Ever found yourself suppressing anger or rage? Below you’ll find the first in a series of videos on women and rage.

1. Why rage matters
2. Our stories around rage and what to do about it
3. Accessing rage – how to locate it when it’s been suppressed for millennia
4. Meeting rage and moving it through the body
5. Using rage as a tool for personal and societal transformation
6. The importance of rage in your visibility journey.

In this first video, I discuss four reasons why rage matters: 

1. Because we live in a world built on the exploitation of human beings and the planet. If you’re not feeling an emotional response to that fact, that in itself is a problem. If we want to respond compassionately to the injustices of the world, anger is a useful starting point.
2. Because suppressing anger is exhausting. If you’ve ever suffered from any form of fatigue, one useful point of inquiry is to consciously go looking for any unexpressed anger. You might be surprised by just how much energy is involved in keeping anger suppressed.
3. If you work with women in any capacity, and particularly in the space of personal transformation, it’s so important that you’re able to hold space for women to access their emotions and express them. The healing power of witnessing – of seeing and hearing – a women’s rage is an essential part of the empowerment process and critical to the eventual expression of personal sovereignty. But standing witness to someone else’s anger and rage – without trying to change it or fix it – is only possible when we’ve accessed our own rage.
   
4. Anger and rage are power sources that are misunderstood and need reclamation. They’ve become synonymous with violence which is a gross misrepresentation of their true nature. One of the invitations being placed at the door of women and all marginalised groups within society in the 21st century is to find a way to access rage in a healthy way and use it as a tool for transformation.

Embracing rage is a core ingredient to accessing and clearing out visibility blocks. We’ve so much conditioning around being ‘good’ – girls, mothers, friends, employees, migrants – and so little modelling of what a healthy expression of anger might look like.

From a visibility perspective, you’ll never let people see the fullness of yourself if you’re fearful about expressing anger. You’ll always play nice and pull back from saying anything controversial or too challenging. It’s essential (to the success of all of our relationships) that we move through these fears and open to the possibility of having healthy, open and frank conversations without feeling overwhelmed by them.

NB: In the video I speak specifically about the role women can play in transforming our collective understanding of women and rage. This is in no way intended to alleviate men or any other people of their responsibilities in this regard. What I am attempting to point to is the specific role that women are able to play by virtue of the fact that their relationship to anger has ben suppressed rather than encouraged. Because there are other influences impacting the way a woman experiences anger, and because the conditioning of men places them in a more volatile relationship with anger, they don’t seem best positioned to lead a movement on rethinking anger. I absolutely think they have a lot of work to do in this regard and hope that it’s happening, I just don’t think they are best positioned to lead the conversation about a new way of relating to anger.

Resources

Interested in books about rage? We’ve a few favourites we recommend right here.

Want to access the rest of our series on Women and Rage? You’ll find that right here.

We’ve also created a journalling prompt for you to download here (or by right clicking on the image below) and unpack your own thoughts around anger.