2024-04-23 09:17:43
“My anger is related to fatigue, frustration and despair. Most often it is about situations when we have to be somewhere on time and we don’t have time,” describes 33-year-old Anna, mother of two daughters. Like other women, she later blames herself for her anger. “When I hit a child, raise my voice, or take my daughter away from the playground against her will, I feel regret that I didn’t manage to solve it calmly. At that moment, I feel tightness, tension and stress,” she describes.
Psychologist and midwife Kristina Zemánková works mainly with women and confirms that with each client she comes to the topic of anger over time. “We all have it and we all need it. When I tell my clients I’m a big fan of it, I always see them relax and smile,” she says. “Women are brought up in the setting that they should be good and not get angry. It is an emotion that cannot be done. During therapy, however, I try to rehabilitate anger with them, because it is an important tool for recognizing one’s own boundaries,” explains the expert.
Being angry is healthy
According to Kristina Zemánková, the basis for accepting one’s own anger is to stop wrongly dividing emotions into good and bad. “We can only treat them well or badly. Emotions serve us as information about our inner world. While sadness, for example, tells us that we are missing something, anger refers to our boundaries. Someone is too close, or, on the contrary, far away,” explains the psychologist .
She notes that anger is a big topic for her clients, also because of the culture in which we live. “It does not lead women to be aware of and feel their own limits. On the contrary, it requires them to be caring and to give themselves to their husband and children. In addition, they often work in caring positions. In our society, a good woman is one who actually suppresses herself a lot and it’s here for others,” says Zemánková.
“When the topic of anger comes up with my clients, I know that they are healing. It is an extremely important part of self-acceptance and self-confidence,” the expert points out, adding that typical upbringing leads women to become “good girls,” who subsequently fear rejection and conflict.
Mother is not god
It is precisely in motherhood, according to Zemánk’s law, that one’s own boundaries are crossed. “Being a mother means that I have invited another creature into my body. Even if I do it voluntarily and give myself as a gift to the child, this is a huge overstepping of my boundaries,” she explains. “Consequently, the mother always has the child with her, it is in her space. Even though it is a natural dependent relationship, it limits her in some way. The topic of anger is thus huge in motherhood and necessarily present, because the woman’s boundaries are crossed,” she points out.
Feelings of annoyance also increase because of the artificially created ideal of a mother who “accepts, gives, loves without limit and expects nothing in return. But the mother is not a god, but a person who does not have infinite resources,” the psychologist points out.
Thirty-three-year-old Anna, mentioned at the beginning of the article, started going to therapy for her anger less than a year ago. “Today I know that my feelings are normal and that I just have to learn to work with them. They stem from my tiredness and the constant demands of those around me to fulfill their needs and the subsequent frustration from the fact that there is no more capacity left for my needs,” describes the mother of a two-year-old and a five-year-old daughter who has learned to communicate openly with her partner about her needs.
The neighborhood does not know your boundaries
Kristina Zemánková advises how to deal with anger practically: “First of all, allow it. Breathe in, breathe out and tell yourself that you can have it. The more you try to suppress the emotion, the more it will scream,” warns the expert. “Be curious and ask yourself in what situations you feel angry. Then notice where you feel the anger. In your chest, in your head, in your belly? Explore it,” she urges.
As a next step, begin to address what is causing the anger. “For example, if your children, husband, mother-in-law are angry with you. If your first thought is, ‘I’m a terrible mother,’ say to yourself, ‘Wait, wait, no preconceptions and judgments, let’s really look at what my anger means.'” says Zemánková. “You can, for example, find that you are doing things for children of their age that you shouldn’t do anymore,” she says, giving an example of how to feel your boundaries and find out where they are being crossed.
The next step is to communicate your wishes. “It’s important to realize where my boundary is and if I don’t show it, others can’t know where it is. We all have it somewhere else,” describes Zemánková. A big mistake and myth of her clients is the assumption that their partner knows where their boundary is. “He doesn’t know. Communicate openly and calmly: ‘This is how I feel, I don’t like this, this is what I want, and here you are crossing my boundaries and I would like you to respect that.'”
Anger brings joy to life
Subsequently, prepare for the fact that the surroundings will naturally test your boundaries. “As soon as something changes, people resist. They don’t do it on purpose, it’s natural. In the next phase, it will be your task to establish a boundary. If you don’t succeed, be kind to yourself. Tell yourself that you have been a boundary all your life she didn’t know how to set and now you’re learning,” advises Zemánková.
In conclusion, he adds that it is also good to realize that anger is an energetic emotion. “When we have it, we feel a lot of energy and often don’t know where to direct it. It is often said that we cannot see or hear. It is tunnel vision that helps us target this strong energy well and see the most important things that bother us and what we need to change,” he describes Zemánková. “When my clients begin to perceive their own anger positively, they feel as if a piece of themselves has returned to them. It will bring a lot of joy, freedom and self-acceptance into their lives,” she concludes.
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