Description

HELPING YOUNG PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THE FEELINGS BEHIND FEELING ANGRY

Download our What’s Behind Anger poster. Featured in Brené Brown’s, Atlas of the Heart. This free infographic illustrates that anger is often a secondary feeling to other deeper, perhaps more vulnerable emotions.  Oftentimes, we confuse other emotions with feeling mad, enraged, or furious. The closer we can get to naming what’s really behind anger, the closer we can get to greater self-awareness and choosing what to do next.

Therapists and researchers often classify anger as a secondary, protective emotion, which emerges from the fight-flight-freeze stress response.  However, there are also other feelings that trigger feeling angry, even if they are harder to identify.  These feelings include fear, anxiety, confusion, outrage at injustice, grief, isolation, shame, humiliation, hurt, sadness, helplessness, rejection, and loneliness.

WAYS TO USE OUR WHAT’S BEHIND ANGER POSTER

• Can be a useful reference when talking with students and children about feeling angry and the triggers behind it.
• Increase emotional vocabulary.
• Develop self-awareness.
• Reframe a challenging experience.
• Improve interpersonal communication.
• Reference during mediation, small group, or individual counseling.
• Helpful reference for families to use as visual support with children.
• Comes in color and black and white….so you can have your students color in their own poster version, too!

We also have a free (very small) Feelings Thesaurus poster.  In addition to a fun, developmentally appropriate video lesson about the fight-flight-flee stress response.