Musings on anger

I have often been called 'angry', and I wouldn't deny this. Anger is often my first reaction to a number of things, usually based on underlying assumptions about what's going on: 'They're late because they don't care'/'They're not in touch because they don't give a f***' and so on. Most of my personal anger revolves around a sense of abandonment or feeling shut out without fair warning/a fair chance. My more 'public' anger revolves around others being hurt, injustice, unfairness, all the things that most people get angry about. 

What strikes me is that no matter what my anger is about, I get similar reactions: dismissed, my feelings denied, 'you are so...', used to channel other people's anger, 'It's scary when you get angry,' not listened to, not genuinely engaged with. 

But guess what? The moment you validate my anger, or just listen? It's over. And I find it's that way with most people I know. Allow them the space to be angry, acknowledge it, listen and engage, and things can get constructive very quickly. 

We all know what we hear: that anger can be a constructive emotion; that it warns us boundaries have been crossed and is a force for action. As M pointed out on the status that kicked off this blog entry, it is pretty much understood that anger is seen as a vehicle for other emotions: fear and pain. But I would argue that it isn't just a 'carrier', as it were, and it often runs very deep indeed, embedded in every cell, because of trauma and injustice inflicted over and over. 

So, if we know these things, if we know anger is compressed pain, the way a diamond is compressed carbon; that acknowledgment will make a difference; why do we avoid those we perceive as angry, dismiss our loved one's anger, deny our own?

It is anger's intensity, power and its tendency to attack when directed outward or cause self-destruction  - intense depression, self-harm, suicide - when turned inward that causes fear in others - either of it being turned towards us or possibly even 'catching' it (and it is known to spread through populations - just watch any number of public demonstrations). It is an emotion that feels out of control - we've seen its effects and perceive it as too passionate, too violent, too MUCH. 

Perhaps even too alive? After all, our vitality, our life force, can get trapped in it. Perhaps being numb feels safer than freeing our power.

Too much, we think, too much. So though we know better, we treat anger like a frightening monolith casting frightening shadows. Rage, after all, is terrifying to witness.

But it is only out of control if we choose not to know it. If we hide it and let it build; if we believe that we can lash out or shut out as venting mechanisms without deeply affecting our relationships; if we refuse to recognise it till the dam breaks and it erupts in a form we cannot control and cannot learn from.

So, what if we do the opposite?  If when we feel it, WE acknowledge it, WE listen to it, WE feel it? Might we not find that all our anger is not, in fact, the same? That there is no monolith, but a mosaic - a pattern, a picture, telling us what we need to know?

About a year ago, I decided to try an exercise suggested by Pema Chodron, the famous Buddhist nun - whenever I was feeling something intensely, I would try to let go of the story and hold the feeling, sensing its colour/texture/feeling, getting to know it intimately. As I've noted above, I DO carry a lot of anger, so many of these feelings were anger about perceived abandonment, dismissal and so on. 

At first, I was afraid to feel it, terrified I'd discover what a horrible person I am. I put up great resistance - but I'd promised myself to give it a try, and one thing I was trying to do was not betray myself.

I had assumed that it was all part of the anger I carried from my childhood, that it all looked the same, but that was simply not true. I thought it would all be hard, sharp, dark, glassy, molecularly sharp, like obsidian. But over time, I realised that my anger was nuanced. Yes, sometimes, it had the obsidian in it - more than sometimes, maybe. But it was different every time. My episodes of anger were like snowflakes, no two the same.

Sometimes, there was more hurt; sometimes, more a sense of injustice; sometimes, it was terribly young, the archetypal anger of the babe with no one to contain her. Sometimes, more loneliness; sometimes, more fear. Well, always pain and fear in some combination. Occasionally tsunami-like, every so often spiky, like shards of glass trying to work their way out. Everchanging, and sometimes, beautiful in its terribleness.

But what surprised me was how often it was mixed with love, with compassion, with sorrow, with protectiveness - how many of what I considered 'good' feelings were often tied up in and occasionally driving the anger, so I would speak, so I would act.

So I would do what was right, even if I was standing alone. 

Once I felt it, got to know it the way I would the body of a lover, held it and listened to what was needed, it dissipated and was reabsorbed into my self, into my whole, in the way it was meant to be, bringing healing and peace in its wake - like water returning to the ocean, its home. 

To quote a well-known character, I can feel your anger. 

I'm here. I am willing to hold the space for it and listen.

Are you?

GC, Day 14 - Music

What to say? So much, yet there aren't words.

Music has always been the way into my feelings - especially when I didn't know what I was feeling: from Tallis to Victoria to Bach to Evanescence and Twisted Sister, music has been my salvation, my joy and my soul's voice; how I enter and explore my emotional and spiritual depths. With or without lyrics, it is the one place in which I lose - and find - myself.

Crikey, this isn't easy to explain, is it? Ok, I'm a teacher, so let's take a recent example.

Today, my friend, Marie, mentioned a couple of songs that had really moved her, and gave me a napster link that didn't work. So I googled both song titles and youtube. Only one popped up, and I took it as a sign that it was the one I needed to listen to.

I should have known - from the first line, I had to fight back tears as I worked, thinking, 'I'm at work, can't cry; I'm at work, can't cry.'

I grew up in what is probably best described as an emotionally dysfunctional family - by the time I was 4, I felt no attachment to my parents at all - and the feeling was mutual. My dirty little secret has always been this: 'How unlovable must I be that my parents couldn't love me and how horrible must I be that I didn't feel attached to them?'

I always felt that my only purpose was to be an extension of my parents; to be something that propped up their sense of worth, though I couldn't have phrased it that way then. Never was there a sense of being loved no matter what; 'love' - or rather, approval - was doled out sparingly when one got an 'A' or did something else that enhanced the parental image. Everything else was met by scorn or anger, even things beyond our control: my mother was furious with me when I got my period too early for her liking; my father once refused to speak to me for a week for something I didn't do - but he couldn't be bothered to find that out before cutting me off.

No, wait. The best summary of my father is actually the following: when I finally told him his brother had sexually abused me for 4 years, starting when I was 5, his response was, "It's not important; it doesn't matter."

So I grew up in a house never feeling safe in someone's love and protection; never believing there would be anyone there for me when I needed them; believing childhood was hell, marriage and family a trap; never believing that I would be worth anything to anyone simply for who I was rather than what I could do for them.

I've come a long way, baby, believe me.

So I grew into a girl - and then, a woman - who is a remarkable survivor, much like a spore, but didn't know how to revert to seed: I knew how to keep people out and I knew how to pursue love, but not how to be in it or with it. As recently as Sunday, I said to a friend about my being loved (specifically by a man in a romantic relationship), 'I'm not sure I believe in it.' It wasn't what I meant to say, but it was absolutely true.

Loved, adored, for me? Someone caring enough for ME to come after me because they treasure me, love me, want to be with me, care for me, because I'm me?

Are you on CRACK? I don't even believe that of God. I never went to God with things I couldn't handle until I was completely stuck because, of course, God would just yell at you, tell you what a fucking failure you were, and why couldn't you EVER get it right? He gave you free will after all.

And so, when Marie brought me this song, music finally found a way in where nothing else had:

I saw you as a little girl
When you were in this room all alone
And you wanted to be found
But no one came and found you
But this is your time now
This is your day
Cause that little girl inside of you
Is what makes my heart ache

You are my love
You are worth purusing
You are my love
You're worth pusuing

I am finding you right now
Right now I'm finding you in that room
And I am taking you by the hand
And I'm leading you out
Into a new place
Forever that place that kept you in
Forever that place that held you in
Forever that place
Forever that place will be shut off

You are my love
You are worth pursuing
You are my love
You're worth pursuing

And you're not going to have fear anymore
You're not going to fear being alone anymore
You're not going to fear
You're not going to fear
Becuase it's being swallowed up in my love for you
And my passion for you
I'm so taken by you
And I'm going to restore all your years
I'm going to restore every tear
You will know my joy
You will know my smile
And you will know dance
Because I am going to show you off
I am so proud of you
And it's time for you to know it
You're so beautiful to me
You're so beautiful to me

Wait. What?

Something that happened to me made someone's heart ache?

Me? Worth pursuing? You want to find me? To really know me, all of me? Not just what I can do for you or how I can make you feel or...? You're PROUD of me?

You'll always be there? I'm safe?

...you love me?

Okay. Something in the music tells me I can believe you, so I'm willing to give it a try.

Deo gratias.

Language rage

Yes, I know I'm overreacting. So I know this is really about something else.

Today, after I'd restarted my computer as per Windows instructions, I lost my network connection. Tried it about three times. Nothing. Now, no biggie if my work didn't require me to be hooked into Oxford University Library Systems; if I were just on Word, Excel or whatever. For me, however, it meant I couldn't catalogue. For almost forty minutes.

I began to seethe after the first 10. I went up to my colleague, whom I love dearly, and asked:

"Is GeoCat working for you?"

Now, I don't know about *you*, but for me, that is a commonly used American AND English construction with the understood subtext of "Do you have GeoCat up, and if not, *could you please bring it up and see if it works for you*, so I can decide if it's the server or my computer?"

If someone came to me with that question and I didn't have GeoCat up, my response would be, "Hold up, let me check. I'm working on X right now, but let me bring up GeoCat and see."

Normal response and reading of subtext, right? Did I get that?

Did I, f***.

Instead I got, "I don't know. I'm working on this particular list."

I *KNOW* you're not working in GeoCat, dear, *BECAUSE I'M THE CATALOGUER AND YOU DON'T CATALOGUE*. SO WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M ASKING YOU TO DO?????

I then asked him if he'd done the Windows restart, because it was after that I'd had the problem. He said he had.

So what do I get asked, not two minutes later? "Did you restart your computer when it told you to?"

*HEAD EXPLODES* WHAT DID I JUST SAY TO YOU????????????

ARGH!

So now I get the calm "So what do we do next" spiel. Yes, I was already there, ok? PLEASE JUST LET ME *VENT*.

So I went over to our computer officer, poked my head round the door and said, "Hon, I've restarted, but it won't connect - would you mind checking it out when you get a chance?"

"Two seconds - I'll be with you in two seconds."

"Fine, whenever, do what you need to do." And I meant that. It wasn't his fault, after all.

So then I come back down, grab what I need to grab and stride out in a huff to lunch, leaving my computer for our computer officer and telling my colleague that I was off to do something productive.

Posted some mail, banked some cheques, grabbed some lunch and came in to sit in the kitchen and eat. By the time I met another colleague coming up the walk, I was fine, and told her how I'd left in a huff. After I'd eaten? Absolutely fine.

Till I came in and heard him discussing it at top volume with a friend. And the shutters came down.

Then they tried to joke me out of it. I stayed calm and played along, but Aetna was seething again.

And it got worse when the CO came over and said, "I presume it's fine since you haven't come over and killed me yet."

WTF? I'd gone over to him and asked him to check on it in the *word for word exchange you see above* in my usual 'hey, do you mind' manner.

So how the HELL would he know how angry I was?

Only if my colleague had said, "*Sharp inhale* You'd better fix it, Irim's on the warpath."

Not CO's fault or problem, I honestly said to him, "I wasn't angry at you, just Bill Gates and the world at large."

I sensed what I refer to as "Oratory problem #3 - Dealing with anger, especially in women".

It was like being at the O, where a genuine vent turns into "you angry feminist" far too often; or someone tries to cajole me out of it; or dismiss it as trivial; or tries to turn it around, "Irim wants all men to be afraid of her."

Here's the response I should have given in the forecourt: "Look, instead of projecting them onto me, why don't you actually *deal* with your issues with women? Or your real issues with me?"

Now, clearly, this is a pattern *I'M* setting up. It is almost a carbon copy of how my emotions were dealt with in my household: dismissed unless they were the same as my parents'; ridiculed; trivialised; mocked; condescended to and cajoled.

Hmmmm. Sounds like I'm trying to play something out here, doesn't it? I'm playing this role over and over until I do something different enough that "Groundhog Day" is officially over.

So, what are the similarities?

Both places appear to be lacking anger/conflict on the surface - there seems to be a remarkable...not quite uniformity, but cohesion, and people seem lockstepped in their beliefs. There's a lot of agreement and nodding and kvetching about the other side. But something is missing. Real fire, passion. Real *emotion*. You hear a lot of tittering in the Oratory forecourt, but you don't hear real laughter. A vitality is missing in both places; a vitality that comes from the heat of anger and real engagement with conflict and strong emotions of every description.

However, dip beneath the surface, and the waters are roiling with anger and everything else that is being suppressed. As a child of the family I grew up with, that's an emotional temperature I'm going to express if no one else does. So already, because of the atmosphere of places I choose to be in, I'm more likely to *become* angry because of the undercurrents around me.

In both cases, I chose someone who is very uncomfortable with anger. The immoderately moderate one, I suspect, because he's afraid of how far he'll go if he gives into it. The other, I'm guessing, because he's not supposed to be angry, considering what he believes. So in both cases, I locked myself into confrontation with someone who would take my anger and magnify it or would try to defuse it in any way possible.

I set myself up to be disrespected, trivialised, ridiculed when I'm angry.

Why?

I need to think about that. But my initial impression is that there's something unresolved in this dance and that I'm choosing people who reflect back to me how *I* feel about my anger. I'M trivialising it; I'M dismissing it; I'M trying to cajole myself out of it. I'm the one who's ashamed of it.

That needs to end. And I think it's beginning to, with the advent of friends - including one at the O - who handle my need to vent/be angry with care and respect, letting me know that my feelings matter.

So, for myself and those who have to deal with me when I'm angry, here are a few tips:

1. Just hear me out. If I'm loud and armwaving, it's going to pass pretty quickly and I'm just venting. Once I'm done, I'm done. If I'm quiet and icy, buckle your seatbelt or be aware that someone/something has pushed me WAY too far. Just letting me go 'RAAAH!' is usually all it takes for me to settle down.

2. DO NOT tell anyone else to 'watch out, Irim's pissed off'. If I'm NOT already angry at you about something - like I was with my colleague earlier because I was feeling patronised - I'm not taking it out on you. I have NEVER been known to take my irritation out on waiters, salespeople, messengers, whatever. There was NO NEED for CO to even THINK I was coming after him. If I take it out on you, that's a pretty good sign you've pissed me off already and we probably need to have a chat.

3. DO NOT try to cajole me out of it, tell me it's not that big a deal, try to put me in a mood that makes YOU more comfortable. I probably already KNOW it's not a big deal, I just need to go off on it right now.

4. DO NOT label me as a man-hater, angry feminist, any other bs label that deprives me of the right to be a complex human being or pull the "Awwww, Iwim's angry" technique. That's just lazy stereotyping, lets you off the hook, and makes me want to push you up against a wall. Or, if you're a man who prides yourself on being a gentleman, it makes me want to pay you the ultimate insult from a woman: *slap* you.

5. If you think the anger is out of proportion - as today's was, no question - DO call me on it. Say, "Hey, [insert term of endearment here: you, babe, hon, chuck, doll - there is the odd favourite that will bring my bp right down], what's wrong? You seem really angry about something that wouldn't normally bother you so much. What's really bugging you?" That's different from trivialising because you're pointing out a delta, or a change, from my normal response, and asking about it. The question will get me thinking.

6. But most of all, whatever you do, treat it as valid, with respect and give me the support and space to work it through.

As I would hope to do with you - allowing for human imperfections, of course.