Anger Covers Pain

Matt Mochary gets emotional when he talks about this insight. He'd been working on managing anger for years. Then someone told him something that changed everything.

'Anger is not a base emotion. Anger is actually a cover. It's a cover for when we feel pain, so our brain doesn't want to feel the pain, so instead it externalizes it. But the problem is it shoves that pain onto everybody else around us.'

This hit hard because he realized what was happening. 'You're breaking it with the people who are closest to you. They're the people who are nearest to you, which are the people you love and care about the most.'

When your toddler screams at you, there's pain underneath. When you snap at your toddler, there's pain underneath too.

'The real answer is just to allow ourselves to feel the pain and it sucks by the way, it actually hurts. But then we're not pushing that out onto other people.'

The next time anger rises - in you or your child - ask: what's the pain hiding underneath?