What I've learned about anger and vulnerability

I won't speak on my experience that led me to being vulnerable, but I will share my discoveries.

As Brene Brown says, to be truly vulnerable is to let someone see an emotional side of you (that is a source of pain) that would be judged, criticized, or attacked, and have that person accept it. When this happens, so does true healing.

I've always been an emotionally expressive person growing up, and usually have no issues being myself, even if doing so invited levels of judgement I was able to handle well. I thought that was the same thing as vulnerability, but that moment I had made this difference clear to me.

Key emotions to keep in mind!

Now I want to talk about anger. Anger is both a primary emotion and a secondary emotion, but it's primary purpose is 1 thing, to protect. Anger is shown instinctively when you undeniably see a danger that you just act on instinct. This is the type of anger you don't spend time thinking about. There was no build-up. It saw threat, it saw something it needed to protect, then boom, anger helps.

Anger also functions as a secondary emotion. Secondary emotions are learned responses that can come as second nature to things that produces different more difficult emotions (shame, sadness, depression, frustration, embarrassed, uncertain), etc. If we're in environments that tell us to "man-up" or "don't be a baby" when we express difficult emotions, then in order to not feel hurt or invalidated again, we develop responses that prevent hurt (real or perceived). This type of anger usually has a slow build-up, mainly that if you experience a primary difficult emotion yet you're trying to fight it (weather with your self or prevent others from seeing it), the very act of doing so is protective. And what emotion do you experience when trying to protect something? Anger.

Now here's something I should mention first before continuing this post, and that's emotional truth. Emotional truth is a state where what you currently feel at its deepest, most raw form, is your truth. This is true to you, as this is something you feel. For example, if you feel like you can't get a job, thus no financial security, thus inability to live your authentic life, then objectively speaking, one can look at Covid as well as GenAI and say those objective factors is what causes the tough job market, but in Emotional Truth, it feels like your efforts are inadequate, that you're somehow broken because even though you applied for jobs, no one responds back to your application. It'll feel like no company wants you, questioning your credentials. It becomes a lot like frustration, uncertainty, or even shame and sadness. "I can't get a job, no company wants to hire me" is the emotional truth, the facts surrounding it are independent of emotions.

The real reason men express emotions through anger

Now if you're in an environment where you feel like you have to protect yourself from everyone and can only rely on yourself, this sets you up for only being able to express vulnerable emotions in the form of anger. I know because every time I felt something deeply and it bothers me, I try to write it out to express my emotions as best as I could. However, sometimes, the emotion I could naturally respond to was anger when writing it out. My thought process was whatever deep emotion I was feeling, if I could express it by writing, even things I normally wouldn't say and sound primitive, I could help let the anger slide instead of keeping it in.

But there was one crucial detail I forgot every time I do this. I was trying to damn hard to argue against emotional truth with objective facts that the natural emotion I default to when expressing those things are anger because, by the act of trying to argue against my own feelings of frustration, I'm still protecting my own deep feelings. Even if I say "I'm so sad" in a state of anger, then even if you're technically saying you're sad, the fact that it's said angrily means the emotional response is still protective.

Unlike true vulnerability, anger doesn't have the properties of healing like more deeper emotions (i.e crying) does. Healing happens when you show parts to someone (parts of you that someone could really harm and use against you), and letting them take care of you. We're relational beings, so an act like this is healing of itself. True vulnerability is not something we can achieve on our own. Someone has to be there to receive it.

Vulnerability is like seeing a doctor for a cure. If you're bedridden in a hospital for severe injury, then your ability to protect yourself is reduced. Knowledge in the hands of an enemy or a bully will open opportunities for easy access for them, more pain to you. But if you make your injuries known to a hospital, they have all the information and they can harm you if they want to, but most doctors will choose to heal that injury. We should view vulnerability in that sense.

How feminist concepts like the patriarchy and toxic masculinity fit into this!

I hope you're still with me so far, because there is one thing I'm gonna address that I'm sure a lot of you have thought about reading this, and that's how feminist tie this back to toxic masculinity.

How they'll frame the narrative is the society that tells men to "man up" and says "don't show emotions" is the societal structure called the patriarchy, and the learned responses where in order to protect yourself, the main expression of those feelings comes out at anger? "Toxic masculinity teaches men and boys that they can't express their emotions other than anger because they believe emotions are girly."

You see what's happening here? They're essentially saying that we learn anger as a learned response because we don't want to be seen as girls because that's feminine and therefore not masculine. So we suppress expressing emotions because we don't want to be seen as girly, so anger is an emotion we allows ourselves to express because it helps us look tough.

And while the society we grow up in often does shame men for showing difficult emotions like crying, their learned responses is a protective measure against societies judgements, not because they're trying to live up to this mundane standard of masculinity where emotions mean weakness.

What's really happening underneath?

The psychology is this. If you feel like you have to protect something, even if it's your own emotional well-being, or topics and situations that bring you shame, sadness, or frustration that you know if you express at certain places you'll be attacked, then when you try to express your emotions, anger is the natural emotions to default because we perceive a part of ourselves as something we need to protect from the outside world. If we see a threat, we need to protect.

Even if you try to express those issues with no one but yourself, if you have this underlying fear that people will hurt you, then even as you unpack those feelings, you can only express them in anger as long as you perceive it as something to protect.

protection is the core of why we mostly express anger as an emotion. We're protecting our most difficult emotions from being seen by people, hence why anger is a mask when expressing those feelings when in reality. If you feel like during difficult topics or situations, you naturally default to expressing them with anger, there's a good chance you're trying to protect something. Is it someone you care about that's in immediate danger, or is it something you know people will attack or judge you for?

Don't get me wrong though, that doesn't mean you have to show your vulnerable side and put the protection down just to heal. In fact, putting that protection down in front of someone who will attack you won't help you heal from those deep wounds. In fact, it'll either make it worse or, if they're the type to accept first then judge later, will follow a cycle of heal-wound-heal-wound.

That means, for true vulnerability, there are 2 core things need to be done in order to heal. 1. you need to let that armor go when you're gonna express a difficult emotion at its rawest forms in times where you'll likely to get hurt and 2. the person being shown this emotional nakedness needs to accept it and treat it with care.

This feedback loop of knowing someone will have our backs and keep our best interests at heart, will be at the heart of healing.

Now, if there's anyone who has a background in psychology, therapy, or have done research on psychological concepts, please let me know where I got right and what I've gotten wrong in my post as I'm still new to exploring this