ANGER MANAGEMENT

MICHELE A’COURT EXPLAINS WHY WE SHOULD BE LOSING OUR COOL MORE

- MICHELE A’COURT

This month I’ve been conducting a social experiment – inviting women to come along to a show and get on stage to express their rage. It’s a wild idea that started a couple of years ago at the capital city’s literary festival, Verb Wellington, and has become one of my favourite things to do. Turns out that being angry is tremendously good for the soul.

This isn’t something I might have expected. Of all the emotions, anger is the one I’ve been least good at. I feel it, for sure, but I have been terrible at expressing it. But I’m getting better.

Injustice, rudeness, threats, insults – any kind of attack up close to me or mine – and my “fight” mode will engage. But instantly (and quite annoyingly for someone who is designed to fight with words, not fists), my throat constricts, so my voice sounds like a strangled kitten, and the fury that wants to present itself as a bold and dramatic volcanic eruption is squeezed out through my eyes, drop by tiny drop, as sad widdle tears. Which is, in and of itself, enraging.

I know I’m not alone in this. Women and girls are often discouraged from expressing anger, lest we be seen as hysterical, stroppy, feisty, or – horror of horrors – “unladylike”.