16.2 Anger
16 of the participants speak of
anger in the interviews and anger seems to be related to crying according to
some of the 13 participants who spoke crying (appendix 4). Anger is mentioned
91 times and crying 32 times in all the interviews and it seems that they are
often mentioned in relation to each other. Ruth explains that anger and crying
are the two most important emotional expressions they meet at the Incest Centre
in Vestfold, and she confides that she herself, when listening to others, sometimes
feels anger. This is an anger which seems to arise together with a feeling of
weakness (avmakt). She mentions the
feeling of weakness first and then anger and research done by Skjørten (1994,
2007), in her work with male abusers in domestic violence, shows that some men
who feel weakness in various situations tend to show anger afterwards instead
of crying. Dagny and Bodil on the other hand say that they cry instead of feeling
anger. For them anger is an emotion they either don’t feel or have not yet been
able to grasp. Gunhild says that she does not have a problem with feeling anger
and has a lot of anger inside of her. Margaret explains that some feel anger
towards their mothers because they expected them to protect them, but they
failed to do so.
Ruth: The two most important things here are anger and crying. ((Bites
her lips together)) Uh-huh… A feeling of
weakness (avmakt) and anger, yeah I
can feel anger myself here. I don’t pay attention to it under a conversation,
but the things we hear here do something to us.
Dagny: I
don’t feel it. I can’t feel any anger or temper…I can be hysterical at home in
a situation with my kids, if they don’t listen or something, but I don’t really
feel angry. Anger doesn’t exist. I don’t have a hot temper. Or maybe I just
haven’t released it yet.
Bodil: I’ve tried, but I just cry instead.
Gunhild: I’ve
got a lot of anger inside of me. Dear God yes, yes, yes. I can really ignite.
That’s no problem at all. That’s for sure.
Margaret_1: They
feel a lot of anger towards their mothers whom they feel have failed to protect
them. They feel let down. There’s a lot of anger there, a lot of aggression;
anger, hate and contempt, yeah.
It
seems possible in my opinion that crying may function as a way of letting out
ones feeling of weakness before it develops into anger, while others may cry in
order to let out ones feeling of anger. The function of crying in the healing
process seems to me to be an interesting focus for further research.
I believe that there is much truth in the research done by Hareli and
Weiner (2002) when they argue, like Ruth, Dagny, Bodil, Gunhild and Margaret,
that anger is generated by judgements of personal responsibility. Anger is the
result of a value judgement that follows from the belief that another person
could and should have acted in another way. In addition, anger requires some
personal involvement as a victim, identification with the victim, or both.
Anger communicates the feeling that someone ought to have done something or
refrained from doing something. The moral aspect of anger is evident when it is
recognized that if the communicated anger is accepted, or perceived as
justified, then the recipient of this emotional message will feel guilty.
Linda: I’m
afraid I’ll attack him.
Margaret: We
have to use our hate and anger in order to become free.
Sally: I usually explode during family celebrations.
Pia: Most of my anger is towards my father… I did all sorts of bad things in
my youth just to harm them.
Ivar: All of the abuse I suffered involved umm aggression, violence and pain.
Yeah it involved both psychological and physical umm aggression, threats, violence,
and even bondage and strangulation… He was a sex sadist…he made me shout out my
pain, but held his hand in front of my mouth so no one would hear me, while he
pounded real hard on me from behind. I shouted and screamed ((Laughs)) that was the sound that was there.
It
can be understandable in my opinion that victims of sexual abuse like the five participants
above can feel anger towards those who have abused. They point their anger towards
there perpetrators, but others, as shown in this study, focus their anger
towards their mothers who they feel should have protected them or towards
themselves for not being strong enough. Lutwak, Panish, Ferrari and Razzino (2001) have carried out a study
where they explore the possible relationships between anger, shame and guilt.
Their findings suggest guilt-proneness is negatively related to outward anger,
both for men and women, and positively related to anger control. In my opinion,
this research shows that there seems to be a positive correlation between shame-proneness
and inward anger. Other researchers have shown that modes of expressing anger
and hostility have been noted to be heavily influenced by experiences of shame
(Tangney, Wagner, Fletcher and Gramzow 1992). Lewis (1971) suggests that anger
may be an emotion which is not accepted by the self as valid; it is not a
personal right for shame-prone individuals. Angered, shame-prone individuals
may feel ashamed of their anger, since they seem to view this emotion as taboo
and unacceptable.
If anger
and shame are related, then showing ones anger in the right way and in the
right place, might function as a way of reducing ones shame. Some do this
through ordinary physical activity such as in sports, others need help to
release there anger. In this way energy is released, and that is way Margaret
sees anger as something that can be positive. It might be so that if one can
channel this energy in the right direction, shame will seem to become weaker. Some of the users show their anger for the first time; some have never
been allowed to be angry before. Anger can then become a new experience in the
healing process.
Margaret_1: People
can have umm big problems with conversations, maybe because they have a whole
lot of aggression inside. Umm one girl here was at the store and the queue was
moving really slowly. Someone was standing in front of her, dawdling. The girl
became really irritated and ended up exploding (.) She felt like she was going to explode and was able to say something to
those in front of her and got really mad. When she came here afterwards and
told me what had happened, she felt guilty and didn’t want to feel that way.
That was wrong. After all, it was all just a trifle (.) someone dawdling in the cue. So she felt her own (.) her own anger and knew that it wasn’t
reasonable anger. I believe it was very important for her to see herself as she
is, even if she was being unreasonable, it was honest anger, and she should
have taken it seriously…Most people can feel anger and get real angry. ((Drinks
water))…I see aggression as a good
energy…and it’s good that those who come here show their aggression. But the
important thing is to channel it so that it doesn’t hurt others. One can’t go
around being aggressive all the time but you have to learn to express it in a
safe way... It’s very effective to hit a punching bag. You can get a whole lot
of anger out there. Especially if you give the punching bag a name, because
anger is often directed towards a person…The anger you feel inside becomes a
different kind of anger when you start to pound on the bag… They name the punching bag after their abuser
or someone else they umm feel has failed them… Aggression is energy and if you
can tap into this energy, then you feel that you don’t have so much to be
ashamed of anymore. One isn’t as shameful afterwards. That’s my experience…
They take back their own power, yeah. Not in order to dominate others, but in
order to take control over themselves instead of letting others use them.
I agree with Margaret that anger and
aggression can be used as energy if used in a correct manner. But letting
aggression grow into violence towards oneself or others would be a destructive
development. Linda speaks of the negative aspects of anger, when anger is
channelled towards the self and results in self-injury. She also says that
anger is positive when it is expressed in the right way
Linda_1: There
are some boys who injure themselves, but I believe it’s the same reaction when
they become violent. It’s good to get one’s aggression out, but it’s a shame
for those who are on the receiving end of this aggression. So what we do here
is to put on boxing gloves and let them pound on a punching bag…They yell a lot
when they punch the bag…Yeah there’s a whole lot of screaming here, I can hear
this quite often here ((Laughs)) I
can hear it through the walls…First we try to help people release their aggression
by using words.
Anger and aggression seems it be emotions which contain a large amount
of energy and it important that they be channelled in the right direction. How
this is to be done depends on the individual. Some are more rational than
others; some are introspective while others are more outgoing; some are shame
ridden while others are guilt ridden. The research done by Tangney, Wagner, Hill-Barlow,
Marshall and Gramzow (1996) suggests that shame-prone individuals are more
likely to engage in unexpressed, indirect aggression, (i.e. self-aggression)
than guilt-prone individuals. However, they also found that shame-prone
individuals are more actively aggressive in conflict situations. It seems that
shame-prone individuals tend to be meek, submissive and passive even though
they are angry. Furthermore, shame-prone individuals tend to express their
anger in irrational and counterproductive ways.
Showing
oneself to others is easy when everyone likes what they see, but more difficult
when one believes oneself to have a range of negative features, such as anger.
Showing ones anger, maybe for the first time may require a great deal of
courage. Ruth explains just this about one of the users she
has spoken with.
Ruth_1: She
had never cried, never felt anger, she had never dared. The consequences would
have been terrible had she done so… Her awful aggressive feelings grew stronger
and stronger every time she came to the centre. I remember when she first
started placing the responsibility for and guilt connected with the things that
had happened in her childhood where it belonged, and some completely new
thoughts struck her. Who am I really?
What am I? (.) Am I the person I
thought I was? Am I the person my abusers say I am? She started to sort things
out. We were in the basement here. She lived here for a short while. And then
she said, “Ruth, there’s something I have to get off my chest.” We closed the
door, and she started to swear and curse and kept on for two hours. She had
never said a naughty word in all her life. They weren’t umm the worst words in
the vocabulary, but they were awful for her. She said things like God, Christ,
Shit and Pee. They were all bad words for her. But she felt much more at ease
after those two hours.
Permitting oneself to say shit for
the first time, saying a naughty word, might be the most aggressive action some
people have done in their lives. The Incest Centre in Vestfold does not
encourage users to show their anger or aggression, but when users themselves
show such emotions and feel they need to work with them, users are then helped
with these emotions. One of the consequences of shame, in my opinion, seems to
be silence and hiding, locking the door to ones emotions. So when users start
to show their emotions, this can be viewed as a positive development in the
healing process. In this section I have showed that anger seems to be an
emotion which can be conceived as both positive and negative, depending on
where it is directed. If anger is directed inward, towards oneself, it can harm
the self. Directing one’s anger at others can also have a harmful or negative
outcome. Focusing on one’s anger as a positive energy and releasing it indirectly
through different forms of controlled activity, rather than directing it toward
oneself or others, seems to have a positive effect. Ruth speaks about a woman
who had never sworn in her life, and who found release when she was able to
curse for the first time. Working through embarrassment seems to play an
important role in expressing emotions. I will therefore take a closer look at
embarrassment in the next section.
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