Your Anger Doesn’t Need a Cure — It Needs to Be Expressed

Since we were little girls, our culture has told us that we must be polite and deferential, that we must be compliant and respectful, that expressing anger is unbecoming and unprofessional.

Spiritual conditioning has trained us to believe that we have no reason to feel angry. Positive psychology training implies that anger is a moral failing on our part — a consequence of refusing to count our blessings or look at the bright side.

The myth of the angry perimenopausal woman assumes that hormone fluctuations are to blame for poorly-regulated emotions, and promises cure in the form of hormone replacement therapy.

Spiritual teachings tell us to practice gratitude as the antidote to anger.

These “cures” force us to play right into the systems and structures that got us here in the first place.

Your Anger Does Not Need Scientific Explanation

Your anger needs no scientific validation.

Anger is an alert system, a warning sign, and a roadmap to the principles and values that matter most to you.

You have a right to feel angry: at doctors who don’t take your symptoms seriously, at a culture that has long told women we can’t trust our own bodies and our intuition, at systems that push us to the sidelines as we get older.

You have a right to feel angry about norms and standards that dismiss the value of your lived experience.

Your Anger is Spiritual

If you think “it’s not spiritual to be angry,” think again.

It’s not spiritual to bury a part of yourself and to bypass what you’re feeling just for the sake of compliance and conformity.

Your anger contains wisdom.

It gives voice to your boundaries that have been violated, to the parts of you who have been disrespected, to the dreams that have been deflated.

Your Anger is Sacred

Your anger is a part of you, just as much as your gratitude and joy.

When you subdue it with hormones or other substances, or bypass it with gratitude, you suppress a sacred part of yourself that needs to be seen and heard.

In fact, if you can’t fully be with your anger, you cannot fully be with your “positive” emotions.

Your anger is sacred, and it longs to be heard.

Your anger does not need a cure. It needs to be expressed.