You’ve probably always been a “good girl”. You don’t like to burden others with your needs, you keep the peace with a smile on your face and try to not rock the boat.
But underneath that persona is a bubbling, festering anger that has been around likely as long as you have, even though you’re not sure when it consciously started. If I had to guess, it’s usually when the micro violations of your boundaries as a child began and you were encouraged to look the other way and continue to be pleasing, nice and well behaved. And this made you feel angry. Today I’m going to jump into anger just a bit and how feeling irritable in your day to day life is usually sign that you’re bumping up against suppressed & unprocessed rage.
Two Main Reasons You Suppress Your Anger
1. Anger Feels Unsafe & Dangerous
Girls got the message at the youngest of ages that anger was a very unsafe emotion and was not to be messed with or tolerated for even a moment. And often for good reason. You possibly learned this if your father or other men in your life had explosive behavior and your mother or other female caregivers would swoop in, ready to calm him and fix the situation. This taught you that all anger was ugly, scary and bad. It also likely taught you to adopt a protector identity similar to what you saw your mom or other female caregivers doing- fix, care for others, tolerate others’ unsafe behavior while shoving down your own emotions so that you can keep the peace and earn approval. (If this happened in your home growing up and you see similar patterns in yourself you might want to read about the tend & befriend response).
You maybe also had a mother who had volatile emotional outbursts so your first introduction to anger was seeing her experience with the emotion. It felt like she was never in control of her emotions and that was scary.
2. Good Girls Are Not Angry Girls.
The reflex to suppress your anger and call it things like “irritation” or “annoyance” is hugely to do with the belief that if you want to be attractive, pleasing to others and approved you then you need to be pleasant. Chill. Agreeable. Smiling. Nice. Not angry.
How many “crazy angry woman” tropes are there to support this cultural belief? Like Taylor sings, no one likes a mad woman. And if you’re a white woman consider yourself lucky. Black women have far less leeway in our society to express even an ounce of their rage lest they be labeled an “angry black woman”.
Shoving It Down
Shoving down your anger is lying to yourself day in and day out. It’s exhausting and essentially living a boundary-less life with yourself. When you’ve learned that anger is bad, unattractive and displeasing you are trying to shut off half of the spectrum of the human experience. You cannot selectively numb emotions, good or bad. If you’re trying to numb out your anger you’re also numbing out positive emotions too. When we avoid anger it doesn’t go away and it in my experience it shows up in two ways:
Irritability
Self destructive behaviors, self-loathing & blame
Anger is essential and it is incredibly powerful. But when you close off access to your anger you’ve severed the connection to your body and you no longer have agency in how you will respond to the things life throws at you. You need your anger. It is an ally, just one that requires tools to make sure it’s identified, used and processed in a way that helps you.
Think of anger like your protector.
Consider Embracing a Relationship With Anger
Look, there is plenty to be pissed off about and that is never going to change. Frankly I only find the world to be more infuriating and I have to find new ways every day to channel my rage in ways that do not harm me or those around me.
Here are some ways to give this a try:
Consider the ways you avoid confrontation and how you collapse your own boundaries for the sake of approval and love. Consistently shape shifting to meet everyone else’s needs while ignoring our disconnecting from our own creates the perfect storm for festering rage and resentment. If you live a boundary-less life or you are consistently pulling back on your boundaries, this is a good place to start in the rebuilding of your relationship with anger.
Stop saying cover words like “that was really annoying or irritating” when you really mean “infuriating, vexing, maddening” etc. Say what you mean.
Commit to authenticity. Be radically yourself. Don’t say Thai food sounds good when you kind of wanted Italian. And if you don’t actually know what you want or need, it’s time to figure that out. Yes it’s terrifying and it probably requires some therapy and soul searching. 100% worth the effort.
Get it out of you. Literally. I know you’re tired of hearing therapists say emotions live in and are stored in your body but they are, so you need to be moving your body every single day to give those emotions a way out of you. If you don’t, they’re literally just stuck there. Think of all that anger just sitting there, eating away at you. Talk about self destructive. Try something with punching, kicking, dancing, lifting heavy, throwing something, etc. Anything that mimics a transfer of energy out of you.
Name your anger. When you’re mad, say you’re mad. Even if only to yourself. Stop saying something isn’t a big deal if it is to you.
Know there isn’t always a solution but get curious about its function. I love to think of anger as an alert system; it’s there to tell me something. Usually boundary has been crossed and I’ve folded or maybe there is a threat in my periphery. Anytime I can get curious about it instead of avoiding it I’m in a much healthier relationship with my anger. It doesn’t mean I’m solving it or fixing it, but I’m in a much more productive dance with it. How can you be more curious about what your anger is trying to tell you?
An Important Note-
Not all anger can be safely expressed and there isn’t always a time and place to get it out. Often women burst into tears when we feel rage because it’s the only way we know how to express our anger. That’s okay too! Not all emotions need to be released in an active, external way in order to be processed, but they do have to be identified and acknowledged internally by you to not be avoided and numbed out.
You don’t have to always “expel” your anger outwardly; just identifying and naming your experience can do wonders for building a healthier relationship with anger.
Stay curious friend,
Melissa