Anger and boundaries
For most of my life, I’ve had an exceptionally hard time expressing anger. It’s as if there’s some part of my brain that flags the feeling as “dangerous” and diverts it down my sadness pipeline, where it can be transformed into tears and self-loathing. On the rarest of occasions, when anger does manage to claw its way to the surface, it’s uncontrollable, terrifying, and overwhelming.
At 28, in an introductory session with my therapist, after a severe bout of depression and panic, I told her about my fear of anger and my inability to engage with the feeling. She gave me a soft therapist’s smile and said, “When someone tells me they can’t get angry, what I really hear is they have a problem setting boundaries.”
I blinked a few times as I processed what she said. Of course, I couldn’t set boundaries. If I did, the people might leave! I reasoned I had a better chance of my loved ones sticking around if I made myself as small and agreeable as possible. My understanding frayed a bit when it came to how anger and setting boundaries were related.
Up until that point, my perception of anger was all twisted faces, flying spittle, animal-like rage filling eyes, violence, and pain. To be angry was to lose control, but it also required a fearlessness and self-possession that I lacked. Anger, it seemed, was for other people far stronger and more confident than I.
After reassuring me that she understood why my childhood would create my particular perception of anger, and why it wasn’t safe for me to express it, my therapist asked: “What if anger isn’t about losing control, or hurting someone? What if we reframe anger as a natural reaction to our boundaries being violated?”
I was hesitant—feeling like I deserved or was worthy of boundaries was a ludicrous concept to me. But, my therapist and I kept working on reframing my understanding of anger and why expressing it would be in my benefit. Though the advantages in setting boundaries might be obvious to some, the concept that I couldn’t really give the best of myself if I wasn’t taking steps to protect my energy, my labour, and myself, didn’t occur to me until my therapist illuminated the idea. I had also, unknowingly, created a trap for myself in all of my relationships: by always trying to anticipate and adapt to others’ expectations of me, I couldn’t be fulfilled, personally or socially, or give myself to my relationships in the ways that I valued. It got to the point where I felt my identity was just a patchwork of what others wanted me to be.
Growing up in an environment where my sense of worth was consistently called into question, it became so easy to devalue myself and only find self-esteem in pleasing others—a concept reinforced in women in our society. But, bottling up my anger had some very real consequences. The most minor boundary violation, in my head, could spin into a personal attack so devastating I’d collapse into myself, become short-tempered, and pessimistic to the point of despair. In addition to my personal relationships suffering, I struggled with my professional responsibilities. Even in the most accommodating of workplaces, I was so hard on myself and perceived other’s expectations of me to be so severe that I ended up fuelling my own burnout—twice. A lack of boundaries meant I also found myself in truly dangerous and traumatic situations because my sense of accommodation was stronger than my sense of self-preservation. Repressing my needs for so long caused fissures to form in my functioning: panic attacks, self-harm, impulsive behaviour, hospitalizations.
Because my knowledge gap around setting boundaries was so significant, my therapist advised me to start by setting a very small, uncomplicated, and manageable boundary. The first boundary I ever set was with my partner, someone who I already trusted to respond to my needs thoughtfully. He had a habit of leaving empty yogurt containers in the sink. I detest the smell of yogurt, yet I was forever cleaning these containers as resentment and frustration seethed somewhere in the murky background of my mind. Up until that point, I didn’t want to say anything because of my fear of abandonment, and my certainty that it was my obligation to accommodate any loved one’s request, as their comfort was undoubtedly a priority over mine.
Though the request might seem minuscule, I experienced a surprising amount of anguish when I asked my partner to clean up his containers. I hesitated, shook, and stuttered but finally managed to get the words out. I held my breath in the instant I waited for his reaction. He smiled. Said it was no problem, and he didn’t realize it had bothered me. The monumental ask I felt I was making was no big deal in his eyes. His reaction encouraged me to keep setting boundaries, and gradually increase their scope and difficulty.
These days, with practice, it’s become much easier to advocate for myself and deal with feelings of anger. This isn’t to say I’m now adept at expressing the emotion. I’m still holding onto some deep rage-filled wounds from my past and struggling with new sources of anger everyday but by understanding anger is simply a reaction to a violation of boundaries, it’s become a lot easier to engage with the feeling and create constructive action propelled by it.
Mad History
This issue: Dancing mania
Emotions can manifest in all sorts of different ways, but none seem so strange as the dancing mania that overtook mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. The afflicted would erratically dance without reason, sometimes in large groups, until they collapsed from exhaustion or, according to some sources, death.
The earliest known outbreak happened in a German town during Christmas Eve in the 1020s. Eighteen people had gathered outside of a church and danced with such abandon they disrupted the mass inside. Instances of dancing mania continued into the 13th and 14th centuries throughout Germany, England, and the Netherlands. By 1374, following another well-documented outbreak in Germany, the manic dancing spread to Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. In July 1518, what was dubbed the “dancing plague” hit Strasbourg (in modern-day France), starting with a lone woman and culminating in, according to some sources, up to 400 people taking to the streets in hypnotic dance. By the mid-17th century, dancing mania appears to have died out completely.
There has been much speculation around the cause of dancing mania, yet no consensus. For some context, these outbreaks tended to occur during times of hardship in a society in which there were deeply held beliefs that angry spirits were capable of casting dancing curses upon helpless victims. A prominent theory proposes victims of the plague were suffering from a type of fungal poisoning that can cause hallucinations and convulsions. Other theories include suggestions of encephalitis, epilepsy, typhus, or simply that the outbreaks were all staged. Dancing mania has been categorized as one of the first instances of mass psychogenic illness (sometimes known as mass hysteria).
Recommended Reading
Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames
By: Thich Nhat Hanh
In his book, Anger, peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh offers a mindful approach for dealing with the feeling. Informed by Buddhist teachings, Hanh provides practical advice around creating a relationship with and tending to your anger through accessible metaphors. Whenever I’m struggling with my anger, this book gives me the tools I need to approach and navigate the feeling in a loving, compassionate, and mindful manner.
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