Last week the following post suggested that anger is a terrible trait. They are even suggesting carrying the Ramban’s letter in one’s pocket, to remind you to “remove anger from your heart”.

Anger just is. Everyone gets angry. So if you think you are removing it, most likely you are repressing it. Not healthy at all. Here is my initial post on anger, that gives definitions and suggests that the Hebrew word ‘ka’as’ not only means anger but also ‘rage’. So you could argue that rage is not the optimal way to respond to anger. But, again, not acknowledging anger itself can be detrimental to one’s well-being.

As an example, let’s travel back 100 years to the time of Virginia Woolf. Here’s someone who was not allowed to express herself. In fact, when her mother died, her whole household reflected her father’s grieving. Is it surprising that soon after this she had her first bout of mental illness?

There is a lot more treatment for mental illness now than there was back in the time of Virginia Woolf. Aside from medication for the biological manifestation of the illness, a therapist often works with a patient to allow the person healthy ways of expressing buried feelings, such as anger.

Let’s take a look at the scene of her house at the time of her mother’s death (from Virginia Woolf: A Biography, by Quentin Bell, who was her nephew):

“Her death,” said Virginia, “was the greatest disaster that could happen.”

And yet, if Virginia’s loss had simply been a shattering bereavement the situation would not have been so bad as to be unendurable. The real horror of Julia’s death came in the mourning of her. Naturally, inevitably, the chief mourner was Leslie; he, a man of sixty-three, had every expectation of being nursed out of the world by a wife almost fifteen years his junior (and she would have it so well)…For a long time he abandoned himself to grief; his life, like his writing paper, was confined within a deep black border…

At meals he sat miserable and bewildered, too unhappy and too deaf to know what was being said, until at length, in one scene after another all through that dreadful summer, he broke down utterly, and while his embarrassed children sat in awkward silence, groaned, wept, and wished that he were dead.

In the accounts that Vanessa and Virginia have left of this period in their lives the image that recurs is one of darkness; dark houses, dark walls, darkened rooms, ‘Oriental gloom.’ And by this I think that they meant, not only physical darkness, but a deliberate shutting out of spiritual light. It was, for the children, not only tragic but chaotic and unreal. They were called upon to feel, not simply their natural grief, but a false, a melodramatic, an impossibly histrionic emotion which they could not encompass.

If experiencing her mother’s death and her father’s need to have all the grief be his grief was not enough, it was at this period that she first experienced sexual abuse by her stepbrother. Can you imagine, having all that suffering and not being to express any anger? Is it surprising that during this period she had her first bout with mental illness?

Virginia Woolf’s main outlet in her life was her writing. In fact, her book To the Lighthouse is said to be a fictionalized version of her mother’s death and her father’s grief. Her books were like her babies (she had no children); after a book was published, she would often plunge into deep depression, a kind of post-partum grieving for the child she no longer carried. In the end, she killed herself.

What if she had had an outlet for the anger she must have felt when her stepbrother molested her? Beyond a mood-stabilizing drug that may have treated the biological ailment, a tendency toward depression that she seemed to have inherited from her father, might it have helped if someone had listened to her pain? to her own personal grief, not just her father’s version? If she had been allowed to acknowledge her feelings, including the anger (maybe scream them, shout them, not keep them inward bound), I think the depression might not have felt so deep. If one views depression as “anger turned inward”, then one can understand why finding a healthy way to turn it outward is so important to overall well-being.

Clarification: if one doesn’t know what to do with one’s anger, my suggestion is find a good therapist.

My intention had been to write about every day anger and how various people handle it. However, a horrific tragedy gave me pause to focusing at present on the every day. I feel fortunate to have wonderful neighbors here in Highland Park of many different backgrounds. But the close neighbors of Sderot, Israel, where people have been under daily rocket threats, celebrated yesterday’s massacre. CELEBRATED! How could one not get angry?

Some responses of bloggers:

• A classic approach by Yid with Lid: Seething at appeasers of terror
• What I would call a “rabbinic” approach by Therapydoc. Listen up, kids, she seems to say. Consider this as another school killing. Let me tell you a story about angels singing at the death of the Egyptians…
• A great way to deal with anger… tell a joke. Maybe then someone out there will get it?!!

Finally, getting back to Highland Park, as I originally meant this to be a blog about Highland Park, I just want to mention with sadness and some anger that Michelle Reasso will be leaving the Highland Park Public Library. At whom do I direct the anger? It can’t be at Mayor Meryl Frank; she gave the library a large donation recently. And not at the other librarians. And not at the taxpayers of Highland Park, we pay too much already. So I’ll direct it at the ridiculous politicians of Trenton who messed up the State budget. Michelle deserves her own post, so I’ll write one soon.

It’s OK to be angry. Really.

First, some definitions:
Repression: The unconscious exclusion of painful impulses, desires, or fears from the conscious mind.
Depression: Freud defined this as anger turned inward.
Anger: I couldn’t find a simple definition. The Wikipedia page on Anger is quite long.

I found a nice explanation of three different forms of anger by Rabbi Abraham Twerski:

…the Hebrew word for anger, kaas, is used for three different phases of anger, and this may lead to some confusion.

Kaas may refer to the feeling one has when one is offended or provoked. There is no need to describe this feeling. Everyone is familiar with it.

After we feel anger, we may react by expressing our anger in a wide variety of ways, from word to deed. In fact, clamming up and pouting is also a reaction, albeit a passive one. The reaction to the initial feeling of anger is also termed kaas.

The third phase of anger, which is likewise called kaas, is retention of the feeling. Sometimes the anger feeling dissipates, and at other times it may linger for hours, weeks and even years. We may hold a grudge for years against the person who offended us.

I like the way he divides anger into three. People often mush together the feeling of anger with the reaction. One of the reasons this is important to me is as a child, I was taught that anger was bad. As an adult, I’m learning to understand that anger just is. And recognizing it and finding a healthy way to deal with it is important to one’s health.

Here’s a famous letter that the Ramban, a rabbi from the 11th century, wrote about anger:

Hear, my son, the instruction of your father and don’t forsake the teaching of your mother (Mishlei 1:8). Get into the habit of always speaking calmly to everyone. This will prevent you from anger, a serious character flaw which causes people to sin.
More of the Ramban’s letter to his son

Now, having read what Rabbi Twerski’s wrote about anger, perhaps this letter should be re-translated as “rage” and not anger, a feeling that we all feel. Or perhaps we just need to accept that the Ramban did not know all.

To be continued…