Dear Fury… 

The expression of anger in humans raised as women and how it can benefit their well-being. 

Our Words, Our World

In this thesis, certain words are used to name and carefully and lovingly explore further the experiences and phenomena discussed. The following serves as a glossary, in part to introduce these terms, but also to facilitate the reader’s understanding, and most importantly highlight the linguistic choices that reflect my perspective, subtleties, and approach toward these concepts. 

AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth): People who were labelled female when they were born, based on one or more physical characteristics. 

Agender: A word to describe individuals who do not align with any gender definition, or who perceive themselves as free of gender entirely. It represents a spectrum where gender identity is seen as non-existent or neutral. 

BIPOC: A term to centre the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour and to display the solidarity between those groups.

De-Selfing: The process of compromising one’s own needs, desires, and sometimes whole identity to meet the (sometimes unspoken) demands and expectations of a relationship or society at large, at the cost of one’s mental health. 

Dysphoria: A state of general dissatisfaction or discomfort. In the context of gender dysphoria, it happens when someone’s gender identity doesn’t match the gender they were assigned at birth or the gender society perceives them as. Gender dysphoria can manifest in various ways, including emotional, psychological, and physical discomfort with one’s body. 

Female Read Person: A person who usually is perceived by others as female, regardless of their actual gender identity or sex. 

FLINTA*: An acronym representing “Women (Frauen), Lesbian (Lesben), Intersex, Non-Binary, Trans, and Agender,” used to inclusively describe groups often marginalized in gender discussions. It underscores the diversity and intersectionality of gender experiences beyond male and female binaries. The attached asterisk serves as a placeholder for all individuals who do not identify with any of the specific letters, but who are still affected by marginalization. Sometimes the word “Frauen” is also translated with “females” to fit the first letter. 

Gender Identity: Someone’s felt sense of their own gender(s) and how they label themselves. Does not have to be the same as the gender assigned at birth. For a better understanding feel free to explore the Genderbread Person. 

HRAW: An acronym for “Humans Raised As Women”. In this term, the “H” is silent, symbolically reflecting how the humanity of these individuals often appears to be overlooked or muted. This, although it might feel redundant to explain, includes not only cis-women but also to trans-men and inter, agender as well as non-binary people. It has nothing to do with one’s gender, but with the way someone was raised and socialized by their caretakers and society at large. For those who may not directly relate to this experience, my thesis aims to shed light on this reality, offering some insights into what it entails. I coined this term to offer a definition that resonated more closely with my research and this thesis.

Intersex: An umbrella term for individuals with biological, hormonal, or genetic characteristics that do not conform strictly to the binary biological definitions of “male” or “female” bodies. It encompasses a wide variety of natural body variations. Very often these individuals undergo gender reassignment surgery after birth, to fit better in the category of men and women. Due to these binary views on sex and gender, intersex people often are forced and coerced into hormone replacement or into undergoing nonconsensual,  unnecessary surgery (known as intersex genital mutilation (IGM), intersex surgeries, or  “normalization surgeries”). These surgeries often cause severe negative physical and mental effects and often happen to children under the age of two. 

Non-Binary: Refers to a spectrum of gender identities that are not exclusively in the binary of “women” or “men”. It encapsulates identities that identify with femininity and masculinity to some bigger or lesser extent, with both or that situate themselves completely outside the binary framework of male and female. Sometimes also written as nonbinary, enby,  enbie, or NB. 

Numbing: A psychological process of deadening emotional responses, typically as a defence mechanism against psychological trauma or stress. 

Oh Lorde: An exclamation used to express strong emotions such as surprise, frustration, relief, or disbelief. It pays tribute to the poet and activist Audre Lorde as well as the work of countless feminists before and after her, adding yet another breath to the chorus of sighs shared over the decades.

Self-Objectification: The perception of oneself primarily in terms based on how one’s body and appearance are perceived by others, rather than derived from one’s abilities,  thoughts, or feelings. This often leads to a constant surveillance of one’s own body and behavior and an increased feeling of being observed by others and alienated from oneself. 

Self-Silencing: The act of suppressing one’s own beliefs, feelings, or desires, often to avoid conflict or to conform to social expectations. 

Trans: Short for Transgender, refers to individuals whose gender identity or expression differs from the sex and or gender they were assigned at birth. It encompasses a diverse range of experiences and identities under the transgender umbrella. Some transgender people may experience gender dysphoria, a distress associated with their assigned gender. Some people might choose to transition, which can involve both social and physical changes to align with their true gender identity.

How did we end up here? 

I was sick and my anger saved me. And it made me a feminist. This means that I can allow myself to see more and more clearly where our suffering comes from. And I write for and about “we” and “us”, explicitly referring to people who are marginalized for not being seen as what our society considers the prototype of a human, but instead are AFAB, femme-presenting intersex,  trans, agender, non-binary people and humans raised as women. I see myself as part of this “we”. 

Interviewing the philosopher and author Sigrid Wallaert (2023) I was made conscious of an important terminological switch she applied to her writing: the change from female anger to feminist rage. Through this, she frees the conversation from potential biological essentialism and instead categorizes this kind of anger on its aims. This made me reconsider the term FLINTA*, I had previously been using throughout my thesis in order to talk about the people affected by the societal imposition of having to suppress their anger. I was never really happy with it, because the discrimination I am trying to fight is not one thing, but a bunch of different spectrums that are overlapping. I can experience sexism because I am femme-presenting. Still, when I am in my 70s I  will experience less sexual assault because patriarchal societies tend to render older women invisible (which in itself is a whole other spectrum of discrimination). If I am a racialized trans woman in my mid-30s I have maybe lived many years of my life being male-presenting and experienced some of the privileges that come with that, whilst still being fed harmful body images that shape my existence in the now, reaching the average life expectancy of a trans-woman. If I am a white male-presenting non-binary person with no dysphoria who is attracted to women, I am likely to only face discrimination if and when I choose to communicate my gender. Gathering all of these people under the umbrella term FLINTA* is surely practical in some situations, but when it comes to the doctrine of having to suppress your anger it might not apply to everyone equally or maybe at all. So I decided to center this thesis around Humans Raised As Women (in short: HRAW)  instead of FLINTA*. 

Healing from these discriminations is very difficult if the causes of our diseases are not taken into consideration. If we are not taken into consideration. There is a vast number of studies and work that showcases and proves the connection between physical (Greer and Morris, 1975;  Pettingale, Greer and Tee, 1977; Li et al., 2015) as well as mental diseases (Choi, 2009; Keller et al.,  2014) and the amount of suppressed anger in humans raised as women. This anger is considered more so if a person faces multiple challenges based on the intersection of different identities like gender, race, disability, and socioeconomic status, amongst other qualifiers. Soraya  Chemaly points in her book Rage Becomes Her to several studies that suggest that suppressed anger in women doubles the chances of dying from a heart-related disease, just like it can cause burnout, autoimmune illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and even certain cancers – particularly breast cancer, and particularly in black women (2019, pp. 81-82  & 118). It is important to note that it is not anger per se that is referred to as a potential cause of disease, but the suppression of it. 

But what is anger? It is generally considered an emotional reaction ranging from irritation to rage, often triggered by perceived injustices or threats. If externalized it can involve physiological arousal and behavioural responses, including aggression (American Psychological Association, 2021; Goleman, 2021) but when internalized it can involve its own suppression and with it secondary negative effects on one’s well-being, as shown in the following chapter.  

According to various theorists, the difference between internalized anger (anger-in) and externalized anger (anger-out) is highly important. As a study shows anger-in predicted anxiety, depression, and somatic complaints while anger-out did not (Begley,1994, p. 511). As anger is an emotion that arises in all humans when they believe that they need to protect themselves or others from being hurt (Aristotle, Rh. 1378a; Baker Miller, J., & Surrey, J., 1997; Ahmed, 2010; Hess, 2014;  Wallaert, 2023), it makes sense to be especially triggered in people who face regular discrimination. Why is it though that it is especially people who experience discrimination who often have to control their anger, instead of expressing it? Why do we prefer to let others hurt us and hurt ourselves instead of changing what causes us pain? How can we show such high levels of empathy for others but simultaneously have so many difficulties in being empathetic towards ourselves? In my ears, this all sounds like brainwashing.

And I hate that. But simply talking about brainwashing more than half of patriarchal societies, controlling the masses, and calling it all a scheme for capitalism and white supremacy to stay in place, sounds like I am a conspiracy theorist.

So I wanted to find proof. I found studies that talk about hormones like testosterone and how the social constructs we live in shape its production in all bodies, no matter their assigned sex. Testosterone levels in people assigned male at birth (AMAB) for example significantly decrease after becoming parents, with an average drop of 34%, especially in those who spend three or more hours daily caring for their children (van Anders, Steiger and Goldey, 2015). But the production of testosterone, typically associated with masculinity, also responds to behaviours like competition, which is regularly discouraged in humans raised as women. Suggesting that gender socialization and norms, alongside heritable factors, may shape the different testosterone levels in humans (Gettler et al., 2011).

Researching further I drew a connection between a 2017 study on the confidence gap (Bian, Leslie, and Cimpian, 2017) and  Erikson’s third stage of psychosocial development. The study shows that girls’ confidence levels sink around the age of six, whilst their belief in having to be “nice” rises. According to Erikson, children around that age face the developmental task “initiative vs. guilt”, during which they learn to develop one of these two states depending on the feedback they get on their efforts (Erikson, 1950, p. 224-226). Additionally, vast research spanning over the past 40 years in developmental psychology, gender role socialization, parent, family, and educational studies as well as media influence shows that especially girls are socialized to believe that they have to be good, pretty, caring for others, and kind at a young age (Gilligan, 1982; Brown and Gilligan, 1992; Chemaly,  2019; Gilligan, 2023).

This led me to think that while this emergent “new” sense of guilt develops in all children, it is on many levels reinforced in little girls by the notion of being a “good girl“ or else being punished with the existential fear of being excluded from the group/family/survival: a simple “go to your room” can already have that effect.

Drawing on the findings of these studies, it becomes clear that the expectations and pressures that society puts on young girls influence two things: the monitoring and adaptation of their external behaviour and accepting and internalizing guilt as what by then might start to feel like an intrinsic emotion. And while this internalization process happens during what Erikson indicated as a critical developmental stage, the continuous reinforcement of needing to conform to (socially constructed and imposed) ideals of being good and caring only increases its effect.  

This opposite effect occurs in boys who are often encouraged to express their anger. So it makes sense that girls, not learning to do this, misinterpret and subsequently come to accept guilt as an intrinsic emotion and carry it into the next stages of their development. Guilt is a moral emotion that often goes hand in hand with shame (Sabini and Silver, 1997) and acts as an ideal breeding ground for suppressing our own unwanted emotions, being receptive to being both objectified and to self-objectify, as well as drawing self-confidence from caring for others rather than caring for ourselves or – to spell out the unthinkable – even leading.

 
It feels important to make clear, that by no means I am trying to demonize guilt instead of anger. Audre Lorde explains “Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it becomes no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness” and “Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees.” (Lorde, 1997, P. 282 & 283)  

We, being AFAB, intersex, and trans people as well as femme-presenting non-binary and agender people, just like anyone else need to have influence, and status, in order to feel at least some sense of agency and power in our world. The easiest and most imprinted way to achieve this as a female read person is our own sexualization. Because “sexualization remains the most available, albeit very narrow, path to power for girls,” as Chemaly states (2019, pp. 73-74). How ironic though, that what gives us a sense of power simultaneously makes us feel our anger and bodies less, see ourselves as less, makes us sick, and in the end more vulnerable (Chemaly, 2019, p. 335). Humans who are self-objectifying lose the ability to recognize when they experience an increased heart rate or muscle contractions when they feel angry for example. This can go so far that they even have difficulties in counting their heartbeats (Chemaly, 2019, pp. 63-64). 

If men who look at pictures of a woman in a bikini stop seeing her as a person but instead as an object, as an influential 2012 study shows (Gervais et al., 2012), what happens with the people that sexualize themselves out of “free will”? Is it our fault? Do we as HRAW have a choice? Will I get the job if I shave my head? Will I get the job if I don’t shave my legs? Will I get love if I am not at least as pretty as possible? What will I lose if I allow myself to feel and express the anger that comes with these questions? 

We, humans raised as women, learn to turn ourselves from subjects into objects and this carries countless dangers. We face sexualized images of women daily, but we lose the ability to react to them. Instead, we internalize our feelings of anger and dissatisfaction and turn them against us.  Which is endorsed by the predisposition of guilt we carry with us from earlier stages of our lives as already described. As Soraya Chemaly puts it: “Women live their lives trying to create bodies of deference. And anger is not compatible with deference. Objectification denies us subjectivity, and anger is all about subjectivity. You can’t express anger without asserting I and your own perspective” (2019, p. 76). And I would like to add: How could I even consider being angry with someone else, if I already believe that I am the one who is wrong anyway? 

But as so often, the problem has more layers. Living in a patriarchal society women and other marginalized genders are under constant attack. From sexism to the glass ceiling, the gender pay and retirement gap, regular physical assault, biased to no health care, and unrealistic expectations of physical appearance and sexual performance (Criado Perez, 2019). Plus the constant numbing imposition of having to be submissive and helpful to others or otherwise being kicked out of the society we were raised to believe we need to survive. And to add some more intersecting layers to the problem: racism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, classism, ageism, and other discriminations all play a part in how anger is perceived and treated. For humans raised as women anger seems to never be acceptable. So of course, anger is seen neither as a moral, nor a political right that HRAW, or as Soraya Chemaly would say “women” have (2019, p. 38-39). 

But there may be another reason why we avoid anger and why, even if we dare to express it, we often do so in a dishonest, masked or passive-aggressive way. Because feeling it, allowing our anger to arise, forces us to acknowledge that something is wrong. And as a result, by accepting, feeling, and knowing that something is wrong, we could potentially give ourselves the agency to change things—things we might want to change but are perhaps too afraid to confront. “Repeating the same old fights”, as the clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner puts it, “protects us from the anxieties we are bound to experience when we make a change. Ineffective fighting allows us to stop the clock when our efforts to achieve greater clarity become too threatening. Sometimes staying stuck is what we need to do until the time comes when we are confident that it is safe to get unstuck” (2014, p. 51).  And it is incredibly difficult to acknowledge that part of our inner selves that fears and resists change (Lerner, 2014, p. 21).  

But who actually benefits from structures and systems that seem to intentionally harm a significant part of our society? Why is it so important to guide us into self-silencing, numbing, self-objectification, submission, de-selfing, tone vigilance, and low self-worth? By ignoring our anger we stop taking care of us and allow society to treat us carelessly too. Which makes it easier to take advantage of us – for work, having and/or caring for children, emotional care work, or sex, to just name a few examples. We stop protecting ourselves from danger and unfairness and we give in to being treated unequally. But “when we are angry and expect a reasonable response, we are walking, talking refutations of this status quo” (Chemaly, 2019, p. 19-20). 

It worries me when people who are under constant attack say they are simply “not an angry person”. It makes me want to yell and ask them: “But who is taking care of you if you don’t feel the attacks anymore?” We need anger as a response to the attacks, to stop the pain that wrong treatment inflicts on us. As this chapter aims to make clear, it is impossible for anger not to exist in us. Even if we suppress it, it is there and it takes a toll on our bodies, desperately trying to do what it is meant to do: help us change the situation we are in. Anger is a natural response to pain, it helps us to do something about it (Ahmed, 2004, p. 174). “Healthy anger says ‘I’m a person. I have certain human rights which you can’t deny’” (Koedt, Levine and Rapone, 1973, p. 37).

Studies show that humans raised and socialized as women are generally less happy than those raised as men –  up until they are in their 80s, which is when they often stop having to take care of others (Chemaly,  2019, p. 123). This thesis aims to investigate ways to reach this point earlier by looking at how an honest expression of anger can benefit the well-being of HRAW.

Asking for Answers 

To write this thesis I opted for various research methods. On the one hand, I documented my experiences with my anger. In the spirit of an auto-ethnographic practice, I observed my anger reactions regularly. Through this, I was able to experiment with the insecurities and fears that came up in me, about speaking up in specific situations. Simultaneously I had the chance to document the reactions of the people affected by my responses. You will find this “Anger Diary” throughout the thesis, shared in chronological order, finding its’ space in between the lines, as unplanned and disruptive as anger arises in real life too.

On the other hand, I held expert interviews with people who dedicate their careers to harnessing anger. I aimed to find more information on how the expression and suppression of anger affect the lives of HRAW in the long term. I was also interested in what the best approaches are to get in first contact with one’s anger and how to overcome the fear of expressing it. So I opted to interview professionals who approach anger in very different ways and use it throughout their practice with different outcomes.

The interviews were held with Susie Kahlich, who is the CEO of “Pretty Deadly Self-Defense”, an innovative self-defence practice taught in Berlin (Germany), Islamabad (Pakistan), Paris (France), and London (UK), Sigrid Wallaert, who is a philosophy researcher at the Ghent University (Belgium) who researches anger and anger expression in the feminist and academic context, Alina Karger, who is a therapist and a facilitator of anger workshops and seminars in Berlin (Germany), Sofie della Vanth, who holds 3-year-long training sessions on anger and freedom for women in Tuscany (Italy) and Stefan Rieß, who is a therapist and coach who works with anger and anger expression in Hamburg and Munich (Germany).

Listening to some Answers

WHAT IS ANGER?

Defining anger is not as much an easy task as I imagined it to be. So I would like to start this chapter with an overview of anger, its different types of expression, and suppression. And touch upon the connected biases, stigmata, socialization, and our own fears (because even though this may be something that can be created by society, it is also something that possibly has been processed enough to be something personal that drives us) that may affect how we feel and handle our anger.

Because one thing is more than clear: anger is one of the basic emotions (Williams, 2017), and it is inevitable. Even if we think we don’t feel it, we process it in some way or another and it will affect our well-being:

“Anger contains knowledge.”
Sigrid Wallaert

“Anger is a guiding light for unfulfilled needs or boundaries.”
Alina Karger

“When it comes to anger, especially when it comes to murderous rage or hatred, if that can run through you, many people’s hearts open up. You wouldn’t think so. But that’s the case.”
Stefan Rieß

“Anger is a bridge. It’s the fastest way to connect to another human being. Not to say it’s a positive connection, because half the time you’re burning that bridge, as you’re building it. But it is the fastest way.”
Susie Kahlich

“Anger is not anger, so not all anger is the same, there is no one anger.”
Sofie della Vanth

I find it astonishing to see that each of the interviewees mold anger into their own tool. They all discovered something distinct in it, something that serves them. Something that helps them help others. For each of them, anger means something different and yet they all their perspectives seem to be making sense. This leads me to the conclusion that anger is much more than that one emotion we often fear to hold space for. And that precisely this fear, this stigmatization of anger is what cuts us off from something that could help us to get to know ourselves better, to take care of ourselves and the rest. Let me explain…

ANGER DOESN’T COME ALONE

Anger mostly doesn’t come alone though. As Stefan Rieß explained to me, anger can come with a strong fear of losing control. It can come with deep pain about something that was locked away a long time ago and with this, it can come with sadness and desperation. Anger can also come with disgust as well as hatred. And anger can come with intimacy, something that in his workshops he calls the “vulnerability of strength”. That is an intimate insecurity, to be there with an open heart, a feeling you can get in the conscious after-contact of a confrontation.

And, as Sofie della Vanth adds, grief is also very close to anger. Because there is no anger without hurt, but there can be hurt without anger. But when we learn to realise this at a very, very early stage, as Alina Karger argues, we wouldn’t perhaps even call it anger in the way we imagine it. She says that if we are already aware of our needs and boundaries, then anger just gives it clarity. And then there doesn’t have to be any pain behind it. But that only applies if there is no more pent-up anger left, that still needs to be addressed, so quite far into the therapeutic process.

But circling back to the fear connected to anger. Stefan Rieß tells me that “when suppressed anger comes to the surface, fear often comes to the surface too, because the times when we had to suppress anger in our childhood, usually we simultaneously also were afraid that we would lose the relationship we were in anger with, which by that time often actually was an option.” He gives the simple example of a parent sending their angry child to their room until they have calmed down. Which gives the kid over and over the experience of “if I’m like that, then I lose the relationship.” And relationships (mostly the ones with our caregivers) are a holy grail in our childhood. He says: “It’s essential that we somehow maintain the relationship, which is why we adapt. In other words, what we often experience is that when deeper feelings of suppressed anger come to the surface, many people are afraid that they will be rejected or that they no longer belong, that they are no longer lovable.”

ANGER IS FELT AND EXPRESSED IN DIFFERENT WAYS

Anger can benefit us when it serves as a natural response to negative or hurtful stimuli and leads us to openly express ourselves. However, when feelings of anger are suppressed they may harmfully affect mental and physical health. This brings us to the different anger expression types. In the context of the anger workshops for women (mostly white, privileged, and cis), that Alina Karger holds with her partner, she tells me that they observed three anger types in HRAW: 

1. HRAW that don’t feel anger.

2. HRAW that feel anger but don’t express it because of their socialization and instead suppress it. 

3. HRAW that tend to get angry fast and have outbursts of anger but then often suffer shame, especially if their behaviour was perceived as destructive. 

Alina Karger also mentions that although all three anger types are present in their workshops, most of the HRAW tend to have difficulty expressing their anger. This makes sense keeping in mind the socialization HRAW go through during their young lives paired with the different layers of oppression and stigma that come with anger as discussed in the introduction to this thesis.

But as Susie Kahlich explains: “If you’re able to respond to something emotionally, it’s wonderful because you can use those emotions to help amp up your response or make it more effective. But that can also be an indicator that the danger may not be an imminent threat. It might be very close, but it might not be imminent. Sometimes women get angry when the threat is very close because it’s a way to drive them forward, and it’s part of the self-defence system of the subconscious mind being like, this lady is not reacting – we need to get her angry! Sometimes that can work. But again, when it’s right in your face, all emotion is gone. There’s just nothing.”  So feeling anger is a chance for change, it means that there can still be room, even if just a tiny bit, to approach things differently. 

Or as Alina Karger posits, anger wants to tell us that there is a need or a boundary that we sense, which we then can act on. If we recognise this early on, then we also have the opportunity to implement this insight constructively and with a great deal of clarity and strength. She differentiates between being angry and annoyed and being really angry or even hateful, which then can quickly become destructive. In their workshops, for example, they clearly distinguish between anger and aggression. Anger for them is acting for oneself and aggression is acting against someone else. A helpful clarification for everyone afraid of the destruction that their anger might bring. 

WHY DO WE OFTEN TEND TO SUPPRESS ANGER?

“When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, those deadly and safely familiar.” Audre Lorde, Fall of 1981

What happens though, if we as HRAW unconsciously suppress, decide to suppress, or have to suppress our anger, this impulse for change? Alina Karger tells me that this leaves traces in our bodies and in our emotional memory. She says “that every experience we have is stored in our body cells, both good and bad. Not all of them are conscious. Most are subconscious or are simply not relevant, especially as information in our everyday memory. And of course, experiences, especially when we talk about traumatic experiences, are things that are stored in our emotional memory. And that means that every time anger is suppressed or has developed as a result of a traumatic event, it is incredibly important to find ways to work through it.” 

In order to not feel anger, as Stefan Rieß explains, we tend to interrupt certain areas within us. “We have developed our entire coping patterns or our entire defence mechanisms so that we interrupt contact with certain areas of our emotions.” Feelings and emotions that contain immense qualities though. Qualities that “we can’t access until we go through them.”

Here I want to add a small reminder of the different intersections of oppression. Obviously, not everyone can afford to be angry, as well as not everyone can afford to work through the traumatic experiences lived. To give an example: by comparing a white cis woman who is wealthy and insured with a racialized, non-binary, disabled HRAW who is systemically held in poverty and can not afford health care, we see that although both learned to suppress their anger, it indeed often is a privilege to be able to learn to use anger as a tool for change or to even feel anger.

Me: “Why do you think we are not allowed to feel or express anger? And by…”

Sigrid Wallaert interrupts me: “Patriarchy.”

[We both laugh like kids who just shared a secret.]

Me: “When I was preparing that question, I thought the coolest thing would be if you would just say ‘patriarchy’.” 

Sigrid Wallaert: “Yeah, I think that that’s the answer in a nutshell. Patriarchy, of course, and different axes of oppression. But if we’re specifically talking about feminist anger, then I think patriarchy is the big one, and racism and colonialism and ableism and whatever you want or don’t want. But yeah, I think various axes of oppression, trying to keep people in check and keep some people in power, and other people without power. I think that’s the basics of it.”

Creating a space where HRAW can express their anger safely is incredibly valuable because anger has something very liberating and empowering about it, Alina Karger tells me. Being convinced that anger is, as science says, one of the basic emotions, Alina Karger and her partner know that as soon as we start to suppress anger it can lead to physical symptoms and illnesses in the long term. These include physical and/or mental illnesses, obesity, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, even depression. She tells me that they have a lot of therapists who send their clients to them because they say they need to deal with anger. 

She says that they believe that every feeling is important and that it needs to be dealt with in a healthy way. And that the core topic in the end is about taking responsibility for one’s own anger and understanding how one can deal with it, even with the pain and the trigger that comes behind it. Something that requires a high emotional capacity and psycho-education, as she recognizes. Because nobody in our society learns how to deal with anger and not everyone is privileged to do so.

HOW CAN WE, HRAW, HARNESS OUR ANGER?

In beginning a journey towards anger you will most probably encounter some kind of previous trauma. And with trauma will come fear and insecurity. Inspired by how Susie Kahlich holds space for upcoming trauma in her classes, I catch myself having an anger fantasy about an outburst I would LOVE to have. I imagine a fight with someone I love (which for me is the most difficult situation to express my anger honestly) in which the other holds space for me. Yelling at someone I love, someone I need, someone that just by being there lets me know that I am safe. Someone with their eyes open, watching the room, so I can break out and down, because they are there, watching out, guarding me. Not the most usual setting when anger arises. 

Stefan Rieß also talks about us needing both, mindfulness and expression, each of it at the right time, in the right place. And most of all, when things come to the surface, we need a corresponding offer of a relationship. He says that we can generate essential momentum when we find ourselves in relationships that don’t split when we get angry. This means that a situation like this can be the chance to work with a lot of intense content coming up. Or as Susie Kahlich puts it: “Let it out and use it, and let’s make connections that way.” She invites us to embrace some of the things that we are always told not to embrace, like anger. She says that yes, maybe we tend to want to spread love and joy and help others, but why not do that too? “They can all exist at the same time,” she says. “This or that… No! These binary ways of thinking, this zero-sum thinking, they are also really, really problematic. And they keep us stuck in systems and in places and in modes of thinking that aren’t helping anything at all.”

Another inspiration comes from Sofie della Vanth, who tells me about her 3-year-long training, which follows an extremely enjoyable, cheeky, profound, and revolutionary approach, as she puts it. One of its two main tracks is to fall back on the knowledge that we have in our bodies. “As women, it is a specific knowledge, about our history, about what has been done to us, what has been erased, what we carry in our bodies as trauma, as prohibitions, as guilt, as shame, yes, there’s a lot to be released” she shares. And that is a special approach, compared to the vast majority of spiritual teachings, which are all geared towards male needs, she explains. It’s not about meditating for hours or overcoming big hurdles, but about relaxing and enjoying yourself and being able to show yourself again. Something that “has to be learned all over again, because we have so many strategies to survive in this stupid, absurd world. We simply have to relearn how to show ourselves just as we are. Because true contact only works when I show myself. It’s like, I can’t say hello without showing myself. And this showing is really something that needs to be explored in a completely new way. And that’s where I come to the second track, which is of course the dismantling of all the patriarchal garbage that we carry with us. And that’s a lot of stuff.”

And when I ask if during her work she deliberately teases out the anger of the participants she gives me a very interesting answer. She says that this is too invasive. She prefers to offer them a different version of themselves and says: “Look, that’s what you could be. See if you like it.” 

HOW CAN WE BE ANGRY TOGETHER?

I got many inspirations from my interviewees on how to step into and how to harness our anger. Since it is one of the five basic emotions that all people have and that are evolutionarily vital for survival, as Alina Karger says, her approach is never trying to get rid of it. Simply because one can not get rid of a basic emotion. So what they do in their workshops is to create spaces where women can let this anger out unfiltered so that there is a feeling for it in the first place. Working with a group can play an important role in getting in touch with one’s anger. Showing oneself loudly and even “ugly” (regarding the current beauty standards of the westernized world) turns into something fun, when you realise you are not alone. When you realise “Oh, I’m not wrong at all!” as Alina Karger puts it.  But there is another part in their workshops, the part that is pure bodywork. The participants hit cushions, shout, and go into the inner processes of their anger. This part is no longer about joy but invites any type of feeling to emerge. “Sadness, pain, despair, pure anger, everything is allowed to be here” Alina Karger says. But as crucial as the connection to anger in a safer space is, the transfer into everyday life is also a key moment of the workshops. So every participant has two things when they leave: Firstly, a specific exercise to use at home, and second, she takes an experience with her of how it feels to express anger. Something that also Susie Kahlich takes advantage of in her workshops. I could happily assist her “Pretty Deadly Self-Defense” classes and teach myself in a pretty impressive manner, how we sometimes have to really do something, to create a memory of a movement, of taking space, of speaking up, to be able to put it in our everyday life toolbox. 

Apart from getting angry in front of the other participants, which helps to address anger later in everyday life, just releasing one’s anger is equally important. And Stefan Rieß tells me that we hold a lot in our bodies.
According to the concept of the body armour^⁠, by allowing some feelings to emerge again, we can let go of them. We carry frozen versions of ourselves, as Stefan Rieß explains to me, sometimes as young as just a few years old. And when we finally allow these versions to express themselves again, with an adult consciousness, then they can start to grow older. “We have to get back to them, otherwise they won’t release themselves,” he remarks. His participants scream, hit, kick, bite, even spit if necessary. Just like children would do. And just like many children are not allowed to do. 

In our conversation, Sofie della Vanth opens another important field though, the one about stepping out of connection/fusion. She says the practice she invites to, is to feel, recognise and inhabit the field around oneself. And to feel and sense the fields of others. And then to “revive an art that we no longer have at all. Namely, going inside ourselves and saying goodbye again.” Any encounter we have with others creates a connection, she explains. And since we rarely have learned how to get out of connection, this is what “creates all the pain, the pain of separation, etc. If we learn to say again, ‘thank you – the gifts have been exchanged,’ then we can save ourselves a lot of pain.”

This reminds me of something I discovered whilst reading The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner (2014), which is that the fear of change often holds us back from stopping to fight and taking matters into our own hands again, for example by leaving a situation or relation that causes us to be angry regularly. This is why endless fights and arguments with our family and other close relationships, although they might be anger-out, are also not helpful long-term. Because the arising of anger is not necessarily calmed by simply expressing it, but by protecting what needs to be protected in and for us. 

In short: Expressing anger is good, and doing this in contact with people is essential, especially if we can manage to do this in the situations in which anger arises. But stepping out of the fusion each connection carries is equally important. So it seems vital to also learn how to hold space for anger by ourselves.

HOW CAN WE BE ANGRY BY OURSELVES?

Sofie tells me about a “wonderful, simple, magical technique” that always works for her: inviting your anger to dinner. She says that by investing some time beforehand we already get in first contact with our anger, for example by thinking about:

What would my anger like to eat?
What would she like to drink?
Is there something else she would want or like? Or rather not?
How do I prepare the ambiance? Will I go out into nature? Dine in?

And then when the anger comes to dinner, we can ask questions like:
How are you?
What do you need?
What are you going to tell me?
Where are you from?
Where are you now?
Tell me what you want.

And then eat, drink, have a little schnapps with her.
Whatever is wanted and needed.

Sofie della Vanth also enjoys walking with her anger. She says that when you move you expand the space, you enlarge it. Similarly, Susie Kahlich also proposes to move, when angry. Not to calm the anger in any way, but to feel its power within the own body. She likes to walk and be conscious of how her hips and legs are feeling and how powerful her body is as she moves.

But sometimes that’s not enough, she says. In that case she enjoys going to a crowded area, walking through it and seeing if she can move everybody to the side with just sheer anger, just “by my vibes”. This practice is especially helpful when anger makes us feel powerless. She recommends it as a reminder to oneself, that we have this much power, without the need to hurt anyone. 

When that’s not enough either yet, Susie Kahlich works with one of her weapons to let out her anger. The first stage is wooden weapons. Just being in a room and training with her swords, letting the anger out and connecting with the wood, is a great experience. Which can also go to using her steel sword when she is “really, really, really angry ”. The effect of cutting the air, the sound of the blade cutting through it is a “really nice release of anger”. 

And then she said something that surprised me:

“When I am at the level of profound female rage, that level of rage that we feel as women where we know, if I open my mouth right now, I’m going to swallow the world, that is the hardest one. But that’s the one where I actually sit down and meditate, not to calm my mind, but to actually send that anger somewhere in the world where it can neutralize the situation. So when I’m feeling it at that level, I usually play with my weapons first just to get it out of my system. Then […] I picture my rage as a shape and a colour and I let it come up out of my mouth and I send it to that place in the world and think hopefully that will neutralize it, those fuckers, because usually that level of rage is that world rage.”

Sigrid Wallaert in turn proposes to be confident in the aptness of our anger. To be confident in the reasons for our anger, knowing that we have a right to it. She invites us to remember that anger arises in difficult situations and that often there are no right answers. And she invites us to remember that there are many people out there who want to listen and even be angry along with us, “even if, again, in a nutshell, patriarchy isn’t.”

In the end, a feeling is just a feeling, Alina Karger says. And a feeling is just a bodily reaction. And it is important to remember though it might feel different in the situation, we won’t die from it. Not anymore, because we are adults now. That’s why she proposes to dedicate ourselves to this feeling, to befriend it. She says that anger is what stands in front (not behind) “every empowered person who knows what they want, who knows what they don’t want, who stands up for themselves and for what’s important to them and who isn’t afraid to take their needs and boundaries seriously and to take care of themselves.”

And that, in the end, is self-love, she says. And I couldn’t agree more. 

SO WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BEING ANGRY?

Apart from the many health benefits already talked about in the first part of this thesis, another benefit of inviting instead of suppressing one’s anger is getting to know ourselves. It is very much en vogue to talk about self-care in this day and time. But when it comes to actually doing it, how are we supposed to care for ourselves if we don’t know what we want?

By working through the experience of anger, as Alina Karger does in her workshops, we can discover the unfulfilled needs and the boundaries beneath it. Or as Stefan Rieß claims, we “need integrated anger in order to establish various qualities” that we need in life. That means decisiveness, clarity, and the ability to say no at the right time, something he calls “healthy autonomy”. Anger basically provides the strength to go for what is important to oneself.  Which is an important distinction, since anger often is imagined and talked about as a force against something. Being well with one’s anger, integrating even the aggressive parts, helps create a loving interior space, as he says. A space that now also exists in me and that I am currently writing from.  

Additionally, working through one’s anger (through feeling and expressing it) also increases one’s relationship skills, Stefan Rieß remarks. By working through the repressed feelings that can keep us from allowing closeness in relationships, it can get easier to get involved and show oneself in the present. 

Being on good terms with our own anger and its motives and reasons can also allow us to see the anger of others in a different light. Not to excuse any kind of violent (physical or mental) behaviour, but to see where their reach ends and where our own internalized and harmful belief systems are activated. This way, if we assume that we are experiencing anger with someone we want in our life and who is equally interested in solving the issue between us “we can use anger as the connector that it is, and we can use it as a tool”, as Susie Kahlich makes clear. Or to put it in Sofie della Vanths’ words: “It really is a force that has a beauty and a power and a connection that is deeply moving.”

In short, if we face anger we also have to face trauma. Which, as Stefan Rieß confirms, needs a “balance between intensity and mindfulness.” Anger does not propose to cross these boundaries if we are not ready for it, but more than anything it wants to communicate to us that we have boundaries worth looking at. Boundaries sometimes maybe worth working through, sometimes worth protecting. This is probably one of my favourite facets of anger: We never know what she is going to show us next. Maybe it is an old belief system that we can let go of now because we don’t need it anymore. Or maybe it is a new border, a wish, a need that arose in order to give our well-being more space. Very often I feel that my honest anger feels like the growth pains we might feel in adolescence, that remind us of how our bodies start to take more space. 

And as Stefan Rieß tells me about an experience of a woman in his seminar, having “the anger channel free” as he calls it, also helps also in a world in which HRAW often find themselves in the need to protect their physical well-being too. Something I can confirm from my own experiences as a HRAW and femme-presenting person, being in contact with my anger took me out of this well-trained reaction of freezing (also known as shut-down), straight into action. 

Audre Lorde writes that “anger is loaded with information and energy” (1997, p. 280) and Sofie della Vanth confirms out of her personal but also professional experience with anger that it has an “immense energy potential bound up in it”. It is “more powerful than love” as Susie Kahlich states, “if we can’t embrace it and use it in healthy ways, it is kind of like a wasted resource.” I agree. Instead of fearing anger in ourselves and others, we should maybe ask: “WHY are we angry?” and aim to discover the solutions that might arise in us if we dare to stop running and start to listen. A task though, that is not as easy as it seems.

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO BE ANGRY? 

Because if I get angry I start setting boundaries. Something that I am not only afraid of because it might threaten some relationships I have (that are not used/based on me setting boundaries) but also because I would have to accept, that I was not setting boundaries before. It comes with big pain/suffering to allow myself to see the pain that was caused to me (physically and also emotionally) because of missing boundaries in my past. The guilt that might arise here, reinforced, if not created by our past socialization (as discussed in the first part of the thesis) might obscure the beauty that lies in us discovering the potential we have, to take care of ourselves. And the older I get, the more pain I have to allow back into my memory in order to accept boundaries as a new tool in my life. Mindfulness is one thing. Being present with the scars we carry is a whole other thing.

In conclusion, the way we choose to express and feel our anger can change the way we emotionally and physiologically react to our environment. Although not all anger expression is beneficial for our well-being, suppressing and ignoring it, seems to lead to even bigger damage for the ones that find themselves in need of protection. As my research shows and as you can see in the flowchart shared above, anger always entails a chain reaction of effects, internal and/or external. And since anger only arises when some part of us needs protection, the healthiest way to handle this basic, and with that inevitable emotion, is to harness it and use it for what it is intended: to care for us and our well-being.

I would like to invite you, dear reader, to give your anger a chance, because it seems to be so much wiser than what we all have been led to believe. And you could start with something as simple as writing a letter:

Dear Fury…

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