It's Okay to Be Angry Read online

  The labels men apply to women are another source of anger. “She’s just hysterical; she’ll calm down,” a man might say. Another put-down: “Here comes the PMS again. It’s time to avoid her for a few days.”

  Many women feel powerless to do much about their situation. They engage in blame, and whenever blame is alive it leads to anger. Fear is another major cause of anger; consequently, as our society becomes increasingly unsafe for women, we see their anger on the increase. I have a friend whose daughter was almost raped. My wife and grown daughter both carry a protective spray whenever they are out, and there are certain places my wife will not go in the evening. I have worked with assault victims and have seen the fear and rage they experience over what has happened to them.

  We see more anger at home and at work. Within the home much of the anger stems from the division of the workload. Women who work outside the home must spend many additional hours in housework each week compared to men, and both men and women are angry at the lack of appreciation they receive from their partner.4 At work, women continue to be frustrated by the fact that, in certain professions, they earn less than their male counterparts. (Fortunately, however, there are a number of professions in which one’s gender does not matter.)

  But it is not just these various forms of social injustice that are causing women to respond in anger. In our national survey, we asked women: “What are some of the factors which increase your vulnerability to anger?” The respondents were given four spaces in which to list their answers (not in order of importance).

  In a sampling of 722 surveys in which this question was answered, we discovered the following:

  48 percent identified fatigue or being tired.

  28 percent mentioned stress.

  20 percent said injustice.

  14 percent mentioned children.

  13 percent said PMS.

  11 percent said pain or illness.

  9 percent stated feeling out of control or helplessness.

  8 percent identified frustration.

  7 percent said communication with their husbands.

  7 percent said it was a spiritual problem.

  Passive-Aggressive Expression of Anger

  Despite the fact that it is becoming more socially acceptable for women to express their feelings, many women still go underground with their anger. One particularly unhealthy approach is to express anger by being passive-aggressive—being angry but expressing it in a disguised way. Some people are clever at this. They may or may not be conscious that they are angry, but whatever their level of awareness, they convey their anger unmistakably—and indirectly. They may release it under the guise of critical comments, or they may harbor well-camouflaged resentment. If confronted, they proclaim their innocence. Their response is similar to the description in Proverbs 26:18–19: “Like a madman who casts firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man who deceives his neighbor and then says, Was I not joking?” (AMP-CE).

  What particular responses might you adopt if you’re a passive-aggressive?

  Letting out your anger by procrastinating is one tactic.5 Putting off responsibilities or delaying doing something for someone else is another disguised way to vent your anger. It’s not obvious and so it feels safe because it’s difficult for others to label the action as anger. You’re more comfortable being called “irresponsible” or “lazy” than being labeled “angry.”

  Subtle stubbornness is another expression of anger. So is forgetting or avoidance. These behaviors usually reflect anger that you wouldn’t dare express openly.

  Forgetting is another handy way to express anger, because the responsibility can be turned back against the other person. “Are you sure you asked me?” Or, “Are you sure that was the time we agreed upon?” “I’m so sorry you had to wait in the rain. But I was sure you said to pick you up at 10:30 and not at 10. Well, anyway, you can get some dry clothes at home.” When passive-aggressives say things like this, others begin to doubt themselves. They end up feeling responsible. But the truth is they have been set up.

  How else might you express anger indirectly? Using your spouse’s car and leaving it a mess, and with an empty gas tank, works well. Paying a bill but conveniently forgetting to mail it can bring your spouse an unpleasant call from the gas company. You can take the money out of your partner’s wallet and fail to let him know about it. You can be passive-aggressive by walking over to the TV as someone is viewing his favorite program and turning the channel to something you want to watch.

  Sarcasm is another “nice” way to be angry. Two messages are given at one time, a compliment and a put-down. “You look so young I didn’t recognize you.” “Your new suit is radical, but I like it.”

  I’ve seen passive-aggressives act as though they didn’t understand the simplest instructions. Though there might be a slight smile or give-away smirk on their faces, confronting them usually doesn’t work. They play innocent; and if you ever suggest that they might be angry, you’re likely to get a “Who me? I’m not angry at all!” response. You’ll end up wondering if you’re the one with the problem.

  Many women think, If I become angry, won’t I become aggressive too? I don’t think so. For many years we connected anger and aggression. But there is actually not as much connection between anger and aggression as there is between anger and blame. We don’t tend to become as angry when we understand the what and why of another person’s response. That is especially important in significant relationships. When you lack an object of blame, do you become angry? Not usually.

  Anger as a Protector and a Defense

  Another often-overlooked characteristic of anger could be operating in your life at this time. Anger acts as a protector and a defense. When the hormonal changes of anger kick in, you will find that you can defend yourself better. Why?

  Your anger gives you a feeling of empowerment. The doubts that you had about yourself are disappearing. You now have sufficient energy to cope. Your anger is a newfound source of strength to mobilize yourself.

  Your anger helps you to block out fear and guilt. Anger tends to drive away any feeling that might inhibit you. Unless you turn your anger back against yourself, it will push you ahead to attack.

  Your anger helps you to focus on your own needs rather than the other person’s. Your pain and needs are the focus, not the other person’s. You are convinced that you are right, and your anger strengthens this belief. (This is why some men and women become addicted to anger, for at no other time do they have these feelings.)

  Perhaps the best way to illustrate how we use our anger as a defense is by giving examples.

  We use anger to alleviate the pain of guilt. Are you familiar with guilt? If so, you know how uncomfortable it is. To alleviate the pain of guilt and defend ourselves against it, we can become angry against what another person is making us feel guilty about. This works for a while but doesn’t resolve the problem.

  We use anger to defend against hurt. That hurt might stem from an unkind remark, a rejection or an injustice. In lashing out we cover the pain of hurt.

  We use anger to defend against a loss. I’ve seen people react with anger when a son or daughter goes off to college or to work in another part of the country, or when a friend moves away. Anger often arises when we lose a loved one in death. We find something to blame in the person and focus on the hurt we are experiencing instead of on the delight he or she may be experiencing.

  We use anger as a defense against the feeling of being trapped or helpless. You may be working overtime to pay for your children’s braces. You didn’t realize how long it would take or how expensive it would be, and now you’re stuck on a treadmill for the next two years. You don’t have any alternative but to stick it out, so you begin to think, They don’t even appreciate what they’re getting, and you focus on your exhaustion and lack of time for yourself. So it’s no wonder that quarrels between you and your children have increased as you find more and more to become angry about. They see you as being overly
critical, which you may be, but it’s your outlet against being trapped.

  We use anger as a defense against fear. You’ve probably seen this in others or have experienced it yourself. A child runs into the street, and fear propels the mother into the street to grab her child in front of a car. She yells and spanks the child in anger, which covers her feelings of fear.

  Using anger to defend against painful feelings is normal. The problem arises when we make anger a habit, or when the frequency and intensity of our anger begin to affect us and our relationships.

  Anger can become an addiction. Anger addicts have used anger as a defense for so long that they know no other way to respond; they feel empty without the rush of anger. That is the downside of anger. People who use anger as a defense over a period of time have a hard time letting go of it—especially if they find it easier to feel anger than to feel fear, hurt, guilt or emptiness.

  All addictions feel good for the moment, but they don’t help us to resolve the problems we face. A response of anger may be appropriate and helpful in situations where we face a direct threat. But the habitual, addictive type of anger will probably direct us away from whatever appropriate action would help resolve the problem.

  What Anger Keeps Us from Accomplishing

  If anger has the capacity to help block out painful feelings, why should we deal with the original pain and its cause? We should do so because confronting the original pain and its cause is essential if we are to become whole.

  Anger Keeps Us from Confronting the Source of Our Fear

  Anger will keep you from distinguishing between actual threats and distortions that create fear. It will keep you from confronting negative messages you say to yourself—things that you may have learned from poor experiences with your parents or other significant individuals in your life. You may be using anger to silence and override this self-critical voice that goes off inside your head from time to time. But will anger help you confront that critic and evict it from your life? Not usually.

  Anger Keeps Guilt Alive

  When you use anger as a defense, you will never come to the place where you deal with the source of your guilt. Your guilt may arise from false beliefs, or it may result from your giving priority to fulfilling your needs rather than living by your value system. You become angry at yourself when you know you are violating your values, but that doesn’t stop you from doing it again and again.

  Anger Keeps Grief Alive

  Many times I have seen grief kept alive by anger over a major loss in someone’s life. Anger can keep a person from saying good-bye to whatever has been lost. It can push them to keep reliving the hurts, harsh words and wrongs of the relationship—which just reinforces the pain, guilt and intensity of the loss.

  Anger Closes Off Communication

  I’ve rarely met an angry person who is able to talk about what pains him or her when angry. Yet if you are unable to talk about what is hurting you when you are angry, how can other people know what is bothering you? How can they change their response to you if you don’t let them know how you felt wounded by what they said or did?

  Anger Keeps Us Feeling Like Victims

  You feel helpless in spite of the strength of your anger because your anger doesn’t let you fix what’s wrong. When you blame or defend, your energy is diverted from resolving the original problem.

  All of this is not to say that you should never become angry. Quite the contrary. It’s when anger becomes your main line of defense that it becomes a difficulty. Every concern and issue has a solution, but anger doesn’t usually lead you to that solution.6

  Silent Pain

  Anger within a woman that goes unrecognized, unadmitted and untouched becomes an unwanted resident that soon affects the totality of her life. Silent Pain, the title of a 1992 book for women, refers to the submerged sadness or deep ache that results and that is always there just underneath the surface, taking the edge off life. That pain could reflect deep unfulfilled longings, disappointments in relationships or lingering unhealed hurts.7

  There are many reasons for silent pain. It could be a residual grief from the past that has never been resolved. Years ago I learned to ask my counselees the question, What is there in your life that you’ve never fully grieved over? In time most identify some loss—and with each loss there is usually a residue of anger.

  It could be pain over a current situation that reminds you of a similar past heartache, but you don’t feel free to talk about it. You’re angry that it still exists, but you can’t talk about the anger either.

  It could be connected to a sense of shame over a past or present sin, real or imagined. You believe that what you did was so wrong you cannot be forgiven, so you live with your pain. Underneath may be a residual anger over the unfairness of the continuation of that pain.

  When you bury any emotion, there is a loss. When you bury your sorrow and don’t allow yourself to feel your sadness, you don’t realize your need for comfort and consolation. When you bury your anger, you ignore what it’s trying to tell you. In so doing you may create another nemesis more common to women than to men—depression.

  Some women take a long time to feel angry after an unpleasant event has occurred. But the fuel for the anger is there. The ingredients, the shape, the structure and the energy are all there, whether ignored or not. What happens to all that energy? Where does it go?

  Anger and Depression

  In many cases that anger results in depression.

  Why is it that women experience depression more than men? Why is it that one in every four women will suffer a serious clinical depression at some time in her life, whereas only one in eight men will? According to a 1990 study by the American Psychological Association, it is not because women are more willing to share their feelings, to complain or go for counseling. It is instead because women have not been culturally conditioned to combat depression.8 A chain reaction toward depression is involved. Women’s vulnerability to depression may be connected to their tendency toward passivity and dependency, which they confuse with being feminine. This leads to a hesitation to admit, face and resolve their anger. Men are given permission by society to be angry, whereas women are not, which in turn leads many women to feel it necessary to suppress their anger. Since anger that is suppressed does not just go away, suppressing anger makes women more prone to anger. That in turn leads to depression, for suppressed anger is often channeled into depression.9 In a later chapter depression will be dealt with in detail.

  Unfortunately, many women learn this pattern as young children. Growing up in a dysfunctional family retards emotional expression, whether the dysfunction is divorce, alcoholism, abuse or perfectionism. What happens between a woman and her father is a key factor. Any type of abandonment is damaging, whether it be by emotional withdrawal, death or divorce.

  This learned repression of emotions is what keeps a woman stuck in her pain. Some believe that emotional distress is caused not so much by the painful events of life, but by silence about those events and the feelings underneath them. I’ve seen this tragedy in the counseling office with women in their 30s and 40s, who for the first time in their lives are taking the cap off their repressed emotions and beginning to face them. It is interesting to see the transformation that occurs. As they let their feelings out, especially anger, they discover a newfound source of energy.

  Positive Ways of Dealing with Anger

  What can you do about anger? First of all, accept it. Break out of the repressive mode. Anger has a message for you. It’s there for a reason.

  So discover the reason for your anger. What is the real cause in each situation? As you look at each situation or encounter in which you are angry, ask yourself, “What is bothering me, and what would I like to change?” Then ask, “What can I do to change?”

  You may find that sometimes your anger response is different with different individuals. You may argue with one individual, yell at another, use silent withdrawal from another, push intensely towa
rd another and distance yourself physically and emotionally from someone else. Which do you do with whom, and why? Who sees you as angry? Who never sees your anger? Which persons do you want to know about your anger?

  You can learn the difference between expressing your anger aggressively and expressing it assertively. You can learn when you are using anger to defend and when you are using it to blame. Once you are able to express your anger without yelling, blaming or attacking, you will feel better about what you are saying, and others will hear you more clearly. Later in this book you will learn the steps involved in the process.

  When you express your hurt and disappointment in honest, controlled and constructive ways, other people will be freed to be just as honest with you. Then growth in your relationships can occur. Relationships can survive and even improve when disagreements are handled properly. When you express anger properly, it will have the effect of exposing you to the criticism and challenges of others. It will force you to stop blaming other people and consider your own responsibilities for a change. If you suppress anger or explode, it won’t provide the advantage of constructive expression that opens you up to an evaluation of your own behavior. Suppression and constant defensive anger are ineffective ways of dealing with anger.

  Don’t apologize for your anger. If it’s there, accept it. It’s yours. Use it for change. As a woman, you need not be uncomfortable with the anger you feel. Instead, see it as a messenger telling you about the cause. Then, with God’s love and help, tackle the cause.