The Nice Girl Syndrome (25 page)

Research shows that parents and teachers discourage the emer- gence of physical and direct aggression in girls early on, whereas the rough-housing and skirmishing of boys is either encouraged or shrugged off. For example, a 1999 University of Michigan study found that girls were told to be quiet, speak softly, or use a “nice” voice about three times more often than were boys, even though the boys were louder. By the time they are school age, children have cre- ated social groups that value niceness in girls and toughness in boys.

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Our culture also derides aggression in girls as being unfeminine. Assertive girls are called “bitch,” “lesbian,” “frigid,” and “manly.”

To many, the word
nice
really means “not aggressive, not angry.” For many years, it was considered fact that girls were simply not inherently aggressive. This was because the first experiments on aggression were performed with almost no female subjects. Since males tend to exhibit aggression directly, researchers concluded that aggression was expressed only in this way. Other forms of aggression (such as gossiping or ignoring someone), when they were observed, were labeled deviant or ignored.

The rules are different for boys, and the girls know it. For girls, overt displays of aggression are punished by social rejection. But try as they may, most girls cannot erase the natural impulse toward anger that every human being has. In
Odd Girl Out
, Rachel Simmons noted a study of girls in 1992 conducted by Norwegian researchers, which revealed that girls were not at all averse to aggression; they just expressed anger in unconventional ways. The group predicted that “when aggression cannot, for one reason or another, be directed (physically or verbally) at its target, the perpetrator has to find other channels.” The findings bore out their theory: cultural rules against overt aggression led girls to engage in other, nonphysical forms of aggression. The researchers challenged the image of sweetness among female youths, calling their social lives “ruthless,” “aggres- sive,” and “cruel.”

Girls and women are not only discouraged from expressing anger because it is “unladylike” but because they often sense that their anger would do terrible damage if they let it out. To some degree they are right. When people feel they have no rights, when they consistently give more than they receive, they become very angry. The longer that anger is suppressed, the more powerful and potent it can become. When people are finally pushed to their limits, they often explode in verbal or physical violence. We see this happen with battered women who end up killing their abusers.

It is often the case that the weaker a person feels, the more dan- gerous she feels. While weakness may be what a woman feels who is being emotionally or physically abused, in reality, one of the reasons she may not stand up for herself is that she might be afraid of losing control of her own rage.

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When the Cause of Your Inability to Express Anger Lies in Childhood

Carly came to see me because she had been involved with several abusive men and she wanted to make sure that it didn’t happen again. “I don’t know why I continue picking these kinds of guys. I mean, I wasn’t abused as a kid or anything. My parents treated me very well. I know I don’t deserve to be treated like I’ve been by men. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

As I took Carly’s history, I noticed right away that she seemed to have what therapists call “flat affect.” This means that she didn’t seem to express much emotion. Even when she described something that was quite sad, she didn’t show a hint of sadness. And as she described the abusive relationships she had experienced with men, she didn’t express any anger. I finally asked her, “Carly, do you feel any anger toward these abusive men?”

Her answer was a flat “No.”

“Don’t you think you have a right to be angry at them?” I asked. “Yes, I suppose I do,” she answered, again with no emotion in

her voice.

“Then why do you think you aren’t angry?” I pressed.

“I don’t know. I don’t feel very many feelings at all. In fact, I feel pretty numb.”

Being numb to their feelings can be a common side effect of women having been emotionally or physically abused, and I assumed that this might be part of the reason for Carly’s disconnection from her emotions. I explained this to her and assured her that most peo- ple who have been traumatized do come to reconnect with their feel- ings, given enough time to heal from the trauma and sufficient time and experiences to regain their sense of safety. “The truth is, I’ve always been a bit numb to my feelings, though,” Carly offered.

When I asked her to tell me more about this, she explained that while her parents had always treated her very well, there were many times when she had witnessed her mother erupting in a rage toward her father. “It scared me to see my mother get angry like that. Her anger was so unpredictable. It always came out of the blue with no notice whatsoever.”

I explained to Carly that even though she had not been mis- treated by her parents, witnessing one parent emotionally abusing

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another can be just as traumatizing as experiencing emotional abuse firsthand. I also explained that having a parent who erupts in a rage can be extremely traumatic and can cause the observer to dissociate or disconnect from his or her feelings.

“I think you might be right about that,” Carly conceded. “When my mother would go on a rampage, I would go in my room and hide. I didn’t cry or anything. I just sat on my bed like a robot, wait- ing for the yelling to stop. Then when it was all over, I just went about my life like nothing had happened.”

Once it sank in that she had actually been traumatized by her mother’s outbursts, Carly began to realize why she had been attracted to men who were abusive and that she had, in fact, chosen men who were like her mother in many ways. She now understood better why she was so numb to her feelings. But there was one more piece of the puzzle she had yet to discover.

During our sessions, I often pressed Carly to identify and express her feelings. For example, I would ask her, “What are you feeling right now?” or “Are you feeling angry about that?” Usually she was unable to identify her feelings, although she was getting better at it. But she seldom acknowledged that she was feeling angry. One day when I asked her if she was feeling angry, she said, “I do
feel
angry at times, you know. I just can’t
express
my anger.”

This was new to me and I requested that she elaborate. “I some- times get angry at my friends or even at my parents. But I can’t tell them I’m angry.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I think it is because I don’t want to become like my mother. Yes, that’s it. I’m afraid if I start telling people I’m angry, I’ll become just like my mother. I’ll start yelling and screaming all the time.”

Carly had experienced an important breakthrough. She had been so afraid of becoming like her mother that she had gone to the opposite extreme. This is a common tactic for many. In their attempt to separate from their parents and guarantee they will be different from them, they act in opposite ways. Unfortunately, this prevents them from really breaking free—they are still responding to their parents’ behavior.

Thus, we discovered that while one of the reasons Carly was numb to her feelings was that she had learned to dissociate when

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traumatized by her mother’s rage, another reason was that she refused to express her anger. I explained to Carly that we can’t just pick and choose which emotions we are going to feel. If we decide to cut ourselves off from our so-called negative emotions, such as sadness, anger, fear, and guilt, we also limit our ability to feel the so- called positive feelings of love, happiness, and joy.

But Carly continued having difficulty believing that it was okay to feel and express anger. I sensed that she needed to be educated about anger in order to be able to give herself permission to feel and express it. She needed to learn the difference between hostility and anger, and healthy and unhealthy anger. As I detailed to her, although anger clearly has some connection with hostility and aggression, they are not the same. Hostility is an
attitude
of ill will, aggression refers to
behavior
that is always meant to hurt, whereas anger is an
emotion
—plain and simple.

The Truth about Anger

As I explained to Carly, anger is neither a positive nor a negative emotion; it is the way we handle our anger—what we do with it— that makes it negative or positive. For example, when we use our anger to motivate us to make life changes or to make changes to dys- functional systems, anger becomes a very positive emotion.

When we express our anger through aggressive or passive- aggressive ways (such as getting even or gossiping), it becomes a negative emotion. Although there are many ways to turn anger into a negative emotion, the following methods of dealing with anger cause the most problems both for the giver and the receiver and are the most common ways that women deal with anger.

Misplacing anger:
When we take out anger that is meant for one person on another, we are misplacing it. We all misplace or misdi- rect our anger from time to time, sometimes consciously and some- times unconsciously. Your boss bawls you out for being late again and you end up snapping at your co-workers; your husband criti- cizes the way you are managing money and you blow up at your teenage daughter for talking on the phone too long. We all need to curb our tendency to misdirect our anger in such ways and apologize to those we have hurt in the process. But it is when we misplace our anger on a regular basis, when we consistently avoid dealing with

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the people we are really angry with by discharging it on innocent people, that it becomes a real problem.

Holding in anger:
It is also unhealthy when we take the anger that should be directed at someone else and turn it against ourselves. Let’s say someone criticizes you or falsely accuses you of something. What do you do? Do you remain quiet, believe what they are saying about you, and begin to feel bad about yourself? Or do you get angry and tell the person you don’t appreciate her criticism? If what the person is saying isn’t true, do you confront her with the truth or do you begin to doubt your own perceptions and begin to believe her lies? In this case, anger held in can be a very negative thing indeed.

Denying your anger:
Many women, in particular, deny they are angry, while others feel anger consciously yet choose to squelch it. They may do so because they are afraid that if they allow themselves to become angry, they will lose control and damage property or hurt someone. Or, they may be critical of people who express their anger and feel morally superior to them. From their perspective, if they were to express their anger openly, it would seem like an indication that they were weak, out of control, or less evolved.

This is what my client Holly told me: “I begin to get angry at someone, and then I switch it off—just like that. I start thinking about why they are the way they are, what their childhood was like, or what obstacles or problems they’ve had to face in life, and I am suddenly overwhelmed with empathy for them.” While this may sound like a very evolved way of dealing with anger, in actuality, it wasn’t really working for Holly. She exuded a great deal of silent hostility. You could feel it just by being in her presence. She kicked her leg almost continuously and frequently made disapproving faces and gestures. When I would note her angry gestures and ask her what she was feeling, she would usually say she wasn’t feeling any- thing. “People always think I’m angry when I’m really not,” she explained. “I guess I just have that kind of face.”

Why We Need Anger

So why do we need anger at all? Why not simply work toward elim- inating it from our lives entirely? The reason is that there are many positive functions of anger:

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• It energizes us and motivates us to make changes in our lives.
  

• It serves as a catalyst for resolving interpersonal conflict.
  

• It promotes self-esteem—when we stand up for ourselves, we feel better about ourselves.
  

• It fosters a sense of personal control during times of peak stress.
  

• Expression of anger can actually promote health. Women with cancer who express their anger are found to live longer than those who express no anger.
  

• Anger and even rage can be a survival tool and a grounding technique by which women become centered and reconnected to themselves.
  

• As uncomfortable as anger is for many of us, it can be prefer- able to anxiety, as it lays the blame outside ourselves.
  

If we find constructive ways of releasing anger and safe places to let it out, it can becomes a positive force in our lives, creating energy, motivation, assertiveness, empowerment, and creativity.

Biologically, anger is defined as a stress response to internal or external demands, threats, and pressures. Anger warns us that there is a problem or a potential threat. At the same time, it energizes us to face the problem or meet the threat and provides us with the power to overcome it. In other words, it is both a warning system and a survival mechanism.

Our first reaction to a perceived threat is fear. When we are faced with a threat to our survival, our nervous system prepares us to meet that threat by raising our defenses. This occurs instantly and automatically, without our conscious intent. This built-in defense mechanism is found in the sympathetic branch of our autonomic nervous system, which is primarily responsible for expending physical energy and for preparing us to protect ourselves. The defense response is triggered by the release of the hormone adren- aline, which helps us out by giving us an energetic boost. This energy boost provides us with added strength and endurance to fight off our enemies or added speed with which to run from them. This pattern of biological arousal is known as the
fight-or-flight response
, an involuntary mechanism shared with all other species of animals.