I don’t get angry very often. I am a very unangry person. I get annoyed, sometimes, and a bit pissed off, but that’s usually as far as it goes.
But last weekend, I got angry. REAL angry. I was like a slow boiling kettle over a stove, and by the end of the day I was so angry I could have exploded.
(It wasn’t a huge incident (sort of) or a violent incident or a particularly disrespectful incident. It was something that was very important to me not being treated importantly by someone close to me. Just thought I’d explain in case the rest of the post made you freak out and think he tried to sell me for 12 camels or something.)
Some people shout a lot, or punch stuff. I’m not very shouty and punching hurts. I get restless – I vibrate and shake with anger, pace around, but I won’t say much, and whenever FaerieD is eerily quiet it means you should be very worried/scared/run for the hills.
I find anger builds up because of one thing, and then from a healthy anger-at-something I turn it into an anger-at-myself.
No? Just me?
I can hear the dialogue running through my mind, telling me my feelings don’t matter. “Stop making such a fuss, this isn’t really a big deal, you are acting TOTALLY irrationally, be quiet – you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Just shut up and get over it woman.” What the hell?
I think in gender politics this is called gaslighting – the systematic attempt by one person to erode another’s reality. This is done by telling them that what they are experiencing isn’t so. Only it’s me messing with my own head, not someone elses. It’s happened to me from other people before – three years with my wankypants ex-boyfriend is when it happened, all the time. I’m sure it’s happened to you too, particularly if you are a lady of the feminine persuasion reading this. But this is the first time I noticed me doing it to myself.
So in the middle of my thunder cloud of anger I notice what’s going on in my brain, and it increases my anger TO INFINITY AND BEYOND. Why would I tell myself that my feelings do not matter? Why would I punish myself for feeling angry? Why the hell would I automatically blame myself? How dare I treat myself this way? And most importantly, where the FUCK did this self-negating censor come from?
So here I am, a few days later, having a Angry Aftershock. (I told you I was really angry. It went on for DAYS dude.) I’m in bed, and I can’t sleep as I am fuming so much, mostly by now at myself for stabbing myself in the back this way. I’m super edgy, because I am angry, and as my fucking evil inner voice tells me (oo-er) I have no right to be angry because how I feel is not important, and I am acting like a bumhole to my partner through furiously wriggling around in bed while he’s trying to sleep.
Enough’s enough. No, I said to myself firmly – No, I refuse to lay this blame on myself. I am a Goddess, and when my anger is awakened that means that a boundary has been seriously crossed. Those boundaries are sacred – they dictate what I will accept and what I will not, and having those boundaries is my Goddess-given right.
What happened crossed that boundary. I can be angry. I am right to be angry. I have permission to be angry. My anger is sacred. My anger is blessed, and my anger is most definately allowed.
After deciding that my anger was allowed, you know what? I was a lot less angry.
It’s been a week and a half since the Incident that Invoked the Fury, and I am still a bit angry. But I am OK with being angry now. And trust me, no-one shall ever dare that boundary ever again.
Being angry is scary, because there may be consequences. And if we shut up, these consequences may not become reality. Maybe the part of yourself that was messing with your brain was just scared and trying to keep the status quo. (Of course this does not mean that it was right, only that it had a twisted logic behind what it was doing to you/itself.) Sometimes understanding helps. Sometimes you still need to club that voice, just a little.
Hi Diandra! I think that part of it is when you get angry, it’s usually about something that is important to you, and I think maybe the brain while angry about something important being messed with, doesn’t want to bring this vulnerability into the open where it could get more trashed. But I agree, I think a lot of these annoying “don’t do it!” voices are usually trying to look out for our safety, if not anything else. Thankyou for commenting!
W00t! Go, FaerieD! Go Goddess Power!
When we recognise our right to anger, we recognise our right to boundaries, and when we recognise our right to boundaries, we recognise our right to our space and place in the world.
This is so hard for so many women to recognise – our existence is constantly shown to us by the underlying culture we live in, in most of the world, as contingent, not our right, secondary to men’s. No wonder you’re angry!
The only caution I have about anger is that it needs to be fuel for change, or all it does is raise your blood pressure – and at some point, we need to sink deep into the feelings underlying the anger, usually feelings of grief and loss, that our gifts and our life and our Self is not recognised, by ourself or others.
Big *hugs*!
I so agree with you Elinor – I really think women have such trouble with feeling anger and allowing ourselves to feel angry at stuff/situations involving men in particular, as we have been unconciously groomed to believe our place and thoughts are less important than a mans, no matter how subtle this conditioning is – it’s still there!