I’ve been aware of my anger recently. Much of the global news over the last few months has been one factor. I notice myself reasoning with my anger. Reason comes from an intellectual ‘head’ space, whereas anger occupies more of an instinctual ‘body’ space. I’m very familiar with living more in my head than my gut. So reasoning comes fairly easily for me, and I can make arguments for and against being angry. I also find this blog difficult to write, my anger reluctant to take form on the page. But I have been reminding myself that there is an intelligence in my body too, and to trust my anger on it’s own terms.
Psychologist Sandra Thomas conducted a Women’s Anger Study in 1993, a large-scale investigation involving 535 women between 25 and 66. Her study showed three main roots of women’s anger: powerlessness, injustice and the irresponsibility of other people. Although gender socialisation may affect how anger is experienced, so far research hasn’t found any gender differences in these roots. Certainly it rings true to my experience, that my anger comes from powerlessness, injustice and my perception of others as irresponsible. Anger is a normal response to problems, not a problem in itself.
In 1981 Audre Lorde wrote in ‘The Uses of Anger’ how anger is an appropriate response to racism and a useful tool for change. She described how black women in America have learnt to ‘orchestrate’ a ‘symphony’ of anguish in response to systematic dehumanization. I don’t want to remove the context of this argument away from racism and more specifically the experiences of black women. But I can connect to this in my own way too. Anger is never, in my experience, ‘just’ a personal feeling. My anger arises because of feelings of powerlessness, injustice or the irresponsibility of others. These are relational and societal issues. I can’t conceive of the concepts of power or justice without considering the impact (or lack of impact) of something or someone upon something or someone.
If anger is denied it can mutate and twist, just like any emotion. To deny it is to deny a part of myself. So in a very real way, if I deny my anger I mutate and twist myself out of alignment. This can have world consequences. My body can twist that anger, through a physical twisting out of shape, through tension in my shoulders. Or my anger comes out in ways I wouldn’t want, either through aggression or passive aggression. If I’m unaware of the roots of my anger then no amount of expression or denial will ease my suffering.
The path to easing the suffering anger can cause is through understanding. As anger is formed relationally, the path to healing may also be most effective if walked relationally. Counselling could form a part of this, as could social activism. To me framing anger as relational very much includes personal responsibility. A relational frame involves looking ‘in’, through which I see what is ‘out there’ more clearly. I can then see how the ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ inter-relate. Learning to study my anger is useful, finding its edges, its sources, its directionality, its orientation. I can then use my anger as a compass to guide me away from what contracts my being, or towards what expands it. I go inwards in order to find the path outwards.
“Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”
– Malcolm X
Sometimes anger can be destructive if ignored or channelled in the wrong direction. I am often perceived to be a very peaceful person, and certainly value my inner sense of peace. However, those who know me well also see my rage occasionally. As I get older I’m becoming more understanding of why my anger is necessary, and am even becoming grateful that it exists. Anger can be protective. The more I am in touch with anger, the more I can use it for positive change (internally or externally) and the less blindsided by it I am. This reminds me of the Hulk / Bruce Banner, the comic book character. People often only see the Hulk’s rage, but Bruce developed this alter ego (with a little help from a dose of gamma radiation) as a protector after suffering abuse by his father. The characters creator, Stan Lee, wrote:
“He never wanted to hurt anyone; he merely groped his torturous way through a second life trying to defend himself, trying to come to terms with those who sought to destroy him.”
He needed a protector as a child, and finding none, had to create his own. His speech patterns as Hulk are a clue to when his alter ego was created. Short sentences with limited vocabulary (“Hulk smash!”). One way of looking at the story is that Bruce takes responsibility for his rage as an adult by channelling it into a role where he protects the vulnerable, just like he protected himself as a child. Hulk may have been a necessary creation, where the potentially deadly yet transformative gamma radiation can be seen as a metaphor for abuse. We shouldn’t confuse allegory for reality though. Domestic abuse is most often carried out by men against women. Perpetrators of violence usually report feeling like victims themselves. Anger is justifiable and can act as a guiding light to what hurts. But this involves inner work and does not justify violence against others. Bruce Banner’s hurt must be acknowledged at the same time Hulk’s violence must be condemned.
No one would wish for any child to experience the type of horrors that would create a Hulk-like persona. I didn’t experience any such abuse as a child. But Bruce Banner’s story can still shed light on why my own anger exists. The themes of powerlessness, injustice and other’s irresponsibility hold a certain resonance. I can find it hard to love the angry part of myself that comes out most often in sarcasm and passive aggression. But imagining anger as apart (or ‘a part’) from (or ‘of’) myself, in the form of an external character like Hulk can help me see ‘it’ more clearly. When I am ‘in’ my anger I can’t see it, not until afterwards. However, if I separate it and name it, I’ve automatically created a distance between ‘me’ and ‘it’. This allows us to sit in opposite chairs and have a conversation. This separation allows me the space to reflect, to converse, and to increase my ability to respond, rather than react, to situations (increasing my response-ability). The separation allows reflection, and that allows re-integration.
I’ve been involved with social activism in the past as a way to direct my anger about local or global politics. I would wonder why I would get so angry about world events when others wouldn’t. Didn’t they see what was happening? Didn’t they care? It was only through my own counselling that I learnt to understand why some events in the news resonated with me on a personal level. Resonance is relational. Even objectively terrible news events will resonate more with some people than others because of their personal experiences. My inner ‘tuning fork’ is different from others. If I understand why certain world events resonate so much with me it doesn’t explain away my anger, or explain away objectively unjust events. Rather it helps illuminate and expand my understanding of why it’s important to me personally, which can then guide my actions. If I am trying to heal an old inner wound through reactivity, externalising my rage, the rage may never subside, and the wound may never be soothed. But by ‘tuning in’ I came to understand why certain frequencies resonated more than others, and could use this knowledge for more intentional action.
Anger and men
As a boy, the best-case scenario is you grow up in a household which encourages you to put your feelings into words. A household which accepts all emotional expression, where it’s OK for boys to cry, and to explore all aspects of their identity in a safe and holding environment. But then you go out into the rest of the world, and you come up against resistance to this acceptance. The air you breathe is different. Men are discouraged from veering from conservative ideas of masculinity. Strength, stoicism and dominance are valued. Anger is permitted, especially when expressed through aggression. Many other emotions are considered weak and are discouraged from being expressed.
As the writer and therapist Terrence Real says, traditional gender socialisation asks boys and girls to halve themselves. Girls and women can express themselves emotionally and forge deep connections but are systematically discouraged from expressing their public, assertive selves. Boys and men in contrast are encouraged to become assertive but not to express their full range of emotions. Of course, the societal limits of how men are supposed to express (or not) our suffering doesn’t mean we don’t suffer. There’s a reason why men commit suicide more frequently than women: because we suffer in silence. Lots of men I know, myself included, feel pressure to perform a kind of expected male-ness, even if we don’t always have the words for this. To ‘be a man’ means to push my emotions down or away, to take action, to protect, to take charge. Limiting men’s emotional expression doesn’t just limit men’s capacity for intimacy, it can also make us dangerous.
“Too often, the wounded boy grows up to become a wounding man, inflicting upon those closest to him the very distress he refuses to acknowledge within himself.”
– Terrence Real
Do you think it’s OK for men to cry? What would you think or do if you saw a man crying? I’ve had these conversations with friends and fellow counsellors, and I think a lot of us would like to think “Yes of course it’s OK” and “I’d react to a man’s tears in the same way I would a woman’s” but the reality of being faced with a man in tears is often different. Think about someone specific, your Dad, a male partner or a friend for example. Exploring these questions often tells us how we each hold up the status quo. An example: your Dad doesn’t usually cry. If you see him getting upset this normally results in him raising his voice, or withdrawing. Maybe you saw him cry once and were so surprised you didn’t know how to act. You thought, if he’s crying things must be really bad.
I try to take responsibility for my own life. At the same time (‘and’ not ‘but’) I have to recognise the soil impacts how the tree grows. I can forgive myself for being snappy or sarcastic at times. And the more I understand and learn about the relationship I have with the world, the more I can express my sadness, grief, terror and so on in authentic ways which do not harm others. There’s nothing wrong with being angry, and sometimes anger masks other emotions which men have been taught are less acceptable. Everyone feels anger of course, and these gendered patterns of men and women halving themselves may not be everyone’s experience. I try to write these blogs centred mostly around my own experience, which is what I know best, in the hope this connects with others. I resonate the most with other people’s writing (or films) when it’s centred on other people’s direct experiences, which they may think is only specific to them. Whenever I write about ‘we’, ‘men’, or ‘women’ this loses the personal in search of the universal. So: I know my anger, its edges, how it hides, how it emerges. I know my anger is good, even if I tend to move away from my gut and into my head at times. I’m thankful I’m good at noticing this process.