The Beauty of Anger
Sometimes, it is right and beautiful to be angry.
But in today’s culture, men are shamed for it. Perhaps the anger was out of place. Perhaps it was justified. It doesn’t matter.
Men are being mostly raised my women who shame their boys for their anger, who tell them it’s toxic, who tell them they should always be polite and respectful, and who teach them how to say, I’m sorry. Men are being hammered to pieces with buzzwords by a culture that has judged men to be a gender that needs to be fixed or improved. Men are encouraged and pushed into feeling mode, are labeled as toxic when they resist, and yet somehow men who succumb to the virtuous cultural altar they are emotional takers by forcing (usually women) to shoulder their emotional labor. But whatever emotions are expressed, one feeling is never ok — anger — with the possible exception of anger at the correct targets — one’s self — the privileged — the entitled — toxic masculinity.
A side note— I get some of my art from dreamtime. I searched for images under anger. 75% of the images (at least) were women with the big cats (cougars and the like) coming in second. Men were represented, usually in a couple context. There were only a few scattered images of solo angry men. It’s a not-so-subtle message that men are not supposed to be angry.
Anger is for me a signal—why am I angry? Is it justified? Anger can be appropriate. Has a boundary been violated? What’s going on here? And I’ve been taught over and over again, that I’m not allowed to be angry— that my anger might make someone else feel unsafe. More and more, I’m leaning in to the beauty of my repressed anger.
Anger is an emotion that provides fuel for me to say NO, that’s not ok or to resist others trying to make their realities mine.
Anger is an emotion that fuels protective responses within me and on behalf of others.
I’ve struggled with anger most of my life—not in expressing it, but in not expressing it. I’ve spent most of my life apologizing where it was not warranted.
It is a habit that I still fight—like I’m apologizing for existing.
I have looked the other way or diminished myself in difficult situations because I had no anger to call upon.
Anger is not a character defect. And yes, sometimes it points to a shadow. But that does not invalidate the anger. I have witnessed the misuse of every emotion most often in ways that are manipulative, used to shift blame or claim victimhood or to lie or all of the above.
There was a gay gateway process (MKP NWTA weekend) that angered me (think a star going nova). Yet in the moment, I could not speak my rage at what for me was a boundary-violating process.
I had learned to hide my anger. I had been taught that male anger was toxic. I had been taught that it was wrong.
The anger did point to shadow, but the shadow was not the anger—meaning, the reaction of anger was healthy and it also revealed a shadow that I had been unaware of.
My boundaries were being throttled.
But because I did not speak my anger, my rage at what was being done, harm resulted. In anger, there is power and sometimes that power needs to be unleashed.
I was left traumatized. No one noticed. My one-word checkout in a circle of almost 70 men after the process was traumatized. No one noticed. It was the last word I spoke that night.
By morning, I was throwing up mucus on the ground with my hands clawing into the soil. I had not slept. I was still traumatized. I was trapped in the moment when my heart wanted to yell its truth, but my throat was closed.
Anger wasn’t safe.
I will not likely ever staff again. But the outcome might have been quite different and beautiful had I allowed myself permission to be angry, to use that as fuel to hold my ground and say, NO, this is not ok!
There is a way in which I trusted myself less for not speaking my anger and in my silence there was no way to heal the loss of trust I had with the weekend’s leadership.
Anger, like every emotion, can be misused. But like every emotion, it can also be a beautiful expression of the human heart.
