I love my anger.

In which I consider -- well, why I love my anger so much

I don’t know where I’d be without my anger.

I know I know: Anger is bad. I’m not supposed to feel it. It’s going to rot my soul.

Yeah, if I repress it into a bubbling bog!

Well then, it’s going to hurt other people.

Yeah, if I spew it at them!

What if I embrace it? As I do every other emotion? Rush up to it, give it a big hug, and then hold it away from me and say, “Let me look at you!”

And then, after I’ve taken a long affectionate look, saying, “So what are you telling me?”

With anger, the answer to that question is generally this:

I sense injustice somewhere.

Capital “I” Injustice, like racism or misogyny or anti-Semitism or fascism or sexual abuse or Christian Nationalism or treason.

These constitute a particular category of angry which can easily escalate into outrage. Which, in my book, is different from anger and worth another look (in another post).

Here, I’m going to focus on “little-i” injustice. Impingements that push my buttons, that I take personally.

Like when someone takes me for granted. When someone treats me as invisible and, worse, takes advantage of me for their own sake. For example: Years ago, during a meeting with a number of professors who had the power to approve or reject my dissertation proposal, my advisor flipped, on the spot, from supporting my work to criticizing it. Thereby risking a vote of no on my proposal, which would have sent me back to the drawing board for weeks. Why did my advisor do this? Because, he actually told me later, he wanted to prove to one of my committee members – a famous researcher who was apparently intimidating – that he (my advisor) could hold my “intellectual feet to the fire.” Not because this little exercise helped me or my dissertation proposal. But because it made my advisor look good in that colleague’s eyes.

For my advisor, was I even there? No. I was invisible except as a stepping stone for his reputation and status. Knee-jerk and fear-based for him. Shocking and horrifying for me. Did he regret his act later? No. He just assumed I’d forgive him and survive whatever fate befell me. He took my forgiveness and survival, no matter the fallout from his actions, for granted.

That made me very angry. Did I repress the anger? No. I felt it and thought about it. Did I express my anger? No. That would have been academic suicide. But I did make a plan. I changed advisors.

I get angry when someone decides to define me in terms that work for them and them alone. Like when an old boyfriend insisted I was “crazy” for calling him out on his bad behavior. Or when a teacher I hired while I was director of a Master’s program bad-mouthed me to the students because — well, because she wanted my job. Or when I’m just one quality — “smart” or “technologically challenged” or “feminist” or “racist” — instead of a complex amalgamation of all of them. (Please note: I am racist because I am a white woman who has grown up in a white supremacist country. I am also fervently anti-racism. See? I’m complex.)

Do I repress this anger? No. Do I spew it? No, not even when another person is spewing at me. What, then, do I do?

I let myself take a look at it: I feel it. I think about it. I wonder what I need to change in myself. I wonder, rigorously, what that boyfriend or employee or accuser might be teaching me about them. Once I’ve formulated a good guess based on the data, I come up with a plan of action.

Which my anger fuels. That is, my anger helps me carry out my plan; it bolsters me, empowers me, emblazons me. But not to dominate. Rather, to connect. To gain understanding. To show up, to persist, to represent myself so I’m seen accurately.

OMG there are so many other things that make me angry. Like other drivers. Don’t get me started! But here’s the point: My anger is a great gift to me. It signals that someone has done me or someone else wrong. If I can figure out what the wrong is, I can try to understand why it happened and, most importantly, what I’m willing to do about it.

No repression. No spewing. Just responsible, disciplined emotion work. Which makes me a better person and invites others to be better people, too.