The Nice Girl Syndrome (27 page)

Unfortunately, some adolescents don’t go through this normal stage of development. They remain enmeshed with their parents, refusing to acknowledge or express their anger toward them for fear of feeling separate from them. Ironically, it is often those children who have been neglected or abused by their parents who have the most difficulty getting angry and separating. This is because they tenaciously hold onto the hope of getting what they didn’t get while they were growing up. As long as they hold onto this hope they can’t afford to get angry.

This same phenomenon occurs when someone is too enmeshed with a partner. If a battered wife were to admit that she was angry with her abusive husband, she might have to face the fact that she needs to leave him. If she is totally dependent on him either emo- tionally or financially or both, she can’t afford to risk feeling her anger. If an overly dependent woman whose partner continually flirts with other women were to admit her anger, she might have to face the possibility that her partner does not love her. If she were to confront him with her anger, she would also risk finding out how he really feels about her.

In order to risk feeling our anger, we need to be willing to feel our separateness from the person we are angry with. If we don’t want to feel that separation, we can’t afford to acknowledge or feel our

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anger. This is why feeling and expressing anger is often the first step to releasing yourself from an unhealthy situation or relationship. You need to begin to untangle yourself from the feeling of enmesh- ment and learn that you have a separate identify. You need to learn that you can survive as a separate person.

Unexpressed and buried emotions from the past can interfere with your life today. It may be necessary for you to find a way to uncover and express your repressed anger to free yourself from the past, find your voice, and live more assertively in the present. There are many ways of voicing your anger and pain from the past. Here are some suggestions:

• Write about your anger concerning significant negative events from your childhood. Getting your feelings down in black and white can act as a catharsis, helping you to get the feelings out instead of continuing to allow them to fester and grow inside you.
  

• Write a letter to each of the people who hurt you in the past. Don’t censor yourself. Say everything that comes to mind and don’t hold anything back—even your most hateful feelings. The purpose of the letter is to help you come out of denial, face the truth about what happened to you and how you feel about it, and eventually allow you to gain some closure. You need not mail the letter; in fact, it is best if you do not. If you wish, you can keep these letters for future reference, or tear them up, or burn them as a symbolic act of closure.
  

• Pretend that those who hurt you in the past are standing in front of you. Tell each person exactly what he or she did to hurt you, how those actions or inaction harmed you, and how you feel about him or her now.
  

Your repressed anger, once found, can be a treasure that pro- vides you with a wonderful avenue for healing. Your anger can pro- vide you the strength, the motivation, and the resolve to heal unfinished childhood issues and to start your life anew. It can pro- vide you with the courage to confront the people and situations in your life that are unhealthy or abusive.

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The previous suggestions for releasing old anger can be highly effec- tive. But for some people, anger needs to be released physically. If you sense this is true for you, ask your body what it needs to do to release your anger. We often have an intuitive sense that we need to throw or kick or hit something. If that is the case, find a way to do this safely. Here are some suggestions:

• Use your fists to hit your bed, or get an old tennis racket and hit it against your bed or some large pillows.
  

• Buy some cheap dishes or some skeet (lightweight objects used for target practice) and throw them against your garage walls.
  

• Place a large pillow on the floor up against your couch or bed. Lie on your back and place your feet up against the pillow and push as hard as you can. (This is extremely effective for some- one who was sexually abused as a child or raped as an adult.)
  

Backed-up anger—anger that has often been held down since childhood and then has been constantly added on to—is unhealthy. When we are very young children, we didn’t hang on to our feelings and let them grow. Instead, we let them out immediately. We screamed, we cried, we kicked our legs, we had a temper tantrum. Give yourself permission to have a temper tantrum. Lie on the bed and flail your arms and legs. Make fists of your hands and punch them down hard on the bed. Move your head from side to side and let the sounds that are bubbling up come out of your mouth.

If you have a tendency to repress or suppress your anger, you have lost touch with an important part of yourself. Getting angry is a way to gain back that part of yourself by asserting your rights, express- ing your displeasure with a situation, and letting others know how you wish to be treated. It can motivate you to make needed changes in a relationship or other areas of your life. Finally, it can let others know that you expect to be respected and treated fairly.

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Don’t fool yourself into thinking that just because you don’t express your anger, it will miraculously go away. Each emotion has a purpose, and that emotion will remain with you, buried inside your body, locked up in your psyche, until that purpose is recognized and understood. Anger arises within us to tell us that what is occurring is undesirable or unhealthy. Suppressing your emotions—that is, consciously trying to bury them—does not eliminate them. In addition to causing you to become numb to your feelings, including your positive feelings, your suppressed emotions will often cause physical symptoms such as muscle tension, back problems, stomach distress, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, obesity, or maybe even hypertension.

Your suppressed anger may also cause you to overreact to peo- ple and situations or to act inappropriately. Unexpressed anger can cause you to become irritable, irrational, and prone to emotional outbursts and episodes of depression. If you carry around a lot of suppressed or repressed anger (anger you have unconsciously buried), you may lash out at people, blaming or punishing them for something someone else did long ago. Because you were unwilling or unable to express how you felt in the past, you may overreact in the present, damaging your relationships.

The passive anger style is not compatible with a healthy rela- tionship. Denying you are angry or withdrawing from your partner does not give the two of you the chance to work out your problems. Instead, you are likely to build up tension and then finally blow up. After your tirade, your partner is likely to feel wounded and angry and wonder why in the world you didn’t say something before.

It is also important to realize that as long as you are angry, you will exude a certain kind of angry energy. Sometimes this energy is palpable and is consciously experienced by others. Other times, it is felt only subliminally by others, but it is felt nevertheless. People are affected by your anger whether it is overt or not and whether they are aware of it or not. They will respond by getting angry along with you, by acting out your anger for you, or by being on guard around you.

Not responding to someone’s provocation, turning the other cheek, or “letting things go” won’t stop the other person from con- tinuing his or her unacceptable behavior. It won’t make the individ- ual back off and leave you alone. In fact, reacting passively to

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inappropriate, even abusive behavior actually
invites
the other per- son to continue the behavior. The less you react to provocation, the more provocation you will invite.

E
XERCISE
: R
ECOGNIZE THE
D
AMAGE

Make a list of the ways you have hurt yourself and others by sup- pressing or repressing your anger.

Without your anger, you may have lost your voice, your motivation, and your courage to get the things you need and deserve. Anger is energy, a motivating force that can empower you to feel less helpless. By releasing it, you will find that you rid yourself of the physical and emotional tension that has sapped your energy—energy that you could otherwise use to motivate yourself to change. Anger can moti- vate you to set and keep boundaries with the people in your life. The more you express your anger, the less afraid of it you will be. Anger can be your way out. Take it.

• For the next week, practice doing the opposite of what you would normally do when you become angry. For example, if you usually hold your anger in, try letting it out. It may seem uncomfortable or even frightening, but try doing it a little at a time. If someone is inconsiderate or rude to you, risk telling him or her how it made you feel or that you didn’t appreciate being treated that way. If you tend to talk yourself out of your anger by telling yourself that you don’t want to make waves, try telling yourself instead that it is okay to make waves some- times and risk letting people know how you really feel.
  

• Pay attention to how you feel each time you practice this new way of dealing with your anger. Although it will undoubtedly be uncomfortable initially, notice what other feelings come up as you try on this new anger style. For example, those women who practice letting their anger out often discover that they feel energized by the process or that they feel more confident and self-assured. On the other hand, some feel guilty about expressing their anger and feel worse about them- selves.
  

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• Keep a log or diary of each time you try on another anger style. In addition to recording the incident, record your feel- ings surrounding the incident and the end result.
  

• Even if it is uncomfortable, continue practicing your new style for at least a week. Take small risks at first and then venture out to take even larger risks. For example, if you tend to have a passive anger style, you may start by letting a rude acquain- tance know you don’t appreciate how he or she treated you. This may make you feel so empowered that you are willing to tell a co-worker that you don’t want to be treated a certain way. By the end of the week, perhaps you will be ready to tell your husband when you are angry with him.
  

There is much more to learn about anger than I can include in this chapter. If anger is a major issue for you, I encourage you to read my book
Honor Your Anger: How Transforming Your Anger Style Can Change Your Life
. In it, you will learn more about anger styles, how to change your anger style into a more healthy one, and how to handle other people’s anger.

11

Learn How to Handle Conflict

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

—T
HEODORE
R
UBIN

False belief:
It is better to avoid conflict at all costs.

Empowering belief:
Conflict is a part of life and can be an opportunity for greater intimacy.

This chapter is beneficial for all types of Nice Girls

I

n this chapter, I will discuss yet another phenomenon that influences women’s inability to express their anger and stand up for themselves. Women and girls have a lot of difficulties with conflict. Most are uncomfortable with it, and many are afraid of it. This is due partly to both cultural conditioning and biological pre-

disposition.

In extensive interviews with adults, sociologist Anne Campbell found that whereas men viewed aggression as a means to control their environment and integrity, women believed it would terminate their relationships. In her book
Odd Girl Out
, Rachel Simmons found the same attitudes in her conversations with girls. The girls expressed fear that even everyday acts of conflict, not to mention

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aggressive outbursts, would result in the loss of the people they cared most about. They therefore refused to engage in even the most basic acts of conflict. To them, conflict equaled loss. Due to this reasoning, the average woman is more willing to compromise her beliefs, values, and desires to maintain a relationship than the average man. Add this to the fact that females are biologically hard- wired to focus on connection and consensus, and we can see why they have so much trouble with conflict. But unless women become better at dealing with conflict, we will continue to lose ourselves in relationships, be dominated by abusive men, and put up with unac- ceptable behavior.

And there is another negative consequence to women’s avoid- ance of conflict. Because we avoid conflict, we don’t have the oppor- tunity to resolve issues. Our natural tendency to value connection over confrontation also often causes women to go underground with their aggression. The truth is that not all Nice Girls are nice. In fact, many are catty, bitchy, and even cruel—all behind the backs of those whom they pretend to like and agree with. They pretend to like someone when they actually dislike the person. They often appear to be so accepting that others feel comfortable confiding in them. But as accepting as some Nice Girls appear to be, they are often actually very critical and judgmental once they gain that confidence.