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It is an interesting sidelight that our language—created and codified by men—does not have one unflattering term to describe men who vent their anger at women. Even such epithets as “bastard” and “son of a bitch” do not condemn the man but place the blame on a woman—his mother!
Because the very possibility that we are angry often meets with rejection and disapproval from others, it is no wonder that it is hard for us to know, let alone admit, that we are angry.
We may begin to ask ourselves questions that serve to block or invalidate our own experience of anger: “Is my anger legitimate?” “Do I have a right to be angry?” “What’s the use of my getting angry?” “What good will it do?” These questions can be excellent ways of silencing ourselves and shutting off our anger.
Anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel—and certainly our anger is no exception.
When we finally do “blow,” we may then confirm our worst fears that our anger is indeed “irrational” and “destructive.”
Although “nice ladies” are not very good at feeling angry, we may be great at feeling guilty. As with depression or feeling hurt, we may cultivate guilt in order to blot out the awareness of our own anger.
Moved me to tears
Nothing, but nothing, will block the awareness of anger so effectively as guilt and self-doubt.
Managing anger effectively goes hand in hand with developing a clearer “I” and becoming a better expert on the self.
By “responsibility,” I do not mean self-blame or the labeling of ourselves as the “cause” of the problem. Rather, I speak here of “response-ability”—that is, the ability to observe ourselves and others in interaction and to respond to a familiar situation in a new and different way.
We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern.
Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self. This book is about having both.
De-selfing means that too much of one’s self (including one’s thoughts, wants, beliefs, and ambitions) is “negotiable” under pressures from the relationship.
A form of de-selfing, common to women, is called “underfunctioning.”
The weaker sex must protect the stronger sex from recognizing the strength of the weaker sex lest the stronger sex feel weakened by the strength of the weaker sex.
What prevented Barbara from moving from ineffective fighting and complaining to clear and assertive claiming?
Our anxiety and guilt about the potential loss of a relationship may make it difficult for us to change in the first place—and then to stay on course when our partner reacts strongly to our new and different behavior.
There are few things more anxiety-arousing than shifting to a higher level of self-assertion and separateness in an important relationship and maintaining this position despite the countermoves of the other person.
“It’s not worth the fight” is a familiar phrase that protects many of us from confronting the challenge of changing our behavior.
We are good at anticipating other people’s reactions, and we are experts at protecting others from uncomfortable feelings. This is a highly developed social skill that is all too frequently absent in men. If only we could take this very same skill and redirect it inward in order to become experts on our own selves.
Fighting and blaming is sometimes a way both to protest and to protect the status quo when we are not quite ready to make a move in one direction or another.
We meet with a countermove or “Change back!” reaction from the other person whenever we begin to give up the old ways of silence, vagueness, or ineffective fighting and begin to make clear statements about the needs, wants, beliefs, and priorities of the self.
In fact, Murray Bowen, the originator of Bowen Family Systems Theory, emphasizes the fact that in all families there is a powerful opposition to one member defining a more independent self.
Countermoves are the other person’s unconscious attempt to restore a relationship to its prior balance or equilibrium, when anxiety about separateness and change gets too high.
Our job is to keep clear about our own position in the face of a countermove—not to prevent it from happening or to tell the other person that he or she should not be reacting that way.
But one of the hallmarks of emotional maturity is to recognize the validity of multiple realities and to understand that people think, feel, and react differently. Often we behave as if “closeness” means “sameness.”
Her warm firmness on this issue communicated clearly to Larry that she was acting for herself and not against him.
When one individual in a family begins to behave in a new way that does not conform to the old family scripts, anxiety skyrockets and before long everyone is trying to reinstate the old familiar patterns.
We can keep family visits few and far between or we can keep them polite and superficial.
however, our goal is to break a pattern in an important relationship and/or to develop a stronger sense of self that we can bring to all our relationships, it is essential that we learn to translate our anger into clear, nonblaming statements about our own self.
Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.
we feel chronically angry or bitter in an important relationship, this is a signal that too much of the self has been compromised and we are uncertain about what new position to take or what options we have available to us. To recognize our lack of clarity is not a weakness but an opportunity, a challenge, and a strength.
“You know, Dad, I have a problem. I haven’t figured out how to balance the responsibility I feel toward you and the responsibility I feel toward myself.
because when you expressed such confidence in your opinion, I began to doubt my own.
Once a pattern is established in a relationship, it is perpetuated by both parties.
She will have to stop overfunctioning.
Learning how not to be helpful requires that we begin to acknowledge that we do not have the answers or solutions to other people’s problems. In fact, we don’t even have the answers to all of our own.
