The Importance of Being Angry

I have just finished an Instagram series of posts on the theme of #twelveangrywomen, inspired by the outpouring of anger women all over the UK were expressing following the tragic murder of Sarah Everard.   Her death tore the plaster off the wound all women wear, which is the threat of violence women live with every day.  This happened in the same week that Meghan and Harry Windsor's interview with Oprah Winfrey aired and the anger directed at this couple, but in particular, at this woman was frankly staggering.  

Sadly, society teaches women in a myriad of ways that anger is an ugly emotion for them to express.  Judged, ridiculed, dismissed as hormonal or mentally ill, this has been historically reinforced through organised religion, the media, portrayals in fiction on the page and on the screen, and normalised by women themselves.  When we buy magazines that peddle scandal and shame, or we watch reality tv shows that applaud the taking down of strong women we collude in our own oppression.

So my dander was well and truly up.  

It is time to understand anger as a useful emotion if we can master it.  

It is time to celebrate assertiveness as a life skill that is as important to our health and happiness as the ability to express love.  

It is time to applaud women when they are forceful, or passionate, or righteously indignant about their rights and their lives instead of colluding in their judgement (Camilla Long's vitriolic review of the Meghan & Harry's interview in the Sunday Times was as masterclass in mean girl behaviour and  a prime example of how culpable we women are in upholding the status quo).    

The image at the top this blog is a Chinese pictogram of nu, or anger.  On the left we have a representation of the figure of a woman.  On the right we have a representation of the figure of a man, or of authority leading her.  These together denote the word 'slave' (which can of course be male or female). The addition of the symbol underneath turns this word from slave to anger, but tells us much about the quality of this anger. 

This is the anger we experience when we feel that something or someone is impeding our ability to live our life, or to progress in life in the way we feel we should be able to.  What rises up in us is a dynamic emotion, that rush of blood to the head, which desires us to be assertive in order to remain in alignment with our goals or feelings.  

In Chinese Medicine anger is associated with the Wood Element and if someone's Causative Factor (ie the Element in them that goes 'off kilter') is Wood, what we are likely to see is inappropriate levels of anger and frustration.  But in health and balance - and we all have all the Elements within us - this Element gives us the ability to stand up for ourselves with the right amount of aggression, or assertiveness.  

Through the series of posts I talk about why anger needs to be physically expressed in order for it not to become pathological and cause us illness or dis-ease, I look at repressed anger, passive-aggressiveness, the righteous anger that creates change (civil rights movements, Marcus Rashford's school meals activism, Gina Miller holding the government to account over Brexit etc), so do go back and take a look at them if this blog creates an itch you'd like to scratch. 

And if you have an issue with anger - too much or not enough healthy aggression - then a course of Five Element acupuncture would be a useful starting point to help you master this important, useful emotion for life.