Being Mad Doesn’t Mean You’re Bad

Often those of us who have experienced neglect and abuse have a really complex relationship with anger (actually, most people do, but that’s another story). One, we may have experienced a parent, partner or authority figure use their anger to intimidate and manipulate us, creating an association between anger and being a really crappy sort of person. Two, we may have experienced the same person or people being very dysregulated and unable to control their anger, creating genuinely terrifying situations where we learn to do anything to appease them and make things ok again.

And three, we have probably rarely been able to know, experience or find the right way to express our own legitimate anger. In fact, in toxic relationships our own legitimate anger (from being betrayed, devalued, gaslit, insulted, and manipulated) is all too often used against us. When we express feelings of frustration or “clap back” we are told we are the problem. “There you go again, you really need to learn how to deal with your anger.” (See Is It Fighting or is it Abuse? for more on this.) Some of us simply shut down and others may find themselves blowing up.

In our relational trauma coach training program it has become clear to us that finding our anger and learning to include it is critical to healing. We use the metaphor of a “speed limit”* in terms of anger as a way to help people see that anger is a) a real, legitimate human experience, and b) does not have to be out of control terrifying rage. Like all emotions, it tells us something, often that a boundary has been violated or there is something happening that is not ok. And it needs to move, but at a manageable speed.

As the students share this with clients, there are some classic responses. One is that in terms of having an anger speed limit, targets of narcissistic abuse often say things like “Speed limit? Hah! I’m not even on the road, I’m still in the driveway!” The other is that they begin to realize that, in the words of the title of this blog, being mad doesn’t mean they are bad.

Here are some questions we can explore to help work with anger at a speed that feels right:

ONE: What speed are you generally at when you need to communicate something with an emotional charge? How does that feel?

TWO: When you are angry and you go overly slowly and carefully, just barely putting along, how does that feel?

THREE: When you are angry and you go full out (100 MPH/160 KPH), no holding back, how does that feel?

FOUR: In most situations, for you, what feels like the right “speed limit?” That is, going at an appropriate, controlled and yet moving along speed? How does that feel?

FIVE: Where in your life do you need to speed up or slow down?

There is more and more evidence that suppressing emotions is bad for both one’s physical and mental health. Learning to a) recognize anger as one of our legitimate human emotions and b) find our own moving-forward-but-still-in-control speed limit of expression are important aspects of the healing journey. Don’t let crappy people in your present or past steal your anger from you — it lives alongside your passion and your joy.

*I think I originally got the speed limit metaphor from Josh Sommers Flanagan in this blog: https://johnsommersflanagan.com/2016/12/11/the-sweet-spot-of-self-control/

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This post was previously published on BUTNOWIKNOWYOURNAME.WORDPRESS.COM and is republished on Medium.

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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:

White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism

Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box

The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer

What We Talk About When We Talk About Men

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