Patience vs. Anger

As I started reading the Scriptures for today, my first thought was, “Oh, this is going to be so easy.” Because, hey, I’ve not murdered someone and I know that would be really bad, and so I can dust my hands and be done. Happy Friday!

Except… I have been angry before. And I have let that anger sit and grow, and full transparency? I might actually kind of sort of be the queen of festering.

I’m going to speak to my fellow women for a moment. Almost all of us have been raised to become a product of what the Nagoski sisters call “Human Giver Syndrome” in their book Burnout. Amelia Nagoski defines it as “the false, contagious belief that women have a moral obligation to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others” * and therefore, that women are not supposed to yell or be angry. Soraya Chemaly continues this in her book, Rage Becomes Her, saying “Many of us are taught that our anger will be an imposition on others… As girls, we are taught not to acknowledge or manage our anger so much as fear, ignore, hide, and transform it.” **

The problem with this is that anger is a basic human emotion that stems from the “fight, flight, or freeze” response of the sympathetic nervous system. We were created with this emotion, this response, in order to save ourselves in a variety of situations. So what happens when we have this thing inside of us that we are told must never show? Or when it shows, it is often pushed onto emotional issues or deflected?

I hadn’t read books such as Burnout or Rage Becomes Her until very recently, so for most of my life, I just learned these unspoken rules and absorbed this unspoken narrative about anger. I’ve spent almost 30 years taking this emotion and squeezing into a little, tiny box inside of myself instead of coping with it. That box can only get so big before it bursts. And it usually bursts at someone I love… kind of like Cain.

Let me give two quick examples: Some angers are small, like when my child repeatedly kicks her muddy shoes onto the back of my clean car seat and now there is dirt everywhere even though I’ve told her a HUNDRED times to stop. I can pack that away pretty easily without screaming at her like I might want to in the moment. Then there are big angers, like when I was in a room presenting work I had put my all into only to be pushed aside and quieted so that someone else could own it. I packed that away because I learned that’s what I should do, but that box just got a whole lot bigger. By the end of the week, my box is pulsing and just waiting for the next thing… So when my husband comes home and leaves all of his dirty dishes in the sink, which is a small anger, it’s the one that pushes everything over the edge and I lose it, saying things I don’t mean at a pitch that really only my dog can hear.

Here’s the point: It’s okay to be angry. It’s impossible not to be. This world is full of things that we should, indeed, feel angry about. What we should not do is box it up for the sake of “keeping the calm”, as it really does the opposite, or immediately hurl it at someone else. Instead, Jesus calls us to confront our anger, talk about it, shine a light on it. Repurpose the energy that comes with that anger into action towards solution. Set healthy boundaries and create new narratives that honor anger instead of feeding it. “Instead, renew the thinking in your mind by the Spirit and clothe yourself with the new person created according to God’s image in justice and true holiness.” (And no, do not post that hurtful, angry comment on Instagram or Facebook. Speak about it with Jesus in mind and maybe even face-to-face first.)

* Nagoski, E., & Nagoski, A. (2020). Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. Ballantine Books
** Chemaly, S. (2019). Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger. Atria Paperback.