Why your anger is imperative

To feel fully alive

Yes, your anger is imperative for you to feel fully alive.

For some people, perhaps you, learning to healthily express your anger is the key to a seismic shift in the way you move in the world.

Disclaimer: this piece is primarily meant for those who consciously or unconsciously suppress their anger in relationship to others. It is not meant for those who have no problem expressing their anger.

For individuals

Do you find yourself struggling to know what you want, feel, and need in situations? Deferring to others to make decisions? Emotionally reactive, full of self-doubt, and high in anxiety? How about great difficulty saying no and setting boundaries? Afraid of conflict? Either you flock to relationships with very decisive figures who are always in charge and you’re following, or you avoid relationships all together because you don’t know how to not lose yourself in one? Like you have a paranoia that someone will bulldoze right over you. Maybe, too, you don’t know what you’re meant to do in this life because you’ve always looked to others to define that? You lack confidence, you often feel “weak”, and you feel embarrassed about it all? Perhaps you have an angry side that comes out a few times a year in violently (verbal or physical) explosive ways, so you stuff it deep down and suppress it the rest of the year, only to have it still lurking and fearing it? Or your pots and pans are the only things that truly know your anger when you’re banging them around your kitchen? Poor guys (hello, passive aggression).

For couples

Or maybe you are a couple that prides themselves on not fighting at all. You think this is a flex, but it’s unfortunately not :( You rush to repair quickly and are not able to tolerate being upset with each other. You have a great deal of trouble not taking on your partner’s emotions when they are upset so you need to either get away from that or rush to fix it? The first thing to vanish in couples that don’t fight is…passion. Yes, sex. If you’re a couple that doesn’t fight, you likely are not having much sex or not great sex. Because passion, desire, and eroticism need space, difference, and mystery. As Esther Perel says, fire needs air to burn. You can’t smother it in sameness.

If you saw yourself in any of the above, you likely struggle with low differentiation. This concept comes from Murray Bowen and essentially means a well differentiated person can maintain a distinct sense of self (thoughts/feelings/desires) while in a group setting, whether amongst family, friends, work, or in partnership. Low differentiation most frequently is the result of low differentiation in your childhood home growing up. Maybe you saw one parent always people-pleasing the other parent who was “in charge” and self-absorbed, so you learned to survive that system by modeling after the pleasing parent. Maybe you had a very domineering parent that did not allow for anyone to stand up for themselves or have their own thoughts/emotions (this person also struggles with low-differentiation, they cannot tolerate others having a different view from them. It’s just the flip side of the same coin). Perhaps you saw a lot of very violent anger from a parent growing up and learned to completely stuff yours. Or maybe you had a parent who was constantly breaking down, fragile, and you felt guilty anytime you made any fuss whatsoever, so you became “good” and “nice”. Bottom line: there was never any space for you or anyone to be “different”. So you became undifferentiated and “good” or “nice”.

The key emotion needed to differentiate if you are “good/nice”? Anger.

Terry Real has a saying, “I want the mighty to melt and the weak to stand up.” I don’t like that he calls folks weak, but there is some truth to it. If you think that you’re going to become differentiated without using your anger, you’re wrong. You’re going to need to fight like hell, even if it’s just against your urges to submit to the sameness and keep the peace. And it’s going to be a scary process. The only emotion I know that can get you through all of that is anger. Anger is the language of our boundaries and it is a healthy response to injustice. But not aggressive anger, not passive-aggressive anger, no - assertive anger. In essence this: “No I don’t like that, I like this. Thank you.” That is someone expressing their difference and individuality, respectfully. Now, imagine if you said that to said domineering parent or said “fragile” parent, or even to a waiter? What emotion(s) would you feel then? Seriously…think about it.

The key blockers of that differentiation for folks that are “good/nice”? Fear and guilt.

Fear that you will be punished, rejected, abandoned, bulldozed, etc. Guilt that you expressed needs at all because historically that meant you were a burden and that if anything bad happened it must have been your fault! Guilt that you wanted space to breath when the predominant culture was one of enmeshment.

Many people come into my office understandably defended around any talk of their parents. They have heard that therapy is about bad-mouthing parents and cutting them off. No. Okay maybe in some cases cut off is appropriate, but in most cases it’s just about differentiating enough to keep your family IN your life. The distance at which I can love you and me at the same time.

They see almost everything in their childhood as their fault. “I deserved it”. This is a survival strategy of children, they will always internalize things as their fault because to view their parents as truly unsafe would be too great a threat to their survival. So they internalize it as their fault to survive that time. Adaptive then, maladaptive now. But to repeat, no, it wasn’t your fault. You were a child. Children don’t deserve neglect. Children don’t deserve abuse. Sorry. You deserved a well differentiated and mature parent. They didn’t have the tools. So now you need to learn them. It’s not so much about blaming as it is about seeing things clearly and honestly. Energy is supposed to flow from parents to children, not the other way around.

My wish for you is that you give yourself the gift of discovering your authentic self. Anger is imperative for that. Strap in and let it fuel some of your journey! And if i’m speaking to the pleaser part of you, well, it would be a real act of service to all of your relationships if you did this. :) When you grow it gives others permission to grow. Lead the way, please.