The Dance of
Anger
* * *
A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships
Harriet Lerner, Ph.D.
For my first family:
My mother, Rose Rubin Goldhor
My father, Archie Goldhor
My sister, Susan Henne Goldhor
And in memory
of my grandparents:
Henne Salkind Rubin and Morris Rubin
Teibel Goldhor and Benny Hazel Goldhor
CONTENTS
Preface I recently read the Dance of Anger again . . .
The Challenge of Anger Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.
Old Moves, New Moves, Countermoves The evening before my workshop on anger was scheduled to take place . . .
Circular DancesIn Couples Six months after the birth of my first son . . .
Anger at Our Impossible Mothers Turning theory and good intentions into practice is especially challenging with members of our first family.
Using Anger as a Guide I was first introduced to the notion of turning anger into “I messages” some years back . . .
Up and Down the Generations Katy is a fifty-year-old homemaker whose youngest child has just left . . .
Who’s Responsible for What While attending a conference in New York one spring, . . .
Thinking in Threes Recently I visited my parents in Pheonix.
Tasks for the Daring and Courageous Jog, meditate, ventilate, bite your tongue, silently count to ten . . .
Epilogue ”Defining a self” or “becoming one’s own person” . . .
Ackowledgements
Notes
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
PREFACE
I recently read The Dance of Anger again with an eye toward updating its contents for this new edition. Although the book was first published more than a decade ago, I found that I still agreed with everything I said back then.
This was both good news and bad news. The good news is that I had nothing more to do.
The bad news is that anger is still with us, and for obvious reasons. Intimate relationships are still a source of suffering, disappointment, and just plain hard times. Families continue to be dysfunctional (I like Mary Karr’s definition of a dysfunctional family as “any family with more than one person in it”). And the world of work is neither fair nor hospitable to women. Anyone who claims to have nothing to be angry about these days is sleepwalking.
Anger is one of the most painful emotions we experience, and the most difficult to use wisely and well. Yet our anger is an important signal that always deserves our attention and respect. The difficulty is that feeling angry doesn’t tell us what is wrong, or what specifically we can do that will make things better rather than worse. That’s why I wrote The Dance of Anger—to help readers not only to identify the true sources of their anger, but also to learn how to change the patterns from which anger springs.
The challenge of anger is at the heart of our struggle to achieve intimacy, self-esteem, and joy. Learning how to deal with it is worth the journey, even though there are no six-easy-steps to personal fulfillment and relational bliss. The Dance of Anger teaches readers to understand how relationships operate and how to change our part in them. It encourages readers to go the hard route.
My own attitude toward the self-help world has changed since The Dance of Anger was first published in 1985. During the early stages of my writing, colleagues often asked, “Do you really think a book (as opposed to therapy, they meant) can help people?” It was a fair question. Real change occurs slowly, sometimes at glacial speed even with professional help. My honest response was, “I don’t know.” But I hoped that it could make a difference in people’s lives.
I also worried that I would never find out. For a very long time, it appeared as if The Dance of Anger would never see the light of day. My first publisher hired, fired, rehired, and then fired me again. This was the beginning of an endless series of rejections from just about every publisher on the planet over a period of years. I often quip that I could wallpaper the largest room of my home with rejection slips—hardly an exaggeration. No one wanted to publish a book on the subject of women’s anger. When The Dance of Anger finally did hit the stores, I was convinced that no one other than my mother and my five best friends would buy it.
Today, with twenty-five foreign editions and sales of over two million copies in English, I have only my readers to thank. Word of mouth keeps The Dance of Anger circulating, and I am continually moved by the “you changed my life” stories that come my way. Once, after a lecture, a seventy-three-year-old woman came up and introduced me to her ninety-five-year-old mother. They were holding hands. The daughter told me that they hadn’t spoken to each other for over two decades until they read my book. This story, along with many others, stays with me, reminding me during the inevitable down periods of authorhood that it is all worthwhile.
Finally, I want to mention the availability of a booklet called A Reader’s Guide to the Work of Harriet Lerner, which your local bookstore can order for you free of charge. You can also call toll-free 1-800-242-7737 and order by ISBN (0-06-099359-6) or visit the HarperCollins home page (http://www.harpercollins.com). All around the country, women have gathered together in book groups to discuss ideas that interest them. Some of these groups are salon-style arrangements where participants share ideas only, while other groups encourage self-examination and more personal sharing. The reader’s guide includes information about me as an author, tips for forming a book (or “Dance”) group, and questions for your own group to discuss. Reading groups like these are wonderful and anyone can start one—on my books or on those of other favorite authors.
What my readers have taught me is that, yes, a book really can change lives. Or, as the saying goes, “When the student is ready the teacher arrives”—and sometimes in the form of the written word. I’m continually amazed that so many women and men have been able to grab a bit of wisdom and advice from The Dance of Anger and run with it. Appreciative letters from my readers now far outnumber my old rejections slips. I am very grateful, indeed.
Harriet Lerner, January 1997
THE CHALLENGE OF ANGER
Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to. Our anger may be a message that we are being hurt, that our rights are being violated, that our needs or wants are not being adequately met, or simply that something is not right. Our anger may tell us that we are not addressing an important emotional issue in our lives, or that too much of our self—our beliefs, values, desires, or ambitions—is being compromised in a relationship. Our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give. Or our anger may warn us that others are doing too much for us, at the expense of our own competence and growth. Just as physical pain tells us to take our hand off the hot stove, the pain of our anger preserves the very integrity of our self. Our anger can motivate us to say “no” to the ways in which we are defined by others and “yes” to the dictates of our inner self.
Women, however, have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats. It is our job to please, protect, and placate the world. We may hold relationships in place as if our lives depended on it.
Women who openly express anger at men are especially
suspect. Even when society is sympathetic to our goals of equality, we all know that “those angry women” turn everybody off. Unlike our male heroes, who fight and even die for what they believe in, women may be condemned for waging a bloodless and humane revolution for their own rights. The direct expression of anger, especially at men, makes us unladylike, unfeminine, unmaternal, sexually unattractive, or, more recently, “strident.” Even our language condemns such women as “shrews,” “witches,” “bitches,” “hags,” “nags,” “man-haters,” and “castrators.” They are unloving and unlovable. They are devoid of femininity. Certainly, you do not wish to become one of them. It is an interesting sidelight that our language—created and codified by men—does not have one unflattering term to describe men who vent their anger at women. Even such epithets as “bastard” and “son of a bitch” do not condemn the man but place the blame on a woman—his mother!
The taboos against our feeling and expressing anger are so powerful that even knowing when we are angry is not a simple matter. When a woman shows her anger, she is likely to be dismissed as irrational or worse. At a professional conference I attended recently, a young doctor presented a paper about battered women. She shared many new and exciting ideas and conveyed a deep and personal involvement in her subject. In the middle of her presentation, a well-known psychiatrist who was seated behind me got up to leave. As he stood, he turned to the man next to him and made his diagnostic pronouncement: “Now, that is a very angry woman.” That was that! The fact that he detected—or thought he detected—an angry tone to her voice disqualified not only what she had to say but also who she was. Because the very possibility that we are angry often meets with rejection and disapproval from others, it is no wonder that it is hard for us to know, let alone admit, that we are angry.
Why are angry women so threatening to others? If we are guilty, depressed, or self-doubting, we stay in place. We do not take action except against our own selves and we are unlikely to be agents of personal and social change. In contrast, angry women may change and challenge the lives of us all, as witnessed by the past decade of feminism. And change is an anxiety-arousing and difficult business for everyone, including those of us who are actively pushing for it.
Thus, we too learn to fear our own anger, not only because it brings about the disapproval of others, but also because it signals the necessity for change. We may begin to ask ourselves questions that serve to block or invalidate our own experience of anger: “Is my anger legitimate?” “Do I have a right to be angry?” “What’s the use of my getting angry?” “What good will it do?” These questions can be excellent ways of silencing ourselves and shutting off our anger.
Let us question these questions. Anger is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, meaningful nor pointless. Anger simply is. To ask, “Is my anger legitimate?” is similar to asking, “Do I have a right to be thirsty? After all, I just had a glass of water fifteen minutes ago. Surely my thirst is not legitimate. And besides, what’s the point of getting thirsty when I can’t get anything to drink now, anyway?”
Anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel—and certainly our anger is no exception.
There are questions about anger, however, that may be helpful to ask ourselves: “What am I really angry about?” “What is the problem, and whose problem is it?” “How can I sort out who is responsible for what?” “How can I learn to express my anger in a way that will not leave me feeling helpless and powerless?” “When I’m angry, how can I clearly communicate my position without becoming defensive or attacking?” “What risks and losses might I face if I become clearer and more assertive?” “If getting angry is not working for me, what can I do differently?” These are questions that we will be addressing in subsequent chapters, with the goal, not of getting rid of our anger or doubting its validity, but of gaining greater clarity about its sources and then learning to take a new and different action on our own behalf.
There is, however, another side of the coin: If feeling angry signals a problem, venting anger does not solve it. Venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur. When emotional intensity is high, many of us engage in nonproductive efforts to change the other person, and in so doing, fail to exercise, our power to clarify and change our own selves. The old anger-in/anger-out theory, which states that letting it all hang out offers protection from the psychological hazards of keeping it all pent up, is simply not true. Feelings of depression, low self-esteem, self-betrayal, and even self-hatred are inevitable when we fight but continue to submit to unfair circumstances, when we complain but live in a way that betrays our hopes, values and potentials, or when we find ourselves fulfilling society’s stereotype of the bitchy, nagging, bitter, or destructive woman.
Those of us who are locked into ineffective expressions of anger suffer as deeply as those of us who dare not get angry at all.
ANGER GONE WRONG
If our old familiar ways of managing anger are not working for us, chances are that we fall into one or both of the following categories: In the “nice-lady” category, we attempt to avoid anger and conflict at all costs. In the “bitch” category, we get angry with ease, but we participate in ineffective fighting, complaining, and blaming that leads to no constructive resolution.
These two styles of managing anger may appear to be as different as night and day. In reality, they both serve equally well to protect others, to blur our clarity of self, and to ensure that change does not occur. Let’s see how this works.
The “Nice Lady” Syndrome
If we are “nice ladies,” how do we behave? In situations that might realistically evoke anger or protest, we stay silent—or become tearful, self-critical, or “hurt.” If we do feel angry, we keep it to ourselves in order to avoid the possibility of open conflict. But it is not just our anger that we keep to ourselves; in addition, we may avoid making clear statements about what we think and feel, when we suspect that such clarity would make another person uncomfortable and expose differences between us.
When we behave in this way, our primary energy is directed toward protecting another person and preserving the harmony of our relationships at the expense of defining a clear self. Over time we may lose our clarity of self, because we are putting so much effort into “reading” other people’s reactions and ensuring that we don’t rock the boat, we may become less and less of an expert about our own thoughts, feelings, and wants.
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.”
Thus begins a self-defeating and self-perpetuating cycle. The more we give in and go along, the more our anger builds. The more we intensify our repressive efforts, the more we unconsciously fear a volcanic eruption should we begin to let our anger out. So, the more desperately we repress . . . and so it goes. When we finally do “blow,” we may then confirm our worst fears that our anger is indeed “irrational” and “destructive.” And other people may write us off as neurotic, while the real issues go unaddressed, and the cycle begins again.
Although “nice ladies” are not very good at feeling angry, we may be great at feeling guilty. As with depression or feeling hurt, we may cultivate guilt in order to blot out the awareness of our own anger. Anger and guilt are just about incompatible. If we feel guilty about not giving enough or not doing enough for others, it is unlikely we will be angry about not getting enough. If we feel
guilty that we are not properly fulfilling our prescribed feminine role, we will have neither the energy nor the insight to question the prescription itself—or who has done the prescribing. Nothing, but nothing, will block the awareness of anger so effectively as guilt and self-doubt. Our society cultivates guilt feelings in women such that many of us still feel guilty if we are anything less than an emotional service station to others.
Nor is it easy to gain the courage to stop feeling guilty and begin to use our anger to question and define what is right and appropriate for our own lives. Just at that point when we are serious about change, others may redouble their guilt-inducing tactics. We may be called “selfish,” “immature,” “egocentric,” “rebellious,” “unfeminine,” “neurotic,” “irresponsible,” “ungiving,” “cold,” or “castrating.” Such slurs on our character and femininity are perhaps more than many of us can bear. When we are taught that our worth and identity are to be found in loving and being loved, it is indeed devastating to have our attractiveness and womanliness questioned. How tempting it may be to shuffle apologetically back to our “proper place” in order to regain the approval of others.
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