If it is, you’re not alone. I used to consider myself such an easily irritated person. Then I read this book:
THE DANCE OF ANGER: A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO CHANGING THE PATTERNS OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS:
This book is a powerhouse. A powerhouse of practical advice and real-life situations that will have you nodding along in understanding.
This book was enticing to me, because plain and simple, I am an angry woman. I have this fiery streak to me and I’ve been known to blow my top on occasion (or like, several times a week but who’s counting?). I always felt entitled to the anger; it was usually in response to feeling wronged, being taken advantage of or being insulted. I don’t want to contribute to the damaging narrative that tells women that anger is not an emotion that is safe for us to experience and express, because it totally is. However, I knew that my personal expression of anger needed a tune up. You see, the “blow your top” kind of anger I was using was actually clouding my communication and creating unnecessary conflict in my relationships.
What Harriet Lerner does in this book is provide a new perspective on anger. First of all, she gives the reader the permission to be–angry. That’s it. She frames anger as a normal part of the full spectrum of human emotion. Anger is neither good nor bad and anger will be triggered for different people by different situations. We all have the right to be angry about anything that we feel angers us.
She goes on to dissect some of the cultural messages that tell women that we shouldn’t express our anger. She highlights the dichotomy of nice vs. angry:
“The more we are ‘nice’ in these ways, the more we accumulate a storehouse of unconscious anger and rage. Anger is inevitable when our lives consist of giving in and going along; when we assume responsibility for other people’s feelings and reactions; when we relinquish our primary responsibility to proceed with our own growth and ensure the quality of our own lives; when we behave as if having a relationship is more important than having a self. Of course, we are forbidden from experiencing this anger directly, since ‘nice ladies,’ by definition, are not ‘angry women’.”(p. 6)
Anybody else out there a recovering nice girl like I am? It was sooo refreshing to hear another woman tell me that there is a way to be a kind person without having to smile and agree all the time.
Lerner then highlights how the things that make us angry are often rooted in feeling like we are compromising our sense of self. She provides specific examples of how this happens in real women’s lives and she gives concrete strategies to live a more soul-centered, self empowering life. Her goal in the book is to assure women that it’s okay to be angry and that there are ways to express that anger so that you are more likely to feel good and get what you want out of your relationships.
This is one of the books I recommend the most often to women because it is so rich with digestible, feminist advice. In under 240 pages, this book will transform how you view your personal boundaries, how you ask for what you need in your relationships and it guides you to make sure that your rage is meaningful and doesn’t steal from you.
Don’t you want that for yourself? I know I wanted to balance out my anger and feel joy and satisfaction just as deeply as I felt my red-hot rage.
I hope this was helpful to you and if you want more where this came from, I do weekly book recommendations in my newsletter. Click the link below to get on the list.
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