Learning to Deal With Other People’s Anger When Anxiety Makes You Frightened

Before I was diagnosed with bipolar 2 and anxiety, I thought I was just a “wimp.”

Anger – anyone’s anger – frightened me, even if it was not directed at me. I spent a lot of time cringing until it became an automatic reaction.

This was not because I was raised in an abusive home. I wasn’t. My parents expressed anger appropriately when they were angry, which wasn’t very often, and didn’t take it out on us kids. Once, my father, in a fit of frustration, kicked the locked door to a room my sister and I were squabbling in, and it shocked me. But compared to what some unfortunate kids go through, it was nothing. Once my fifth-grade teacher slapped my hand when I was holding hands with a boy, but again, my main reaction was shock.

But by the time I reached my late teens and early 20s, strong negative emotions overwhelmed me. Not just my own emotions, but other people’s. I was seldom touched by their joy or relief, but their anxiety or anger really got to me. That’s when I started cringing — literally drawing back in fear and trepidation when voices were raised. At its worst, I cringed even when the voices were in another room.

Along with this, my startle reflex was in overdrive. A sudden noise from another room caused me to jump and gasp. The sound of someone dropping a kitchen utensil was enough to set me off.

I believe that these reactions were a result of the anxiety disorder my psychiatrist eventually diagnosed me with. I always felt that the negative emotions, the anger and the attacks would be coming at me. I was always on edge, anticipating the raised voice, the accusation, the threatening sound. And it was exhausting. There’s a certain amount of adrenaline that goes with fear and anxiety, and it can leave you shaking.

Oddly enough, I didn’t really start to get over my fear of anger until I began to get in touch with my own anger. For years, I thought my only feeling was anxiety, but hiding behind the fear was anger. Even in situations that should have made me angry, when I had a legitimate reason to be angry, I never felt that feeling. That part of building a wall against my feelings worked, even if anxiety and depression were walled in, not out.

Gradually, I began to see that there were times when I should have been angry about something that had happened – that I had a right to feel angry. Later, I learned I also had a right to express my anger. And I learned that neither feeling anger nor expressing it would destroy me. At that point, other people’s anger began to have much less of an effect.

I’m not completely over it. When someone expresses not simple anger, but rage, near me, I again feel the need to rebuild the walls. But I am learning to deal with it. Sometimes, I am able to help the person examine their rage and explore what to do with it. Other times, I can simply remove myself physically from the situation, so the rage doesn’t come pounding in on me. I learned to do that when I was dealing with simple anger and the anxiety surrounding it. But I’ve found that it works for rage, too. If I don’t have to be around it, I don’t stay within range.

Fortunately, rage is rare in the people I choose to have around me. Anger still happens, both for me and others around me, but I have learned coping mechanisms and built up the strength to withstand it.

I no longer cringe.