See, the thing is, I had. It’s frighteningly easy. I wasn’t originally planning on doing a response to this, even though I appreciate the support greatly, but I decided to because this needs to be said.
The thing is, it’s frighteningly easy to forget that you have a right to be angry. It starts with a simple phrase, and that phrase is, “I can’t afford to feel this right now.” It starts with the understanding that expressing your anger is just going to get you hurt, and it continues when you start telling yourself that your reaction was overblown – that you had no right to react the way you did, essentially. That even though someone did something shitty to you, they had their reasons, as if that somehow makes their behavior ok, because it has to be ok, because fuck, who else have you got that even pretends to give a shit about you? It continues when “I can’t afford to feel this right now” becomes “I shouldn’t be feeling this at all.” It continues when the people around you validate that feeling instead of telling you you have a right to not be ok with what someone’s done to you – instead of acknowledging the shitty behavior and ensuring the person responsible experiences some kind of consequence from someone other than the person they’ve hurt. It continues when you start hearing, “but they’re family!” as if being related to someone negates the fact that they’re a shitty human being. It continues with being hushed, and silenced, and told to calm down, and generally refused any kind of expression of your pain with the people you’re supposed to be able to trust.
What I’m saying, Anon, is that holding onto anger can be a difficult proposition under the right circumstances and it’s super important to be there for people when they tell you that someone’s done something terrible to them or help them find someone who can be there for them if you can’t do it yourself. It’s important to let them have their rage, because otherwise they wind up, like me, forgetting that there are options other than knuckling under and taking people’s shit because they’ve been required to do so far, far too often.
^and I want people to remember this even if their family isn’t shitty. I want people to keep this in mind, because kind, decent people don’t always know the damage they do just telling you it’s not worth being angry about.
‘It’s got nothing to do with you, so why are you angry about it?’ You know what good question I don’t fucking know I’m gonna go and think about it shall I? Good idea.
‘It’s a stupid thing to be angry about’—yeah, maybe for you it would be. For me, this is an important part of my life, and I know you don’t understand that.
‘Stop shouting!’ But I wasn’t. ‘I won’t talk to you when you’re like this’ because anything I have to say is inherently wrong and without value if I am angry? Really?
If only ‘I won’t talk to you when you’re like this’ wasn’t backed up with years of ‘that’s stupid’ and ‘you shouldn’t be worrying about that’ and ‘it’s none of your business’ and ‘it doesn’t affect you so stop worrying about it’—if only—
Maybe then I might have read it as ‘take a moment and then come back when you’re not fuming’.
But wait, no, never mind. Even when I come back with a reasoned argument, ‘you shouldn’t be worrying about that, your priorities are wrong.’
No one ever gets to tell you you don’t have the right to feel the way you do. It’s not a privilege. You already do.
This is a good and important post and follow-up. ❤
I literally stopped being able to feel anger at some point in my childhood. I don’t remember when. And anger always seemed like a useless emotion to me, and besides, any time I got upset about things it just made other people around me more upset and angry, usually at me, so really, at the time it just seemed like it was for the best. Other people’s anger always felt physically and mentally painful to me, whether or not it was directed at me, so it was a good thing I didn’t get angry. (I would have said if I had ever thought about it.)
I started feeling anger again sometime in college. It didn’t come back in full until after college. i was living away from home, away from anyone who knew me, and I still hadn’t realized how much emotional abuse I’d experienced. (emotional abuse bingo square: feel guilty and like you’re lying by using the phrase emotional abuse). I didn’t realize that learning to feel anger was a good thing at the time, that it meant I was starting to heal. I hated it for the first year or two. It seemed like such a useless emotion- it filled with me with this boiling energy I couldn’t do anything with.
It took another two or three years for me to realize that being angry about something was connected with having boundaries. That I was allowed to want things in relationships, in friendships, in family interactions, and that there was a reason I felt hurt if I didn’t receive them. I’d started to understand I could have boundaries in college, but always as a very… abstract, concept. That anger, that boundaries, were not only things I could have but things that were *good* for me to have took longer for me to understand.
Anger is still uncomfortable for me, but I am better at holding it, and I understand how important it is for me to be able to feel it.
Never forget how to be angry. Never.
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