Just found this invaluable website while doing research on another post of mine (the link to the site is given below).. It explains how we are not responsible for angry feelings, only for how we manage and express them. The other article I have copied from at the beginning of this blog shows what other feelings may lie underneath anger in children. This is invaluable knowledge as the child in question is often our own wounded inner child.
If you understand the other feelings that lie behind anger of the child, you will be in a much better position to help your children process it. There are numerous other feelings masked by anger. These include hurt, fear, shame, feelings of abandonment and rejection, vulnerability, feeling unloved and unlovable.
Very often hurt is the main feeling behind anger, and if you talk to your children about that hurt, you will have a healing effect on them. Sometimes with younger children fear is the feeling that triggers anger.
Fear is about survival and being in danger ultimately provokes anger. There are many fears that a child may harbor and hence many reasons for their anger. Anger is very quick to fill a vacuum, and it can readily fill the emptiness in an unloved child. Children who have not experienced love, will not know why they are angry, the parent or parents who are unable to give love will be puzzled and possibly blame the child.
How often do we label our children without pausing to consider why they are as they are? Let us not label them as angry children. Let us look at ourselves as parents and take responsibility for forming them this way. Children need unconditional love, and those who get it will thrive and never suffer core anger. Anger will also fill the vacuum in a child who feels a failure, feels powerless, unwanted, is hungry, is in danger of being hurt, is deprived of something essential, is not liked by other children, or is confused.
Being aware of your anger at a given moment : This only takes a few seconds. You must bear in mind that you only have a very brief opportunity to control your anger. The amygdala, that part of your brain that processes emotion, allows only a quarter of a second to respond to an event that triggers it.
While this almost instant response is happening the increased blood flow goes to the frontal lobe of your brain that controls your reasoning and this takes two seconds to react. This brief window allows you to create more time to process the anger. You can become aware of where you feel the anger before it overwhelms you. Most of us are not aware of this because we never thought of it before. The next time you feel anger listen to your body and be aware that your anger is about to proclaim itself. You may feel your fists tighten or your jaws clench.
Begin to talk to yourself internally admitting that you are feeling angry and try to master it by your internal conversation rather than letting it take you over. The longer your conversation the better. Finally, if you can put yourself in the other person’s shoes that might help. Understanding another person can ease your anger with them.
Ultimately, you are not responsible for your angry feelings, but you have a choice about how to process and express your anger. You can choose to hesitate, to give yourself space, not to vent your anger on someone, and not to blame or criticise them. This may be hard, but you have a choice. Even in your worst moments you have a choice. I can never accept it when someone says to me that they are unable to control their anger. Many show admirable self-control in external circumstance, but not so much in their own home.
You can control your anger if you have an awareness of it
Emerging From The Dark Night 