JP’s Reviews > Overcoming Depression: A self-help guide using cognitive behavioural techniques > Status Update

In working with our anger, we need to discover why we feel threatened and then work with our feelings of vulnerability.

1. Understand the values you place on the things that make you angry
2. Consider the way that you feel hurt and vulnerable

Many psychologists think that beneath the veneer of an angry person is a very vulnerable one — not someone who is confident or strong. Confident people rarely need to get angry as they feel less easily threatened and more assertive. It is because anger implies that we have felt something as a threat or block that it can be so ‘hot’ and difficult to control.

The steps to forgiveness often require us to fully acknowledge what we have done, face our guilt and pain, learn from it, make amends if we can, and give up attacking ourselves.

Unexpressed anger actually causes depression. - Freud

What Triggers Anger?
1. Frustration related
2. Injury related
3. Exploitation
4. Lack of attention
5. Envy and jealousy
6. Lack of social conformity
7. Compassionate anger

If you feel sorry for your poor behavior then it is useful to express this as sadness rather than as anger.

Work out how much your guilt lead you to take on a rescuing hero stance in life. Is this helpful to you? What do you risk by doing this? Will you get burnt out? If there are times when you have to say no to people, be aware that you might feel guilt to some degree; but you don’t need to always back down.

Sometimes therapy is about learning to tolerate our negative feelings.

As a rule of thumb, when you hurt people with your thoughtlessness—and you will, we are not perfect—own up to it. Allow yourself to feel the guilt and pain you have caused. This does not make you a bad person; far from it. It keeps you in touch with your caring feelings and compassion.

When you’re depressed, it feels like everything has to be earned. However, such sense of ‘deserving from earning’ can be unhelpful. Now the question for you is: if good things happen to you, can you enjoy them? Can you really appreciate and take joy from them? Or are you a person who constantly thinks, ‘I don’t deserve this?’

It is important to allow yourself to take an honest look at your life and see what needs to change to make you feel less burdened. Are you expecting too much of yourself? Have you become exhausted? Do you feel like this when you are not depressed?

Coming out of shame is often a slow opening-up process. We gradually learn to reach out to others, and become more compassionate with them and with ourselves. Once you make the decision to come out of hiding, numerous possibilities become open to you.

Guilt and Escaping

✅ Try to work out what specifically you want to escape from.

If people try to be helpful, respect their efforts rather than discounting them. Again, avoid thinking in all-or-nothing terms—i.e. they must understand completely or it’s pointless. Maybe a little understanding is helpful. Maybe it’s part kf a step-by-step approach. Try to avoid attacking others if they do not understand in the way you would wish, as this will put them on the defensive.

Since shame is usually about hurt, sometimes it is possible to tell others what has hurt us and explain our feelings.