Reframing and Reclaiming Anger

It’s no secret that I often write from a place of anger. I’ve always considered anger to be a negative thing, and that being labelled angry was something to be ashamed of. I would go as far as to say, I was reluctant to share my work because I was worried about being labelled angry, I was scared of how people would see me because of it.  I felt this way because from my understanding and experiences, anger was deemed a negative trait, no one I’ve ever met has proudly owned being angry. Instead, we are often shamed for demonstrating anger. 

The first poem I wrote about anger captures those sentiments exactly,  I wrote it as a journal entry when someone asked me to describe my anger. 

The Beast Called Anger 

Let me tell you about this beast called anger. A beast that sits, rots, and eats away at your insides. It burns like a dragon’s breath and inflicts pain like an unsheathed dagger. It will use your guts and bones as a scaling ladder. You can taste its bitterness in the words that slip through your lips. You can feel its power in your hasty actions and your involuntary reactions. This beast called anger, it will not surrender. This beast called anger must be chained, trained and tamed. It must be self-contained before it comes unrestrained. For the damage it will sustain will leave us bruised, battered, and broken. This beast called anger leaves a wake of guilt and shame. It points its fingers and blames, deflecting accountability it complains about the actions of others but refrains from holding up the mirror to see it was its own fault all along. 

When I reread this poem, I can feel the shame and judgement I felt for having these feelings. But I know behind the anger was a scared, hurt child. I recently came across a social media post by Lyndsey Gallant who shared that their therapist said that “your anger is the part of you that knows your mistreatment and abuse are unacceptable. Your anger knows you deserve to be treated well and with kindness. Your anger is part of you that loves you”. 

This, along with the shadow work I had done (I’ll explain this later) was a revelation and completely changed the way I saw my anger. It made me think back to all the times I felt rage - whilst it was probably not the best way to deal with a situation, I can see now that I felt it because a boundary had been crossed. I felt someone’s behaviour was unacceptable, I felt mistreated and disrespected or that there was a threat to my safety and security. I see now that my anger showed up for me to protect me and because it felt I deserved more, I deserved to feel safe, secure and loved. 

‘Rage represents one of your body’s self-defense options. It’s choosing to fight instead of flee or freeze.  According to Daniel Goleman, anger is triggered by a sense that we are endangered. Physical threats as well as threats to our self-esteem or dignity–such as being treated unjustly or rudely–can both lead to rage’ (Anderson: 2000:179).

We women (especially women of colour) are taught to quell our anger. We are often discouraged from expressing it. Instead we are conditioned to be passive, to silently obey and be the dutiful daughter, granddaughter etc. To be unfazed and passive even when something has deeply upset us. But why is being labelled angry as such a bad thing, why are women not given permission to feel angry? It also makes me wonder what happened to their rage? How did they transmute it? How did they release it? 

For me, “releasing” took the form of writing as a way to healthy process my anger. It wasn’t until I started to do my healing work that I began to notice just how differently women’s anger was perceived in comparison to a man’s, it was so much more unacceptable, and I began to share this disparity through my poetry. 

It is my belief that women have been dissuaded from being angry because people recognise the power that anger can have in creating change. Rage can be powerful, rage can fuel rebellions and create social change, just look at the Women’s suffrage and civil rights movements. It started with outrage at the way they were being treated. Anger used in the right way can be powerful. It can fuel rebellions and spark change. Perhaps this is why we are taught to be ashamed of it, people fear what it could mean for them because heaven forbid we begin to question the unequal power dynamics and injustices in the world. 

‘Rage insists upon righting the injustice and restoring your sense of self-worth’ (Anderson: 2000:178).  

I’m not saying I was ever going to change the world with my anger but maybe it would have changed MY world. Maybe if I was taught that anger if used in a healthy way could be powerful I wouldn't have suppressed it which would have prevented outbursts. My anger could have helped me to assert myself in a healthier way, yet by denying and feeling ashamed of it, I became self destructive.

‘Rage can be both destructive and constructive. Your risk is to transform energy into healthy assertiveness–that is, to take positive actions on your own behalf’(Anderson: 2000:178).

I recently have been doing some inner healing work or “shadow work” to help me reframe and reclaim my anger. I would label anger as a shadow aspect or just the ‘“shadow” as psychologist Carl Jung called it.  So what is it? Shadow (aspect) is  ‘a part of ourselves that we have tried to hide or deny. It contains all those dark aspects we believe are not acceptable to our family, friends and most importantly, ourselves’ (Ford:1998:1), 

But rather than fear our anger, what if we were taught that it was okay to be angry, that actually anger is sometimes necessary. Whilst I’m not saying anger is an ideal quality, I recognise that  like all emotions, it can be used as a tool to understand ourselves more deeply. Emotions are indicators our situation and what is around us. Personally, I believe anger is there to teach us something - like all emotions, especially those we are ashamed of, they are clues which can lead us to our triggers, or deeper still, to our core wounds. 

‘Everything we hate, resist, disown about ourselves takes a life of its own, undermining our feelings of worthiness’ (Ford:1998:11). The more we suppress them the more harmful they can be. The longer you let something fester, the more it eats away at you. If you allow yourself to feel it and explore why it has come up for you, it no longer has that power over you. 

In the book ‘The Dark Side of the Light Chasers’ by Debbie Ford, she talks about how all the qualities you deem as negative have at one point been necessary. She gives the example of a lady who was terrified of being labelled a b*tch. She explains why it is necessary to be a bitch at times and that actually in reclaiming that part of herself, the lady was able to offer her compassion and see herself in a different light, as a more whole and complete being. 

`We are here to learn from all these aspects of parts of ourselves and make peace with them. To be truly authentic persons, we have to allow the aspects of ourselves that we love and accept to coexist with all the aspects of ourselves that we judge and make wrong. When we can lovingly hold all of these traits together in one hand, without judgement, they will naturally integrate into our system. Then we can take off our masks and trust that the universe created each of us with a divine design. Then we can stand tall, embracing the world within (Ford: 1998:89)’. 

Expression of the traits we deem to be negative such as anger, is important in order to release it in a healthy way. The more we suppress these emotions the more they eat away at us. Marisa Peers states that the quicker we are able to express our hurt- in close proximity to when we felt hurt, the healthier it is. The longer we wait the more the emotion festers and eats away at us. This is part of the forgiveness step - part of the forgiveness to forgive yourself for feeling these emotions. You need to own them - when you own these parts of yourself often called “shadow aspects” they no longer have power over you. 

So as Debbie Ford suggests, to own being a bitch, it’s necessary to be a bitch sometimes to get what we want and deserve. Reclaim the anger you feel, see how your anger has served you and helped you. If I wasn’t angry I never would have written my first poetry book, and the second one too, without it I would have never become a writer. It all serves a purpose. 

So, how has your anger served you? 

Sources: 

Anderson, S. (2000), The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Berkley Books, New York, USA. 

Ford, D. (1998), The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Riverhead Books, USA.