Unmet Needs: Frustration and Anger | Sonomare

A cup, a week of saying yes, and a reaction that surprises you. Frustration and anger seen through unmet needs and the body.

EMOTIONS, BODY AND NEEDS.

Laura Roig

10/8/20269 min read

You've spent days telling yourself it's fine.

When Your Needs Aren't Met: A Story of Frustration and Anger

You've spent days telling yourself it's fine.

That you'll rest later. That you can handle it. That it's not worth arguing about. That tomorrow will be different.

You've spent days sleeping worse. Answering messages you didn't feel like answering. Accepting plans when what you really needed was to stay home. Saying yes when you wanted to say no.

And it works. Up to a point, it works.

One Tuesday afternoon you walk into the kitchen and there's a cup on the counter. Just a cup. Someone asks, quite casually, if there's anything left for dinner.

And you explode.

First you feel it in your jaw, a sharp snap, like a door slamming. Your chest fills with heat. Your voice comes out louder and sharper than you wanted, with words you hadn't planned. In front of you is a face that doesn't understand what just happened. Neither do you.

Then, silence. Your heart still racing. Your hands a little shaky. And then the guilt arrives.

Why did I react like that?

There's a question I come back to often when I hear stories like this one. It isn't the one you've just asked yourself. It's the next one: what if the reaction didn't really begin in that moment?

Anger doesn't always begin with anger

Maybe it began on Monday. Or two weeks ago. Maybe it began the first time you said "it's fine" and it wasn't.

Before anger, other things can be there, quieter ones: exhaustion, disappointment, helplessness, fear, the feeling of not being listened to or taken into account. Sometimes, an accumulation without a name.

I say "can" on purpose. Not all anger follows this path. There are clean, proportionate bursts of anger that respond to something that just happened. And sleep, pain, the stage of life you're in, each person's history, all of that matters too. Human experience isn't a linear formula: not everyone reacts the same way, not all frustration ends in anger, and not all anger comes from here.

But looking a little further back seems to me one of the most interesting doors to open.

What were you needing?

Maybe you didn't need to "regulate yourself." Maybe you needed to sleep.

Maybe you didn't need to "manage your emotions better." Maybe you needed to say no.

Maybe you didn't need to learn to put up with more. Maybe you needed someone to listen. Or to stop being available to everyone, even for a single afternoon.

I'm not offering this as a universal truth. It's a way of asking. And when the question changes, the scene in the kitchen looks different: it's no longer just an overreaction, it may also be a warning that arrived late.

Frustration: when reality doesn't match what we need

Frustration is the distance between what we need, want, or expect and what is actually happening. It isn't a character flaw. It's a human experience.

And this is where Gabor Maté's work made me stop. I've drawn inspiration from his books, interviews, and public conversations, and there's one idea of his I find especially interesting: the relationship between unmet needs, frustration, and certain forms of anger or aggression. In a piece on teen violence, he proposes that frustration is the engine of aggression and that the person living it often doesn't know where it comes from.

He writes it with a forcefulness that I prefer to read as a hypothesis rather than a law, and in a specific context: teenagers and their attachment to their peers. It is his perspective. It is not a scientific consensus.

There is another, independent route that points in a similar direction. Self-determination theory proposes that people have basic psychological needs, such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Its authors link the frustration of those needs to distress and to greater vulnerability to defensiveness and aggression (Ryan & Deci, 2000; Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013). Neither perspective explains everything. The other needs I mention here, like rest or space, are our own reflection, not evidence.

Fustration: wehn reality doesn't match what we need

The conflict between belonging and being authentic

Now imagine that during that week, at some point, you wanted to say what you needed.

If I say no, they might get angry. If I show I'm angry, they might stop wanting me around. If I say I need help, they might think I can't cope. If I set a boundary, I might lose the connection.

What happens when expressing what we need puts our sense of belonging at risk?

Maté speaks about this tension between attachment and authenticity. In his talk Reconciling Attachment with Authenticity, he describes the conflict between our attachment needs and the drive to be ourselves, and the toll it can take when fear leads us to repress who we are. He develops it from The Myth of Normal in Return to Self. In his framework, some people learn to disconnect from certain needs or emotions in order to preserve the bond.

And he adds something I find important. In a conversation at the University of Arizona, he insists that attachment needs can go unmet without anyone having stopped loving: sometimes the people caring for us were stressed or overwhelmed.

This isn't an explanation that fits everyone. Some people ask for things easily, and others struggle for very different reasons. But maybe that's why the question seems so interesting:

How many times have I chosen belonging over listening to myself?

Anger may be telling us something

Anger is neither good nor bad. Sometimes it warns us that a boundary has been crossed or that something important is being ignored. But we don't always know what. The anger might point at the cup, and the cup might have nothing to do with it.

Because feeling it is one thing, and acting from it is something very different. Feeling anger doesn't justify hurting anyone, and understanding it isn't excusing it. Nor is it about clamping down on it until it disappears. In the documentary The Wisdom of Trauma, Maté suggests looking at where difficult behaviors come from, instead of only correcting or suppressing them.

If your anger leads you to hurt others or yourself, or if its intensity frightens you, it's worth talking to a mental health professional.

The body often knows before we do

Sometimes you notice it first in your jaw. You realize you've been clenching it for several minutes. Your shoulders are up, almost at your ears. Your breathing has changed, shorter, higher. There's heat. Maybe a knot, maybe an urge to move.

And you haven't yet thought: I'm angry.

It doesn't happen the same way for everyone. Some people feel cold, some go speechless, some notice nothing until it's too late. It's about getting to know your own signals.

As we start to observe them, we can also ask ourselves how the nervous system shapes how you feel, and why a body loaded with days of strain reacts so quickly to something small. And if you wonder at what point that load became too much, there are signs that can help you know if your nervous system is dysregulated.

From sensation to action

All of this happens very fast, which is why I like to separate it into pieces. The sensation: the heat in your chest. The emotion: the anger. The impulse: the urge to shout, or to leave. The action: what you end up doing.

From a perspective inspired by Somatic Experiencing, it isn't about holding yourself back. It's about noticing the sensation, recognizing the early signals, and opening a small space between what you feel and what you do. A tiny margin. Sometimes it's the only one there is.

On the evidence, honestly: a randomized trial with 63 people with post-traumatic stress, compared with a waitlist group, found positive results after 15 sessions (Brom et al., 2017), and there is another trial in chronic low back pain with post-traumatic symptoms (Andersen et al., 2017). This is research in clinical trauma settings, and it is still limited. It is not a treatment for anger and it isn't for everything. Here I use it as inspiration for observing.

Regulating yourself doesn't mean learning to endure everything

Regulating yourself doesn't mean learning to endure everything.

Sometimes regulating is breathing. But other times it's saying no. Resting. Asking for help. Setting a boundary. Changing a routine. Leaving a situation. Stopping being available. Acknowledging that something isn't working.

Maybe you didn't need to hold on longer. Maybe you needed something else.

A nervous system doesn't regulate in a vacuum. In Return to Self, Maté argues that the body can't be separated from the mind, nor health from the social environment. As a framework, I find it useful: sometimes what needs adjusting isn't the person, but the conditions they live in.

If one day you want to try observing it

If one day you want to try observing it, you can start with something very simple. When the most intense moment has passed, calmly, you can pause on these questions:

What happened?
What do I notice in my body?
What emotion is showing up?
What impulse is showing up?
What do I need?
What can I choose to do now?

It isn't a therapeutic technique and it doesn't aim to solve anything. It's an invitation. Some questions will go unanswered, and that counts too. If observing your body feels uncomfortable or overwhelming, you can stop, look at what's around you, or do it with someone beside you.

How we work with this perspective at Sonomare

From the perspective we're building at Sonomare, we don't separate the body from its context. We bring together the body, the nervous system, presence, sound, regulation, and the environment each person lives in.

We draw on Somatic Experiencing to go slowly, recognize early signals, and respect each person's pace. We use sound as a space for pause and bodily perception, something that invites you to notice what's happening inside. We don't promise results, it isn't a medical solution, and it doesn't replace therapy when therapy is needed.

Frequently asked questions

Does Gabor Maté prove that anger comes from unmet needs?

No. His ideas are a clinical and popular-science framework, not a scientific consensus. Here I take them as an interesting hypothesis that intersects with independent research on psychological needs.

Does all anger come from an unmet need?

No. There are many possible causes: exhaustion, pain, stress, each person's history, context, or health conditions. Exploring needs is one route, not the explanation for everything.

When is it a good idea to seek professional help?

When anger leads you to hurt others or yourself, frightens you, or persistently affects your relationships or your work.

Back to the cup

The cup is still there, on the counter. It's still a cup.

But maybe now the story reads differently. It began long before. You'd been tired for days. Saying yes. With no room. Without asking for help. Without saying what you needed. And a cup was the straw that broke the camel's back.

But it wasn't the whole story.

Maybe the next time an intense reaction shows up, we don't have to ask ourselves only "why am I so angry?"

Maybe we can look a little further back and ask: "what was I needing before I got here?"

And then, very gently, one last question:

"Which part of me learned that I couldn't ask for it?"

References

1. Gabor Maté's perspective (the author's framework and popular science, not scientific consensus):

Maté, G. Are Violent Teens Suffering "The Rage of the Unparented"? https://drgabormate.com/violent-teens-suffering-rage-unparented/
University of Arizona, Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. Exploring Trauma, Addiction, and Emotional Pain with Dr. Gabor Maté. https://weilcenter.arizona.edu/episode24_mate.html
The Wisdom of Trauma (documentary). https://drgabormate.com/the-wisdom-of-trauma/
Reconciling Attachment with Authenticity (presentation). https://drgabormate.com/events/trauma-illness-healing-in-a-toxic-culture-11/
Return to Self: Navigating Attachment and Authenticity (presentation). https://drgabormate.com/events/trauma-illness-healing-in-a-toxic-culture-26/

2. Independent scientific studies:

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2000_RyanDeci_SDT.pdf
Vansteenkiste, M., & Ryan, R. M. (2013). On psychological growth and vulnerability: Basic psychological need satisfaction and need frustration as a unifying principle. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 23(3). https://pure.ewha.ac.kr/en/publications/on-psychological-growth-and-vulnerability-basic-psychological-nee/
Brom, D., Stokar, Y., Lawi, C., et al. (2017). Somatic Experiencing for posttraumatic stress disorder: A randomized controlled outcome study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 30(3), 304–312. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5518443/
Andersen, T. E., Lahav, Y., et al. (2017). A randomized controlled trial of brief Somatic Experiencing for chronic low back pain and comorbid post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 8(1), 1331108. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5489867

3. Sonomare's own reflection: reading an intense reaction as something that may have begun earlier, the distinction between sensation, emotion, impulse, and action, the idea that regulating isn't enduring everything, and the observation practice are interpretation and proposals from this article, not scientific evidence.