How feminism helped me deal with anger

So many ideas for my first blog post! There are certainly many things on my mind lately, but I think what I really want to talk about today is anger. Here is Google's answer to the definition of anger:

Anger:
NounA strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.VerbFill (someone) with such a feeling; provoke anger in.Synonymsnoun.   wrath - ire - rage - dander - fury - irritationverb.   irritate - vex - exasperate - incense - provoke - rile

Humph. I don't know about you but that doesn't really describe anger for me. Anger is like white hot fire under your skin. Anger is furious shaking and racing heartbeat, rushing adrenaline pushing you to fight and scream and break everything. Anger is, frankly, scary.

But here's my question: did our society make it scary, or is it inherently scary?

Mostly we associate anger with verbal or physical violence. So it's no wonder it seems scary. But perhaps the problem isn't anger itself, but the lack of our society's ability to acknowledge and deal with anger as an acceptable and sometimes useful human emotion. From what I can tell, we are all taught to push anger away. Anger is bad. You can't feel anger. That's just wrong.

I am no stranger to anger. I freely admit that I have anger problems. Maybe not quite as obviously as others, but I definitely struggle with it. On top of anxiety, anger is very comfortable in my brain. It has a great deal of support from my brain chemicals. If you aren't aware, those with a mental illness, like myself, have very different brain goings on than a "healthy" person's brain. There are very obvious, chemical and physical differences. Anyway, I digress...

Now, for those familiar with the diagnostic criteria for BPD, outbursts of anger are a thing. Borderline's roller-coaster of amplified emotion can be quite explosive. Personally, I am not one to have outbursts of anger very often. I have learnt over my life, particularly in childhood, to avoid conflict, and also to run in the other direction if I myself felt angry. It has actually been feminism that has really made me connect with my anger and attempt to channel it into more productive avenues (ie. destroying the patriarchy).

It's fucking scary facing up to your own anger. To me it kinda looks like this giant flame with angry red eyes (something like Calcifer but much much worse) and I am just this tiny little human with piddly little arms and squishy bits and how could I possibly fight this thing?

The problem I believe is that we often do try and fight it instead of actually sitting with it and going "so, what the fuck is up with this then?" Obviously difficult to do in the heat of the moment, but getting into the habit of paying attention to your anger, where it is in your body, how it feels and when it happens means taking back control of it rather than fighting it or ignoring it and pushing away (which is a VERY bad idea).

How has feminism helped? I'm glad I asked.

One thing that I've always struggled with in terms of my perception of myself is strength. I tend to view myself as weak, due to firstly being quite a physically small person, female, and also because of my mental illness. It's difficult to feel strong watching people around you doing that whole life thing with apparent ease when you fight a battle every morning to convince yourself it's actually worth getting out of bed today and no, everything is not trying to kill you. When you often get harassed simply because you are a small girl in public.

Feminism came crashing into my brain and told me I was awesome. It told me that I did not have to put up with harassment. It told me that I was a bad ass bitch who was powerful and more than able to stand up for myself and that I had no reason to tolerate bullshit. NONE.

(I must also mention the numerous friends who tell me how strong I am on a regular basis. I love you guys.)

So I go it into my head that instead of running away I would stand up, because I am worth fighting for. 

I may be an angry killjoy some days, but I certainly don't tolerate anything that is not a constructive part of my life, and I do not run away when I'm angry. I channel it. I prove to myself and those around me that my gender, size or illness has anything to do with my ability to fight back.

The more you really look at human emotion, the more obvious it is that we have them for a reason. These reasons are generally related to survival (whether your own or that of current or future offspring).

Anger isn't inherently bad or evil. Anger is a useful emotion that simply needs to be accepted and channelled productively. Talk to it, pay attention to it, accept it as part of yourself and learn how to control it. (I am in the process of getting better at this, so I'm not perfect, but I strongly encourage it none the less!)

Note that I do not see abuse or violence of any kind as productive IN THE SLIGHTEST.