Anger & Adolescing
Sep 13, 2023- I’ve had many inquiries this summer about teenagers and their anger, how to deal, and what to do. Is this anger normal? Should I be worried? Parents, caregivers, and adults who are in the sphere of adolescent energy often feel like pulling their hair out, wondering “what is it with teenagers and their anger!?!”
Anger, because it is one of our four basic emotions, is a given. It’s a thing! It’s not something that we are going to get away from unless we become a creature like Spock from Star Trek–emotionless. And god forbid we ever do so. Because we need anger. Our kids need it. If you raise adolescents, teach them, work with them, coach them, support them, then you are going to be dealing with their anger. Our job is to guide, scaffold, usher, and companion them through those moments and help them form healthy mature relationships with their anger. Our job is also to recognize our own triggers and angry reactions to expressed anger in our kids.
Your first line of response
The best place to begin is with our relationship with anger, so here are questions for reflection:
What are your memories of anger from your adolescence?
How was anger handled in your household when you were a kid? Was it accepted? Banished? Used as a valid tool to create change?
How do you model anger and expressions of anger? In your home? In the workplace?
Do you feel like anger and its expressions are disrespectful?
Is anger allowed in your own internal system? How do you feel toward your angry parts?
If we are going to be with our teenagers and their anger, their angry parts, we must know how to be with our own anger, our angry parts, and our parts’ expressions of anger.
Hormones, the brain, and other considerations
Teenage anger is particularly challenging. Given the hormonal and brain storms that occur during adolescence, we can expect to have to buckle in for a bumpy ride. (See Inoff-Germain, Arnold, et al, Pajer, Tabbah, et al, and Ramirez for more on the correlation between hormones, anger, aggression, and adolescents. See this comprehensive article that explores anger, aggression, and the irrational beliefs that adolescents often have.) We must also keep in mind all of the valid reasons for fear and anger that our youth face: climate crisis; neverending reports of school shootings; COVID and the reverberations from 12+ months of lockdown; the powerful influence of social media; in the US, the roiling political divide that leaves all of us feeling uneasy and uncertain; the rising threat of authoritarian government policies here at home and globally. For most of my teen clients, there is an ever-present sense of looming threat for which they can’t always identify the cause but feel keenly. Where there is fear, often there is anger.
Things to consider
While anger is a basic emotion there is also great complexity. We can’t solve the “problem” of anger with simplistic, one-size-fits-all solutions. Here are some considerations and assessment questions for supporting your angry adolescent. Each of these will require a particular intervention and/or response. Some may require professional help, more research and knowledge, and/or extra support for you and your child.
Has the expression/nature of the child’s anger become more intense, more aggressive?
Does the child have a history of trauma?
Is the teenager neurodivergent?
Are you engaging with the adolescent in invalidating ways? Intentionally or unintentionally?
Is the adolescent having a perceived experience of invalidation?
Does the teenager have major stressors in their lives? For example, major transitions; friendship or intimate relationship issues; stressors regarding school, jobs, or family?
Does the adolescent have a mental health diagnosis?
Are drugs or alcohol an issue?
Has the child been prescribed psychopharmaceuticals? Is medication management and compliance an issue?
Do they feel powerless or helpless? If so, their anger may be an attempt to exert control and power in a situation where they feel they have none.
Are you going through major stressors in your life? Are you emotionally regulated? Our teenagers need to know that the adults in their lives can handle the big things. They need us to be emotionally regulated. If we can’t, which is understandable, they are going to act out. Often scary behavior equals scared feelings in the individual.
In conclusion
Anger is complex and necessary. So many people are afraid of anger, which makes sense for many reasons. Anger demands respect. We need to acknowledge it, make room for it, and teach kids how to appropriately and respectfully express it. To banish, exile, punish, or shame anger is going to backfire. If the child knows anger is not allowed in the environment, it doesn’t go away. It becomes a psychic pressure cooker. It’s going to be expressed somehow, including passive-aggressiveness; displaced anger; aggressive and/or destructive acting out; internalization which can lead to self-harm, self-loathing, and suicidality.
Anger can be a magnificent, beautiful, transformative energy. Anger helps kids know when they need to set boundaries, how to set those boundaries, and how to maintain them. It can lend backbone when they need to self-advocate and hold their own in an overwhelming, threatening world. If they need to show up for themselves in the face of pressure–peer and otherwise–anger is there for them. Anger, especially the anger that comes from the archetypal Adolescent, makes kids do heroic things like stand up for others who are being bullied or oppressed and gives them the strength to stand in the face of oppression and injustice. Anger done right gives them energy and fire to contribute to, create, generate, and support the changes our world so desperately needs.
Image by: Budimir Jevtic