PCOS Fam: You Need to Confront Your Anger. Here’s Why.
Last week, I wrote about the association between PCOS and emotional dysregulation, or trouble managing our emotions. It got me thinking about one emotion in particular: anger. I had done previous research to understand the negative effects of repressed anger on our health. It’s widely accepted that repressed anger and what psychologists refer to as “destructive anger”, leads to negative impacts like heart health troubles, increased inflammation, mental health concerns, higher levels of cortisol, and increased blood pressure.
PCOS Symptoms and Repressed and Destructive Anger
If you are familiar with PCOS, you may know that it is associated with high levels of inflammation, a higher likelihood of anxiety, depression, biploar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, a toxic stress response, and metabolic issues. With that, it is in our best interest to learn about our anger: where it stems from, how to commune with it, not repress it, and how to transform it into constructive anger. In this way, we’re removing a trigger that can inflate many of our underlying issues with PCOS.
destructive anger defined
According to Psychology Today, destructive anger is “a powerful force that can cause us to focus on the person or situation that has contributed to anger…[it] hijacks our capacity to pause for self-understanding as well as brainstorm about how to manage such anger”. Effectively, this kind of anger stops us from introspection to understand why anger arises. All emotions are information, and anger is a surface-level emotion trying to communicate something to us: is it guilt? Is it shame? Were we disrespected? Do we feel powerless? Was a boundary crossed? The answers to these questions provide the blueprint for how we transform destructive anger into constructive anger, where we approach conflict from a place of compassion and desired repair. That reflective moment is also when we’re primed to explore what unhealed wounds may have been triggered by someone else’s action. But if we’re blinded by the emotion itself, or the external circumstance, we’re also missing an opportunity to understand ourselves and grow.
in the teal health pcos community, here’s what the reaction to anger looked like…
I reflected on a post I put up on Instagram about how anger might exacerbate our PCOS symptoms. Comments flooded in, both on the post itself and in our direct messages. Quotes like these started to emerge:
“This is me today, sadly enough”
“Indeed…getting angry makes me physically ill”
“This is true, but the anger is intense and takes over me and I feel like s**t anyways”
“This hits home. I get angry a lot. Like the dumbest things will piss me off. I feel like I have no control over this emotion. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions anger leads to. I cry, and it’s exhausting to be honest…”
“I try to hold my tongue and then I blow up. My husband thinks I am crazy”
notice anything interesting about those quotes?
What I heard in each comment, each message, was a hint of guilt or shame, and I don’t know that these PCOS warriors even recognized that themselves. I reflected on my own relationship with anger. I can’t say my anger has ever been anywhere near the word repressed. In childhood, I shut down my emotions as a reaction to my chaotic household. But as I grew older, I adopted the same forms of explosive behavior I learned from my parents and sisters. I wore my anger proudly, as some sort of talisman for being the tough girl no one could mess with. I leaned more towards destructive anger, but I saw it as righteous anger.
My Personal Anger Socialization
In social settings, I quickly learned this explosive anger was not the way to be accepted as a girl or woman. I tried to hold my tongue after my friend’s older brother told me I would never have a boyfriend with that kind of anger. But there were times I simply couldn’t. I can remember vividly the night a boy at a college party groped me and I reacted with physical defense and yelling. All of his friends standing around me were laughing at me, calling me crazy and dramatic, and somehow I left embarrassed. In the workplace, I was terrified of being seen as the “angry” woman even when manager after manager sexually harassed or assaulted me. In graduate school, if the topics of misogyny, sexism, or human rights violations arose, and I felt people were on the wrong side of the debate, my inner lion was released. When I felt mistreated by a man, I ripped him apart, seeing it as justice-driven anger that would prevent him from treating another woman similarly.
Why did I feel guilty, even when I learned healthy confrontation?
When I felt people, especially men, were trying to deceive or subjugate me or other women, I couldn’t hold my tongue. Sure, maybe I was more emotionally reactive about it in my younger days, but as I learned nonviolent communication and the importance of anger as a motivating force to stand up for injustice, I felt I had to stand up. Yet afterwards I always felt humiliated, like somehow by trying to defend my gender, I brought shame on it - proving that women are emotionally reactive and perpetuating the stereotypes the patriarchy has used to keep us inferior. I related my experience to that of my Instagram followers. Why were we feeling guilty or ashamed of our anger? What leads us to repress, and then explode? Why were we angry at ourselves, for feeling angry, when we were wronged? Why did sometimes that destructive anger point the finger back at us, only to fuel our inner critic and let it grow?
how was repressed anger tied to a condition that affects those assigned female at birth?
I started to think about anger’s role with PCOS in particular…what did it mean to identify as a woman, or be socialized as someone assigned female at birth according to gender norms, and have PCOS? What was the relationship to anger? Why did I feel justified in my anger, only to later feel ashamed of it?
the psychological theories that may shed some light
Gender schema theory posits that in childhood, boys and girls absorb an understanding of gender norms based on our environments, and reinforce these norms with self-selected activities that align with such norms. Socialization theories also posit that because of their own underlying gender schemas, parents may pay more attention to the emotional experience of their children that fit into their schemas. So, this may mean fathers showing more empathy to a daughter expressing sadness or anxiety, or identifying with a son expressing anger. Since we need our parents to provide for us during childhood, we can subconsciously internalize that we are better cared for if we dial up those emotions that are associated with our respective gender. Could this lead to repressed anger in those of us socialized for “feminine” behaviors?
According to Brody &Hall, girls are expected to emote more when it comes to positive emotions like happiness, but they are expected to internalize what may be perceived as a “negative” emotion, which may include anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, shame, and guilt. Young boys are socialized and expected to express anger or contempt, as these emotions are seen for boys as “solving a problem”. With outward expression of these negative emotions allowed, boys are less likely to internalize distress over the emotions. Boys are allowed to express their anger, so they do not feel shame or guilt over feeling anger.
Those socialized according to the gender norms of being a girl, however, do not have the same luxury. We are taught our anger is bad and something to be ashamed of. Because of this, we do not learn how to confront our anger, and it begins to control us, rather than serve us as a source of information.
my friend when she “lost it”
A study out of the University of Tennessee found that internalizing anger leads to physical tension in the female body and a feeling of powerlessness. I thought about one of my good friends who was in an emotionally abusive relationship for years. Consistently her boyfriend cheated on her, and gaslit her about his actions. She found evidence numerous times, and he repeatedly promised to change. Sure enough, he was back in another cheating cycle when they had recently moved in together. She found more evidence on his phone when he was showering, and when he emerged, he became defensive. Still, he denied it, making up excuses for what was on his phone. Finally she released the extent of her anger, repressed for years, and she threw the phone at him. She was horrified by what she had done and told me she “lost it”, how could she throw something at him? She launched into a full self-loathing spiral about what a horrible person she is.
Once again, the anger became destructive, not toward an external source, but toward herself. According to Kristin Neff, Ph.D., and author of Fierce Self Compassion, “when we [women] feel threatened and can’t confront the danger by taking action externally, the fight response is direct internally. We try to reassert control through self-criticism, hoping it will force us to change and thus restore safety”. And we perpetuate the negative self-talk spiral, chastising ourselves for being human, contributing to low self-worth, low self-esteem, and all that those diseases of the mind and soul entail.
retraining ourselves to befriend our anger
There are ways we can re-train ourselves to step into the power of confronting and moving through our anger. And it’s in our best interest to do so, for the aforementioned reasons, as well as for a host of other benefits of our anger. Constructive anger gives us energy, a sense of control and power, motivation to fight injustice and solve problems, alerts us to what we care about, and leads to self improvement. Try the following exercises to start learning how to process your anger:
Greet your anger with love. Thank it for its attempt to keep you safe, and alert you to an issue
Ask your anger why it’s there. Is it guilt? Is it shame? Were you disrespected? Do you feel powerless? Was a boundary crossed? Is your personal history knocking on the door, and maybe you’re angry about a different situation? Open a dialogue with this emotion
Make your repressed or persistent anger productive. Wait until you feel in control to communicate clearly and calmly with the person you are angry with, if it is safe to do so. Approach the conversation from a lens of problem solving. Emotionally mature people use conflict as a way to problem-solve and potentially grow closer
If it is not safe to communicate with the person who made you angry, try journaling, or writing them a letter you do not send, or destroy ceremoniously
Push it out! Lay two hands flat on the wall with your legs in a slight lunge. Push against the wall as hard as you can. Sometimes physically pushing out the anger is your best bet, and helps you to avoid rumination
Work it out! Try taking a boxing class or doing a difficult workout. Again, sometimes physical release is the best way to process pent up frustrations
Reframe your thoughts. Instead of using anger as a way to bring external blame on people, circumstances, or your life, question what is at play internally. Replace extreme, absolute phrases with more rational phrases to train your brain