The danger with male anger is that when you have no way to express vulnerable emotions, anger is going to come out as aggression a lot more.  Being able to deal with negative/vulnerable emotions without anger is a valuable skill. 

Most women have at least a girlfriend they can call up and say “I’m feeling really bad about myself, everything I touch turns to crap” and the girlfriend will understand.  So just talking to her friend makes her feel better.

Now how many men have a male friend they can call and say “I feel really bad about myself” and then feel better?  You might do it but you’re not generally going to feel better if you do.  Men don’t even know how to respond to that. 

Men generally have three ways of dealing with difficulties in their lives.  They get drunk, get laid, or they watch football.  Now all these activities can certainly distract men from the difficulties they are experiencing in the short term, but do nothing to relieve the underlying issues in the long term if they are feeling really bad about themselves.

A lot of men cannot even talk about their vulnerable feelings with a girlfriend, so if you can’t do it with anyone, you are probably going to have an anger problem, which will show up as either anger or depression.

Vulnerable feelings have to be expressed and communicated, and someone has to understand.  There used to be a myth that you had to express anger, in fact, expressing anger just makes you angrier because you are reinforcing the anger.  All those vulnerable emotions are coming out in anger, and you’re just making it more likely to occur.

However, you do need to express the core hurts underlying the anger, self-regulate them, and tell them to someone important to you.  That is how human beings are; we have to have an internal way to regulate anger and a social way also, because we are social animals.

Core hurts are feeling disregarded, unimportant, accused, guilty, distrusted, devalued, rejected, powerless, and unlovable.  When these happen you need the skills to re-connect to your Core Value.  Core Value is a deep sense of how important, valuable, and worthy you are.

You do not determine how valuable you are by how many people love you, or value you because that is going to depend on how good these people are at loving.  When you judge how lovable you are by how somebody else loves you, it is like judging yourself by a mirror.  What determines how accurate the mirror is how much love that person got as a child.  Something you have no control over.

It is only your own behaviour that reflects your Core Value, and especially your compassionate behaviour.  So if your Core Value is low, it is not other people’s behaviour that is going to bring it up, it is your own compassion that is going to bring it up.  Your sense of security, wellbeing, self-esteem, competence, creativity, and personal power comes from your Core Value.

When your Core Value is low, you will do things that are not in your best interest.  You are likely to hurt yourself, or hurt other people.

When your Core Value is high, you will only act in your best interest, and it is impossible to hurt yourself, or hurt other people.  You cannot be abusive, and it is very hard to be abused when your Core Value is high.  It can only occur during a temporary disconnection from Core Value.

When you let your Core Hurts rule your life, your sense of self becomes a monument to that other person’s abuse, or carelessness, or thoughtlessness.

Your sense of self is far too important, and too valuable to be a monument to somebody else’s mistakes.  You have to take control of your sense of self, and heal the hurt that has been inflicted on you.