How to Heal Anger After A Breakup

Feeling a sense of anger towards your ex after a breakup is a completely normal and human response to the situation, for the person being dumped, but sometimes also for the person who broke up with their partner. It’s normal, provided of course, the anger isn’t allowed to fester and doesn’t lead to actions that could hurt yourself or others.

In fact, anger is usually one of the first steps on the journey of healing from a breakup. In this post we will cover a strategy for better understanding and hopefully alleviating lingering anger from a breakup.

As a first step, let’s investigate where the anger is coming from within ourselves.

Anger is sometimes referred to as a “compound” or “composite” emotion, because it can often be brought to the surface by multiple underlying emotions or thoughts. Sort of like an emotional “anger iceberg.”

Let’s work through an example that can help make compound emotions easier to understand.

Imagine you’re driving in your car, on your way to work and another driver cuts you off. Your blood boils, your face feels hot, and your palms become sweaty as you lay on the horn. You feel a flash of anger as the other driver speeds off and disappears up the highway.

The only information your body is giving you is that you’re overwhelmingly angry, but If we dive deeper and investigate the thoughts in that moment we can get a clearer picture of where that anger is coming from.

“Man that driver could have hit me! They could have seriously injured me or worse. I was afraid for my safety. On top of that, I have a huge presentation today and they just added so much additional stress to my morning, I’m going to choke now for sure.”

As we can see from the above example, the driver’s anger came from 3 completely different underlying emotions. The thought of bodily injury or death frightened the driver, the incident added new stress, and there was a heightened fear of failure for the day’s presentation.

Even in this simplified example, our driver’s anger is coming from 3 different underlying emotions!

When it comes to breakups, which are much more emotionally and situationally complex, we often end up having many more emotions and thoughts underlying our anger.

It could be that you made subconscious assumptions about your partner or relationship that the breakup proved false, which lead to feeling a lack of control. It might also be that your ex made assurances of “undying love” that have then been upended by the breakup, leading to emotions like betrayal.

No matter the emotions underlying the anger, uncovering them and their unconscious thought patterns is the key to dispelling the anger they turn into.

Below are a few questions you can ask yourself in order to start uncovering the emotions underlying anger.

• During the relationship, did my ex cross any of my personal boundaries? If so, which ones?
• Did I build up any expectations during my relationship? What were they?
• Did the breakup make me feel less certain about the strength of my future relationships? Why?
• Am I taking something my ex did / said too personally? What do their actions say about them?
• Did my ex outright lie to me? Do I feel a sense of betrayal?

If you’d like a kind, helpful partner during the investigation of your feelings, feel free to start a free trial of Breakup Buddy by clicking the download link below.

The next step in healing the underlying emotions causing the anger is a very personal one, and different strategies will work better for different people. However, the core idea is that once the anger is uncovered to be coming from different emotions / beliefs, one can begin exercises to confront those emotions, like increasing self-esteem, or drawing concrete boundaries for their next relationship, etc.

Below I’ve listed 3 common emotions / beliefs underlying anger and provided directions one can take in order heal said underlying emotions.

1. Lost Security: If your ex said they loved you right up until the days or hours before the breakup, you’re likely feeling blindsided. This might lead to fear or a sense of lost security. You might be having thoughts that love cannot last forever and there’s no point in trying if someone can up-end your sense of security just like that.
   This is certainly a tough feeling and realization, and one that is not easily overcome or consoled with words. However, it can be the beginning to a beautiful reframing of life and one’s perspective on it. A realization that we are really only able to control our own actions and reactions to our thoughts, nothing more. Any sense of control or security you possessed was simply an assumption. Sit with this idea and see if it resonates with you.
   
2. Imagined Future: Sometimes our anger is based in the fact that during the relationship we “jumped forward” and created a complex and beautiful imagined future with this person. We pictured the beautiful house, with the lush garden, and 2 or 3 kids running around that have your nose and their eyes. This is an easy fantasy to fall into, we’re all guilty of it at one point or another.
   If your anger is coming from the loss of an imagined future, one you never actually had, but were only planning to have, you might take solace in the fact that you haven’t actually lost anything. When we live in the future, and that future is “destroyed” it may feel like we have lost that entire future. However, remember that that future was your fantasy. You still have the power to live it out with another person, someone who is likely better suited.
   
3. Betrayal: Being lied to or cheated on is one of the hardest emotional rollercoasters to endure in life, and when that betrayal leads to a breakup it can be even harder. If your partner lied to you or cheated on you, you are likely having overly negative thoughts stemming from placing your trust in another and having it betrayed.
   It might not come as much solace during the height of anger or negative feelings, but try to sit with the idea that, if you did the best you could at the time to communicate and set boundaries, and did not betray your ex or their trust, then you have done all you can, and any betrayal is more of an indication of their morals and trustworthiness than it is any comment on you.

I’m sorry to hear that you are feeling the pain of a breakup, but I do hope some of these questions or ideas have helped you reach a deeper level of emotional understanding and have moved you further along the journey of healing.