Trigger warning: This article includes a brief reference to an experience of sexual assault.
Growing up, I didn’t have a model for how to express anger. The tacit message that I absorbed was that anger was unfeminine, unladylike, and unacceptable. Anger, I thought, was a selfish emotion, a mean feeling, proof of a character defect. It might sometimes be okay for boys, but it was never okay for me. I was allowed to feel sad or scared—not angry.
My mom never seemed to get mad. My older siblings swear that she said ‘shut up’ once, but I’m not sure that I believe them. If I grant them their dubious claim, then I am certain her words weren’t shouted but were instead whispered as softly as a prayer, while the five of us kids raced around in circles, shrieking, blowing into whistles, and pelting one another with soiled diapers.
The closest I ever came to seeing anger on my mother’s face was when I “borrowed” the neighbor’s car. He was on a business trip in Russia, so it’s not like he needed it, but my ever-smiling, ever-gentle mother gave me a look of such severe disappointment that I burst into tears. Perhaps there was anger behind that look? I have certainly felt anger that I have not expressed.
Most of my life, I’ve played whack-a-mole with my anger. If it pops up, I smash it down with a mallet. I might do this by focusing on all of the reasons why the offending person did what they did—they were abused as a child, they are a victim of this or that system, they were operating based on incorrect information, or maybe they are simply unhappy, and miserable people often make poor choices. Alternately, I might talk myself out of my own reality. You misunderstood, I tell myself. You are being too sensitive. You are being selfish. Then I focus in on other emotions. I might let myself feel sad or hurt or worried or concerned for the other party’s well-being. When I was sexually assaulted by a massage therapist some years back, it took me days to file a police report because I was worried about ruining his life. I felt shock and sadness and anxiety and shame; I did not feel anger—not that I noticed, anyway.
It must have been there, though—the anger. I just struck it so reflexively with my mallet that I never registered its face. When we do this—when we shove a feeling down—it pops up as something else. I think of the sadness and anxiety that I carried with me for months after the assault. Is that where the anger went? I think of the long Covid symptoms that have altered the past three years of my life. Is that anger, triggering my mast cells?
I’m not suggesting that an unexpressed feeling is the ultimate cause of my long Covid symptoms, but energy has to go somewhere, and when we don’t give a feeling any outlet or expression, it’s not unreasonable to think that it will find other ways to romp and play or shriek and blow whistles. I doubt that an on-off switch for chronic illness is flipped for anyone solely on the basis of their unexpressed emotions, but might these emotions act instead like a dimmer switch? Without being the cause, might unexpressed or unresolved emotions be a contributor to long Covid? I can only answer for myself, and even then, I’m just guessing.
I think, in my case, that the answer is yes. I hope that the answer is yes. Why? Because I want to learn to feel and express all of my emotions, anyway, and wouldn’t it be lovely if that process improves my health?
In my teens and early twenties, I had a pattern of bottling annoyance and anger instead of directly expressing dissatisfaction or disagreement. Once I went away to college and had roommates, this became a challenge. Most of the time, we got along swimmingly, but when things came up that bothered me, I didn’t address them either within myself or within the relationship, and so over and over, I would find myself suddenly, inexplicably, overwhelmingly annoyed by a particular roommate or friend, to the point that I literally could not abide their presence and had to avoid them for days at a time.
Recently, I was reflecting on this and congratulating myself on my growth. I’m getting better at feeling, expressing, and moving beyond anger, I thought! And then something happened that made me really angry—seething, hopping mad. I cannot be around this person, I told myself. I will say things I’ll regret if we spend even a moment in the same room. And then he stopped by. And do you know what my lips did—instinctively, fluidly, flawlessly—when he crossed the threshold into my home? They smiled. Then they said, “Can I make you some tea?”
Can I make you some tea!?
Once upon a time, I would have considered this a triumph of virtue. I don’t anymore. It’s an edge for me to lean into, a place where more growth is needed. It should not be that easy to eradicate my inner world for the sake of outward pleasantness. Do we sometimes need to smile and offer tea to a person we’re angry with? Probably, yes. Should it feel easier than expressing what we actually feel? Absolutely not.
This week, I’ve been practicing feeling and expressing anger. I went for a walk and thought of my tea-sipping friend while stomping my feet hard against the ground and throwing air punches. It felt amazing—a flame that briefly burned red hot then softened into light and laughter. I practiced yoga and thought of the massage ‘theraperp’. I lunged into a ragey warrior pose and thrust my arms out like swords, my face ferocious, contorted with anger that I hadn’t known I felt. It was powerful and healing and beautiful and necessary. Over and over, I pulled my arms in and out, slashing them like swords, until the anger again dissipated into warmth and laughter. I hadn’t known that, given bodily expression, the heat of anger could transform into something so warm and light and lovely. What a waste—to bury this energy deep in my cells or smother it into sadness or resentment, when instead it can be felt and expressed and transformed into an energy that is life-giving.
Obviously, my work is not done. I have a lot of stomping and air punching left to do. I need to continue to grow my awareness—and my courage to act on that awareness—so that when the moments come that call for a real punch, I am able to recognize and act on that, too. This doesn’t mean that I aspire to be rash or cruel. I simply aspire to grow beyond the unhelpful notion that anger—or any emotion—is bad. Every emotion is simply this: energy and data. Each feeling is an energy that must be channeled one way or another, and it’s data about the fit between what’s inside us and what’s happening around us or to us. I want that data. I want the energy inside me to flow and find expression.
Where are your emotional growth edges? What emotion is the most difficult for you to feel and express? What practices have you found that help you to locate this feeling in your body, experience it, express it, and return to flow? I would love to hear from you and learn from your experiences in the comments!
I also struggle with expressing anger, Lisa, but really only to my family and closest friends. I have no problem expressing it to my husband, but I think that is because he knows me best, and loves me despite it. Not that I feel my family wouldn't, but I come from a unit with very different personalities, who respond in many different ways to different emotions. I never know what I'm going to get from certain people, but I always know how my husband will react. It's something I'm working on in therapy. Letting myself be angry, understanding why I'm angry, also understanding the other party, and then learning how to approach it.
Liberating and exploring emotions, narratives, beliefs is part of the healing from Long Covid. This will be controversial for many, but for me having Long Covid for 18 months was actually a gift (of course it didn’t feel like it at the time!!!!!!)