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March 23 - March 29, 2025
Thus, we too learn to fear our own anger, not only because it brings about the disapproval of others, but also because it signals the necessity for change. 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.
To ask, “Is my anger legitimate?” is similar to asking, “Do I have a right to be thirsty? After all, I just had a glass of water fifteen minutes ago. Surely my thirst is not legitimate. And besides, what’s the point of getting thirsty when I can’t get anything to drink now, anyway?”
Over time we may lose our clarity of self, because we are putting so much effort into “reading” other people’s reactions and ensuring that we don’t rock the boat, we may become less and less of an expert about our own thoughts, feelings, and wants.
Nothing, but nothing, will block the awareness of anger so effectively as guilt and self-doubt.
The “evil” that we must avoid includes any number of thoughts, feelings, and actions that might bring us into open conflict, or even disagreement, with important others. To obey this rule, we must become sleepwalkers. We must not see clearly, think precisely, or remember freely. The amount of creative, intellectual, and sexual energy that is trapped by this need to repress anger and remain unaware of its sources is simply incalculable.
Managing anger effectively goes hand in hand with developing a clearer “I” and becoming a better expert on the self.
“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.
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.
Women are actively taught to cultivate and express all those qualities that men fear in themselves and do not wish to be “weakened” by.
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.
What happens if there is not enough “we” in our relationship? The result may be a case of “emotional divorce.” Two people can end up isolated and alone in an empty-shell marriage where they do not share personal feelings and experiences. When the “separateness force” is overriding, an “I-don’t-need-you” attitude may be expressed by one or both partners—a stance that is a far cry from a truly autonomous position. There may be little fighting in the relationship, but little closeness as well.
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.
We want to control not only our own decisions and choices but also the other person’s reactions to them. We not only want to make a change; we want the other person to like the change that we make. We want to move ahead to a higher level of assertiveness and clarity and then receive praise and reinforcement from those very people who have chosen us for our old familiar ways.
In the traditional division of labor, men are encouraged to develop one kind of intelligence, but they fall short of another that is equally important. The majority underfunction in the realm of emotional competence, and their underfunctioning is closely related to women’s overfunctioning in this area. It is not by accident that the “hysterical,” overemotional female ends up under the same roof as the unemotional, distant male.
By doing the work of expressing the neediness, clingingness, and wish for closeness for both partners, pursuers make it possible for distancers to avoid confronting their own dependency wishes and insecurities.
It is another example of doing the feeling work for men.
Independence means that we clearly define our own selves on emotionally important issues, but it does not mean emotional distance.
No successful move toward greater independence occurs in one “hit-and-run” confrontation.
If, 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.
The more significant issue for women is that we may not have a clear “I” to communicate about, and we are not prepared to handle the intense negative reactions that come our way when we do begin to define and assert the self.
Feeling fuzzy-headed, inarticulate, and not so smart are common reactions experienced by women as we struggle to take a stand on our own behalf.
Karen was afraid of transforming her anger into concise statements of her thoughts and feelings lest she evoke that disturbing sense of separateness and aloneness that we experience when we make our differences known and encourage others to do the same.
More often, and more crucially, separation anxiety is based on an underlying discomfort with separateness and individuality that has its roots in our early family experience, where the unspoken expectation may have been that we keep a lid on our expressions of self. Daughters are especially sensitive to such demands and may become far more skilled at protecting the relational “we” than asserting the autonomous “I.”
Karen’s story illustrates how our unconscious fears of destructiveness and of separateness may block us from maintaining our clarity and using our anger as a challenge to take a new position or action on our own behalf.
An old saying tells us: “We teach what we most need to learn.”
my blaming stance was preventing me from gaining an understanding of my heated reaction.
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.
If 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.
Our anger can be a powerful vehicle for personal growth and change if it does nothing more than help us recognize that we are not yet clear about something and that it is our job to keep struggling with it.
Katy has the problem. She has yet to find a way to identify and clarify her own limits with her father so that she is not left feeling bitter and resentful. It is Katy who is struggling and in pain. This is her problem.
Another person cannot “make” us feel guilty; they can only try. Katy’s father will predictably give her a hard time if she shifts the old pattern, but she alone is responsible for her own feelings—guilt included.
All of us inherit the unsolved problems of our past; and whatever we are struggling with has its legacy in the struggles of prior generations. If we do not know about our own family history, we are more likely to repeat past patterns or mindlessly rebel against them, without much clarity about who we really are, how we are similar to and different from other family members, and how we might best proceed in our own life.
We may know virtually nothing about the forces that shaped our parents’ lives as they shaped ours, or how our mothers and grandmothers dealt with problems similar to ours. When we do not know these things, we do not know the self. And without a clear self, rooted in our history, we will be prone to intense angry reactions in all sorts of situations, in response to which we will blame others, distance ourselves, passively comply, or otherwise spin our wheels.
Likewise, family members assume responsibility for causing other people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
We begin to use our anger as a vehicle for change when we are able to share our reactions without holding the other person responsible for causing our feelings, and without blaming ourselves for the reactions that other people have in response to our choices and actions.
As we learn to relinquish responsibility for the self, we are prone to blame others for failing to fill up our emptiness or provide for our happiness—which is not their job. At the same time, however, we may feel responsible for just about everything that goes on around us. We are quick to be blamed for other people’s problems and pain and quick to accept the verdict of guilty.
They may even be part of the game we learn to play in which the unconscious goal is to safeguard relationships by being one down in order to help the other person feel one up.
When we do not put our primary emotional energy into solving our own problems, we take on other people’s problems as our own.
If we are dealing with depressed or underfunctioning individuals, the least helpful thing we can do is to keep focusing on their problems and trying to be helpful. The most helpful thing we can do is begin to share part of our own underfunctioning side.
But it is not possible to change our children’s thoughts and feelings. More importantly, it is not our job. Trying will only leave us feeling angry and frustrated. It will also hinder our child’s efforts to carve out a clear and separate “I” within the family.
Family roles and rules are structured in a way that fosters overly distant fathering and overly intense mothering.
Triangles take on an endless variety of forms; but in each case, the intensity between Judy and a third party will be fueled by unaddressed issues in her marriage, and marital issues will become increasingly difficult to work on as the triangle becomes more entrenched.
It is the intensity of our reactions toward another person’s problem that ensures not only the escalation but also the continuation of the problem itself.
If the only way a family handles stress is to focus on a “problem child,” the outcome will be a severely troubled child.
children have a remarkable capacity to handle their problems when we begin to take care of our own.
children are the carriers of whatever has been left unresolved from the generations that went before.
Focusing on a “problem child” can work like magic to deflect awareness away from a potentially troubled marriage or a difficult emotional issue we may have with a parent or grandparent. Children have a radarlike sensitivity to the quality of their parents’ lives and they may unconsciously try to help the family out through their own underfunctioning behavior. The “difficult child” is often doing his or her very best to solve a problem for the family and keep anxiety-arousing issues from coming out in the open.
PURSUERS • react to anxiety by seeking greater togetherness in a relationship.
DISTANCERS • seek emotional distance or physical space when stress is high.
