Patricia Adams, a reporter for a news magazine, could feel the rage rising as she started reading an article she had written. Although the article had her byline, it had been rewritten by her editor in such a way that it bore little resemblance to her original copy. Worse, the editing had made the article inaccurate.
”First, I felt disbelief and then I was absolutely furious,” she said.
”I could not believe he had done this. But I knew I could not call him right away because I had to sort out the emotionalism. I didn`t want to cry.
”It was two days before I talked to him. My anger by that time had not diminished one whit, but it was a cold anger as opposed to the hot anger.
”I knew exactly what I wanted to say and I said it. At first, he kept trying to justify his actions, and then he tried to get off the track. But I kept getting right back to it (the subject). I did not cry and I did not get emotional-and, as we know, we women have a problem with that. Our relationship since then has been fine, and it hasn`t happened again.”
By almost any measure, Adams is a successful woman and has a lot in her life to feel good about. But her ability to get angry that week-to recognize her anger and then clearly express it without tears and without emotion-filled her with an intense feeling of accomplishment.
It was a breakthrough because she was aware that it`s difficult for herself and most women to even allow themselves to get angry in the first place, much less use that anger constructively as a powerful tool to get their point across.
The peacemaker role
Anger is not an emotion most women feel comfortable with or handle well.
Women traditionally have been raised not to feel or express anger. They are the pleasers, the peacemakers, guardians of the home. Conversely, men are raised to know it`s OK to get angry, to be aggressive.
Historially, said Chicago therapist Jo Lief, ”men were given permission to go out and shoot the beasts and women were objects, wearing their housedresses and girdles and accommodating to (male) authority.”
But as difficult as it is, anger is increasingly being recognized as the force that will allow women to become successful in the workplace and to improve their personal relationships. Well-used anger is power, and that power can change not only women`s lives but, obviously, the lives of the people they work with and live with as well.
Well-used anger is not temper-tantrum anger, in which people fling objects through the air or yell and scream at each other, or become fragmented and tearful. Well-used anger is anger that`s recognized and acted upon, as Patricia Adams did. It`s used to state and possibly change a situation that is not acceptable.
MADD for a cause
”There`s been a taboo against women`s anger. Women can become angry for other causes, such as against drunk drivers, but there has been a powerful taboo against women using their anger on behalf of their own self,” says Menninger Foundation therapist Harriet Lerner, author of the best-selling
”The Dance of Anger,” (Harper & Row, $8.95 paperback).
”But never, never will a woman be successful, either in the workplace or in her relationships, if she`s not able to feel her anger, speak to important issues and take a clear position.”
Although women are making strides toward channeling anger, they are still newcomers to it; and the stereotype of the angry woman is of a woman who has given in to negative, non-rational emotions and has thus become ineffectual.
It`s a stereotype that has been prevalent both in the workplace and in personal relationships.
For example, picture this real-life scenario of a couple driving down Lake Shore Drive.
He`s driving, and another woman driver refuses to make room for him to change lanes. He rolls down the window and yells, ”You dumb broad, move over.”
The tissues fly
His female companion is enraged. She grabs the closest available object, which happens to be a tissue box, and throws it at him while yelling at him to never use the `dumb broad` term again.
He gives her a long, appraising look, and then comments that if there`s one thing he dislikes, it`s women who lose their temper. Of the two of them, he continues, he is the stable one. The more emotional she becomes at this assessment, the cooler and more rational he becomes. Finally, she actually finds herself wondering if she is, indeed, wrong and her anger becomes suffused with self-doubt and guilt.
”It`s very hard for women to clarify their anger,” said Lerner, of the Kansas-based Menninger Foundation. ”Often a woman will go along with a situation for a long time, and then she`ll explode, blow up. But too often exploding is just part of a repetitive, unproductive pattern, and then business goes on as usual.
”Anger should be used to define a new position in a relationship pattern, a position that does not mean self-betrayal.”
Pinpoint the source
Psychologists such as Lerner stressed the importance of understanding the real source of the anger. For example, the woman on Lake Shore Drive was angry at the immediate situation; more important, she had a deep, long-felt but never-expressed anger at what she perceived as the man`s hostility toward all women, both in his professional and his personal lives.
She could not use her anger to change him. But, by stating clearly and unemotionally how she felt about the situation, she could change her role in the relationship. In time, she did this; the relationship ended.
That might not be a so-called ”happy ending,” and it`s one of the reasons women so often sit on their anger or fail to even recognize it. Women have traditionally identified themselves through their relationships, their connections with other people. Expressing anger creates a separation-even if it`s only temporary-between themselves and the other person. The result of anger can be aloneness.
”Many women go right from sadness to forgiveness, skipping anger completely,” said Evanston clinical psychologist Robert Mark. ”And the reason they skip anger is because they`re afraid of abandonment.
”Being assertive and expressing anger has its costs. One cost is that the culture we live in still wants to see women as sweet and nice. Second, just because a woman is capable of expressing anger-of knowing where she stands and what she wants and asserting herself-doesn`t mean that the other people in her world are going to like it.”
Use it with care
So to get ahead and feel good about themselves professionally and personally, they have to feel and use anger; but they have to do it carefully. It`s like walking on eggshells. On top of that, there are few role models. Past generations of women turned anger inward; depression, sadness and guilt were the unhappy results. And finally, women`s anger, even when expressed appropriately, is viewed with far more critically than men`s anger.
Said Lerner: ”People react very differently to men`s anger and women`s anger. Imagine the Boston Tea Party, if it had been women who poured that tea overboard. They would have been written up as a group of hysterical, strident, immature women in the throes of PMS.”
”It`s a big problem for women,” acknowledged Wilma Smelcer, the first female senior vice president at Continental Bank. ”They can`t let their emotions show because that`s unprofessional. This probably applies to men, too, but I think women have to be more careful.
”Anger-how to express it-is something I`ve learned. I had to learn it. And when I feel anger, I step back and say, `All right, what is the real reason why I`m feeling angry?` Because sometimes it has to do with other things that have gone on during the week rather than what`s happening right now. Once I get through that process, I have to decide whether it`s appropriate to react strongly to the situation. You have to stay calm, but you cannot be a wimp.”
Smelcer talked abut a woman she knew several years ago, who held a high-pressure managerial job. ”She was seen crying one day. No one knew what the reason was, why she was crying, but (the crying) took on a life of its own. Every time her name came up about something, there was the impression that this was an emotional, mercurial woman rather than a professional.”
Charting a change
Roadblocks exist even when women transform teary anger into lucidly expressed anger. The status quo has a habit of being comfortable, and when women start expressing anger, they are changing that status quo.
”Say you`re in a relationship and you want to make a change,” Lerner said. ”So you, the woman, make it clear you are not going to continue in a certain pattern any longer. There is almost certainly going to be a countermove. The other person probably won`t want that change. And when there`s a countermove, the anger is probably going to intensify.
”So women have to know what their bottom-line position is. The bottom line is using anger to make very clear what the acceptable limits are, and saying, `I can no longer tolerate this in the job or in the marriage.` If you know you cannot survive without the job or marriage, you have to navigate within the situation.”
Such a bottom-line position-the posibility of anger ending a relationship or job-can strike fear in the strongest of women.
”Women are still terrified-they want approval and love, and they fear that they`ll lose that if they get angry,” says Evanston therapist Linda Randall. ”I still hear women saying, `I`m afraid to be angry.` ”
Betty Cook (not her real name) was desperately afraid of that bottom-line position. The suburban housewife was afraid, and she also had trouble feeling any anger. She got depressed and sad, but not angry. For most of her 26 years of marriage, she negotiated carefully, trying to change abusive situations without drawing the final line.
”I had always felt that he was right, that he was smarter-I was raised like that. I would think, `All right, I`ll try this for one more year and see if things change.` Then the year would be over and I`d just keep rolling along. We kept going in the same circle. It`s hard to break out of that.
”He was verbally abusive and physically abusive at times to the boys. He would order me to leave the room (when he became physically abusive to the sons), and I would.”
They started family counseling, but he participated for only a short time. he continued by herself. ”It gave me strength. I started taking stands. Quiet stands, but stands. He (her husband) had problems when I didn`t agree with him. He said he was uncomfortable and wanted things back the way they had been. I could not go back.”
After 26 years, she got to the bottom line. She told her husband she wanted a divorce.
A question of control
But she says she still isn`t sure she knows what anger is all about. She understands guilt, she says, and sadness, but she still doesn`t understand anger, or particularly feel that anger is a good thing. ”I defused things and I walked away a lot. But I always felt, and still do, that getting angry would be losing control. I don`t want to ever lose control.”
It may be a matter of definition, of semantics. Anger was never part of her vocabulary. But, call it what you will, she channeled her emotions into an understanding of what she wanted-and didn`t want-and clearly stated that understanding to her husband.
”Expressing anger doesn`t mean an hysterical, histrionic display of rage,” says Robert Mark. ”It means going up to someone and saying, `This is what I want.` ”
”It`s complicated-anger is very complicated,” Lerner says. ”But women are learning about anger and how to use it. It`s changing the way all of us live.” –
