boss that's really difficult, but then you notice they have a glowing tail. That's their vulnerable point, maybe--
Emily: Like Ganondorf or Ganon, rather, at the end of Ocarina of Time.
Jase: Right, or basically, 10 billion other games, because that's such a common mechanic for so long, but yes, that idea of maybe this opens up for you, an option of, "Oh, yes, maybe I could go for this part that feels more accessible or feels like I could make progress, instead of this one that I've been running into and just don't know how to get through."
Lastly, we want to remind you that you're not alone in navigating this complex world of anger and anxiety. Lots of people struggle with this themselves. I know all of us have gone through that at different points and still are in certain ways, and we do have a really awesome community in our Discord. There's some really amazing supportive people, and if you start a thread talking about this, I bet you'll have a lot of other people who want to share their own experiences and help support each other.
You can go check that out on our Patreon, and we have a question of the week for you on our Instagram at multiamory_podcast, and that is, how do you and your partner navigate moments when one or both of you are feeling angry or anxious? Now this could be, what are strategies that work well for you, or this could be, what are the bad patterns that we fall into? Either way, I think it's helpful to share that and to think about that a little bit.