Anger. We've all been there--either as the person getting angry or the person who suffers someone else's anger and it's never pleasant. My son, Danny who blogs here posted about an experience he had in the grocery store with someone who was (inappropriately) angry. It's been picked up by Tricycle and now Elephant Journal where he linked to a poem by Jill McDonough that I sent him. (WARNING: Strong language used in the poem.) I learned about this powerful work from a Rachel Maddow Tweet. It gets right to the heart of the fact that anger and fear are very closely related.
I was brought up to regard anger as "not ladylike" and because it was a loss of control, it was doubly verboten in my family. (My dear husband describes my family gathering as a "carnival of control freaks.") Anger often brought me to tears which made explaining the cause of it difficult. In a recent study, angry women were regarded as less competent. A 1993 study of women and anger found some interesting correlations between anger expression and health.
How are you affected by anger or being in an angry situation?
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4 comments:
Thanks for this post, I really was struck by the posts, the poem and the comments on the whole anger issue. I, too, was raised not to be angry and have the crying upon trying to experess it thing. My husband I work together--he doesn't react to my tears which lets me ignore them as I tyr to express the anger. I'm still not good at articulating it but working on it.
Marjorie, I can really identify with your reaction. My husband has also been really helpful to me in the same way. Thank you so much for your comment and for visiting my blog.
Kind regards,
Dana
Your post is timely for me, as we've just had houseguests who were unbelievably inconsiderate. The emotions are complicated because one of them is my husband's daughter, who has always been very difficult, and hasn't changed through maturation (she's now almost 45). He is struggling with his anger mixed with guilt, and I'm struggling to let go of my anger. We deal with this much better than we did earlier in our marriage. But I have a hard time letting go of resentment when we've been used. Finding the line between processing it so I can let it go, and re-living it which keeps it alive, is hard.
Susan, I'm glad that you found this post. For most of us, dealing with anger is bad enough, but when you add familial baggage into the mix you can end up feeling completely wrung out. It's also very difficult to maintain a safe space for you and your husband when the source of the agitation is a houseguest! Wishing you good luck as you navigate that passage between processing and re-living. Thank you for taking the time to write a comment.
Kind regards,
Dana
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