Anger is often misunderstood. Many of us are taught that anger is something to suppress, control or avoid. Yet anger serves an important purpose. It is a mobilisation emotion, an emotion that provides energy for action when something feels wrong, unfair, threatening or when an important need is not being met. Think of our strong moral compass here too of what’s right or wrong.

For neurodiverse people, including those with ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Tourette’s, OCD and other neurotypes, anger can sometimes feel bigger, faster or more intense. However, anger itself is rarely the whole story. It is often the visible expression of something happening underneath.

Understanding the four core emotions.

• Mad (Anger) mobilises us to take action
• Sadness encourages reflection, grieving and seeking comfort
• Fear helps us identify danger and seek safety
• Joy supports connection, motivation and wellbeing

And then you have the fifth emotion SHAME (I’ve written about in a previous blog) which draws our attention to perceived social disconnection, mistakes or threats to ‘belonging’ and self-worth (our inner entrenched self-dialogue).

While these emotions serve different purposes, anger is often the one we notice first because it is energising. It gets our attention but we also fear it.

The challenge is that anger frequently masks other emotions. Underneath anger we may discover sadness, fear, disappointment, shame, overwhelm and/or exhaustion (burnout).

Why Anger can feel so intense for Neurodivergent people?

Neurodivergent individuals often navigate environments (our lives basically since childhood) that are not designed with our needs in mind.

Daily experiences may include:

• Sensory overload
• Social misunderstandings
• Constant Masking and trying to adapt to fit in
• Executive functioning challenges
• Rejection dysphoria/ feeling judged
• Difficulty communicating needs (throw alexithymia in here too)
• Extreme tiredness from managing competing demands

When these experiences accumulate, anger may emerge (fight or flight) as the body’s way of saying:

‘Something needs my attentions’

Pause, at this point you can start to see that anger is not necessarily the problem. It may be signalling an unmet need.

Anger as a messenger.

Think of anger as the warning light on a dashboard. The light is not the fault. It is providing vital information. Questions worth exploring include:

What is this anger trying to protect?
What happened just before I became angry?
Is there sadness underneath this?
Is there fear underneath this?
Which of my needs is not being met, seen or heard?

When we become curious about anger rather than judging it, we often discover valuable information.

Let’s look at a practical way to explore the experience beneath the anger.

Pause and notice what’s happening. The aim here is, rather than immediately reacting, acknowledge the emotion.

‘I can feel anger showing up’

Explore the situation and what has triggered the response.

Ask yourself:

What happened?
What meaning did I make of that situation?
What was difficult about that experience?

Name the emotions because although anger may be present, what else are you feeling,

• Hurt
• Shame/feeling judged
• Disappointment
• Frightened
• Overwhelmed
• Grief
• Feeling of injustice/not feeling heard

Being able to name emotions often helps us understand them more and why anger is dominant emotion.

Now consider your unmet need (s) which might be:

• Rest
• Safety
• Predictability
• Understand
• Connection
• Boundaries
• Validation
• Recovery from sensory overload

Maybe now, this rush of anger can begin to make sense because we are starting to recognise the actual unmet need (s) beneath it.

Your choice (remember anger provides mobilisation energy and now you can start to ask ‘how do I want to use that energy’?). Be curious rather than instantly judging yourself for projecting outward. This can be fear driven from the imprint within our nervous system – our lived experiences to date.

Remember, anger may be loud, but it is not the whole narrative. Anger management recognises the critical need for emotional understanding, nervous system awareness and needs based regulation. Anger, therefore can be a positive emotion if used to mobilise and meet your unmet needs.