How a little girl becomes a quietly angry woman

You are a little girl playing in the sandbox with her miniature cars. Your brother, two years older, comes along and kicks at your cars. You quickly pick up your favorite one-- the yellow one with the red stripe— to make sure it doesn’t get buried in the sand. He reaches down, snatches it out of your hand and holds it over your head.

Your jaw tightens, your little fists clench, and your eyes brim with hot tears of rage. It’s so unfair!

Your body feel full of energy. You want to release it by pushing Ben away from you, but you don’t because he’s older and stronger. You know he would push back and you’d get hurt.

So instead you keep your jaw clenched and walk over to your mom, who is chatting with another mom.

“Ben took my car!” you say, your tears now spilling over onto your face.

“Oh, come here, come here,” your mom answers, holding out her arm. “It’s okay. It’s nothing. Here, come have a snack.”

Your mom means well. But what do you learn in that moment about anger?
- it’s “nothing”
- your mom is not interested in your anger
- what you need is some comfort
- you can distract yourself with food

Your anger doesn’t get seen or heard. Your mom, who does not have a good relationship with her own anger, doesn’t get curious. She doesn’t asks you what triggered it. She doesn’t show interest in what it feels like inside you, and what your body wants to do with that energy.

She doesn’t even name what you’re experiencing as anger

You are alone with this intense experience, unable to name it, make sense of it, or process it. The only message you get is: Don’t be angry.

When this happens enough times, you eventually stop feeling angry. When something unfair happens, you skip the red hot anger and go straight to feeling powerless, collapsing and crying. And eating cookies.

You grow up to be an adult who rarely gets angry. You spend a lot time in your head. You hate confrontation and do your best to avoid it, even if it means being nice to people you can’t stand. When you get upset, you cry.

As the years pass, you feel more and more like a passive observer in your own life. It feels like there’s something in you that is longing to be expressed, but you’re not sure what it is, and you’re nervous that if you let it out it will destroy your life.

What is longing to be expressed is your anger. It was not allowed to express and it was not given the support to move through you, so it got stuck.

Imagine if instead the little girl’s mother had recognized the anger and reflected it back to her: “Wow, you are angry aren’t you! Of course you’re angry, because Ben kicked your toys and snatched your favorite car out of your hands. I can see why you’re angry. That really isn’t right!”

What the little girl most needed was for her mom to notice her anger and help her put words to it. This tells her: “Your anger is valid. It is a normal human emotion that has a name, and it is allowed here. Your experience matters to me. Let’s make space for it together. I want to hear all about it.”

Now the little girl can move through her anger process. She might clench her fists tighter and say, “I want to kill him!” She might grit her teeth and growl, furious. Naturally, instinctively, she will know how to move the anger through herself by moving her body, gesturing, speaking words. We all know how to do this, if we allow it. Our bodies are self-healing, but only if we can let our process unfold.

Moving through an emotional process is not something you can easily do on your own, not when you’re 5 years old and not even when you’re 50. It’s easier and deeper in the presence of a caring, attuned other. That person’s role is to be present, to hold the space securely, to convey through their eyes, their tone of voice, their demeanor and their words that your anger is okay and that you can safely move through your process.

Anger, like all emotions, follows a wave pattern. It mounts, crescendos and then dies down. As the little girl’s process unfolds, the anger moves through her body, and it eventually subsides. She arrives, naturally, at a place of clarity.

“What do you want to do about it?” asks her caring mother now, noticing that her daughter is calmer.

“I’m going to go over there and tell him to give me back my car. And then I’m never playing with him again.”

The little girl knows what action she wants to take and what boundaries she wants to set.

And most importantly, she will grow up to be able to recognize when she is angry, and she will know that it’s okay to be angry. She will know how to let the anger move through her, energizing her body and her mind. She will experience her anger as a source of power and clarity, and as fuel for change in her relationships and in the world.

If you learned as a child that your anger was not welcome, and you have a pattern of avoiding conflict and feeling powerless, therapy can help. A skilled therapist who is not afraid of anger can help you reconnect with your anger and support you as you move through it, so that you can feel clearer, energized and more fully expressed.