Anger is a secondary emotion.

I love these lyrics taken from 'Lightness' by Death Cab For Cutie.

'Instincts are misleading
You shouldn't think what you're feeling
They don't tell you what 
You know you should want...'

Anger is a secondary emotion. There is always a primary emotion that precedes anger, such as fear, disappointment, frustration, sadness, loss...sometimes it can be just too difficult and painful to deal with these softer emotions and show our vulnerability, so we default to anger which is a much more powerful place to come from.

For example a man finds it very difficult to cope when his wife is angry with him. How could he respond to his wife differently knowing that actually she isn't angry and attacking him, but feeling insecure and scared that she could lose him, the way she has perhaps lost other significant men in her life.

If we recognise anger as a smokescreen for vulnerability, we can see her anger is actually panic in response to external events that she experiences as threatening, perhaps due to past traumas. As she is unable to cope with these feelings on her own, she then 'gives' her anger and panic to him in the hopes that he will be able to help her manage them.

However he perceives her anger as an attack on him and begins to panic as well. He tries to appease her with explanations, but this only serves to infuriate her further as she feels unheard, unsupported, alone and even more vulnerable. They then spiral out of control as she becomes more and more angry in an attempts to cope with her overwhelming feelings.

When we can look past the anger to see the scared little girl asking to be comforted and loved, we can begin to see how to work towards healing, reconnection and greater understanding of each other and who we are.

NB. The purpose of this post is merely to provide an insight to what anger is and where it could come from. This is not to say the person who feels angry gets a 'get out of jail free card'. It is always their responsibility to look at why they are angry and what it is they really want and work towards reconciling these feelings for themself rather than continue damaging their relationship. More on anger as a secondary emotion here.