April 8, 2024 • 42 mins
What do we lose when we’re not allowed to be angry?
In a lot of ways, anger is more taboo than grief. They’re deeply related, as you’ll hear in this two-part episode: both grief and anger are considered “negative” emotions, things you shouldn’t feel, and definitely shouldn’t express in polite company. But what if reclaiming our anger was the way to build the world - and the relationships - we most want?
All of that and more with the best selling author of Rage Becomes Her, Soraya Chemaly.
In this two-part episode we cover:
- What is the right amount of anger?
- Why deciding some emotions are “good” and some are “bad” isn’t really helpful
- What would “anger competence” or “anger literacy” look like? (and why would you want that??)
- Why Soraya says “most grief is ambiguous grief”
- How the old split between the head (logic) and the heart (emotion) cuts us off from what we most want
- Finding your best community by embracing your anger
We're re-releasing some of our favorite episodes from the first 3 seasons. This episode was originally recorded in 2023.
Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.
About our guest:
Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning writer and activist whose work focuses on the role of gender in culture, politics, religion, and media. She is the Director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project and an advocate for women’s freedom of expression and expanded civic and political engagement. A prolific writer and speaker, her articles appear in TIME, The Verge, The Guardian, The Nation, HuffPost, and The Atlantic. Find her best selling book, Rage Becomes Her at sorayachemaly.com. Follow her on social media @sorayachemaly
About Megan:
Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. Get the best-selling book on grief in over a decade, It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, wherever you get books. Find Megan @refugeingrief
Additional Resources:
We mention Pauline Boss in this episode. If you’re not familiar with her excellent work on ambiguous loss (a term she coined in the 1970s), check out her website at ambiguousloss.com
To read more about anger and how it relates to grief, check out It’s OK that You’re Not OK.
If you want to explore your anger with creative prompts and exercises, check out the guided journal for grief, How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed.
Want to talk with Megan directly? Join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A grief clinics: your questions, answered. Want to speak to her privately? Apply for a 1:1 grief consultation here.
Books and resources may contain affiliate links.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you google the words anger management, most of the
images you get are white man yelling work pointing or
breaking things or yelling at each other. And that's how
we think about anger and anger management. But in fact,
the rest of us are managing our anger. Twenty four
to seven.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is It's okay that You're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Devine. This week on the show, we
are talking about anger, that much maligned, much needed, normal,
healthy emotion. My guest this week is Sarriah Shamalley, author
of the incredible book Rage Becomes Her Settle in Friends.
This hot topic coming up right after this first break
(00:46):
before we get started. Two quick notes. One, this episode
is an encore performance. I am on break working on
a giant new project, so we're releasing a mix of
our favorite episodes from the first three seasons of the show.
Some of these conversations you might have missed in your
original seasons, and some shows just truly deserve multiple listens
(01:07):
so that you capture all of the goodness. Second note,
while we cover a lot of emotional, relational territory and
our time here together, this show is not a substitute
for skilled support with a licensemental health provider, or for
professional supervision related to your work. Take what you learn here,
take your thoughts and your reflections out into your world,
and talk about it. Hey, friends, I am so excited
(01:34):
for this episode. Getting to talk to Sarriah Shimali is
a bucket list item for me, to be honest, one
of the main reasons this show exists at all is
so that I have a legit reason to talk to
interesting people about difficult things. Now you're going to hear
about it in the episode itself, But I spend a
lot of my twenties exploring the connections between grief, anger,
(01:57):
women's rights, colorism, and in environmental destruction, just like your
average light topics. But getting to talk with somebody who
also finds those topics fascinating and deeply interrelated was just
a joy. Now that is another thing you don't hear
very often connected to anger.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Joy.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Sarria and I cover a lot of territory in our
time together, but I wanted to preface the entire conversation
by saying that when you unleash your anger, you also
access joy, connection, creativity, and all the things we've been
taught will never happen if you allow yourself to be
angry for more than a hot second. Sarah and I
(02:39):
had such a great time together and talked for so long.
This episode is now a two parter. The joy stuff
comes in part two, so be sure to come back
for that next week because it's important and it's an
awesome conversation. Part one here we definitely dunk on the
stages of grief. I mean, how could we not when
we are talking about out both anger and grief. But
(03:02):
more than that, we get into the real reasons why
anger is considered an unevolved, negative, dark emotion, something you're
supposed to move through very quickly, and something you should
definitely not express if you've ever found yourself swallowing your
rage because it wouldn't be polite, And honestly, who hasn't
done that? You are going to get so much out
of this conversation.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We start fast and we cover a lot Part one
right now. Next week's part two. Both of them go
into the listen several times fold for sure. Sarah, welcome
to the show. I am so thrilled to talk with
you today. Now, anger is actually one of my absolute
(03:45):
favorite topics in the world. It's really tied to grief,
of course, and we'll get into that later, but I
kind of want to start out by saying, the most
common complaint that I get from my own work is
that I'm too angry. And I really appreciate that feedback
from people, because to me, that says like, if you
think I'm too angry, then I'm doing my job.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I'm just wondering what's the right amount of anger for them?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right? What is the right amount of anger? Which is
like this, I feel like we're gonna probably spend our
entire time together talking about the bullshit around the right
amount of anger. But what is it about anger that
freaks people out?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I think it depends on who's getting angry, right, So
I think it particularly freaks people out. If the dispossessed, oppressed,
powerless get angry, that's one kind of freak out, right,
because anger is an entitlement. You get your entitled to
be angry. Some people don't have that entitlement. I think
(04:39):
it causes discomfort. We don't like discomfort. You know. It
causes sadness, It causes shame, it causes guilt, It elicits
all of these negative and fearful emotions. Yea, And in fact,
it'll its its anger when the angry person is violating norms.
So gender norms, angry women are an oxymoron. We understand
(05:04):
angry men. We really don't want to understand angry women.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
No, And honestly, I think we excuse and allow angry men,
but I don't think we understand angry men because we don't.
It's like, there's one channel for anger, and it's like
this violent, explosive, pissed off, destructive thing, which I just
I think that really dis is anger.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah. And also it's the one emotional channel that men
have the right to without challenge, right. I mean, the
fact is we attribute emotionality to women, and then we
use women's emotionality to punish and discipline and regulate them.
But in fact, the result for men is that if
they feel emotions that are softer, that are more feminine,
(05:49):
they are conflicted, they feel shame, they're punished. You know,
little boys who are sad or anxious or fearful are
bullied by homophobes. I mean, it starts so early. And
so the one form of emotional expression that is conflated
with masculinity is anger, and that's super dangerous and damaging.
It's damaging to the individual, it's dangerous for society. But
(06:13):
you know, even in adulthood, we really see the ways
in which it gets distributed. So for a white guy
to get angry is understandable to people because it's how
we define certain type of leadership. It's how we think
of a certain type of god, right, the angry, vengeful father,
and so that confirms our stereotypes. So it doesn't make
(06:34):
people so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, it's bizarre that something so violent, punitive, oppressive doesn't
bug people, right, as long as it comes from the
right source.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
The right source. I mean, if a black man, a
black leader, a black president articulates anger, people are not comfortable.
I mean, when Obama was president, we had an entire
comedy routine sketch that the anger translator, the key, Key
and Peel had an entire uber that was just based
on that. You know, and for men who don't have
that kind of power. You know, a black man who
(07:06):
sounds angry or looks angry, he doesn't even have to
sound or look angry. He just needs to be a
black man. Much more likely to be criminalized for that.
You know, that followed as a leader in the broader community.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, And I think this comes back to something we
hinted at a little bit when we first got started,
which is like the uses of anger, What anger expresses,
what it points to? Can we talk about that maybe
a little bit for folks who are like, Okay, the
only anger I know is like the anger that burns
the world down that white men have access to. So
(07:40):
when we talk about anger, what are we talking about?
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I mean, I think first of all, we could of
live in a culture that thinks they're good emotions and
bad emotions, right, that are very sort of binary and
oppositional understanding of the world, and emotions fit into that framework.
So the first thing I would say is there are
no good or bad emotions, and in particular, is a
signal emotion. It's the emotion that warns us of threat
(08:06):
or trouble or problems. And so from that perspective, we
evolve to have anger so that we could survive. Right.
And So the question that I sort of ask in
the book is why do we sever this key emotion
from femininity? Because when we do that, we take away
the ability for a girl turning into a woman to
(08:31):
identify the problem name the problem, label the problem, figure
out the relationships that matter to the problem, and then
seek to change it. We're far far more comfortable pathologizing
an angry girl or woman, or silencing her or medicating
her then listening to what she has to say, right.
(08:52):
But in fact, if she can't do any of those things,
she can't really help herself, you know. And so I
think by the time when you get to what you
describe the explosive, destructive, violent anger, the angers are ready dysfunctional.
It's already been suppressed or repressed or sort of tessellated
into a really corrosive force in a person's life.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, that backlog of anger only has escape and explosion
as it's rough, like you know, the the image of
sort of volcanic rage, right, Like, there's this constant pressure
push this down. Don't name it, don't say it. Don't
say that you don't like something, don't say that something
isn't working for you. I often say or talk about
(09:33):
how you know, for me, anger is a sense of injustice.
It's a message that something is not right for you, right,
And we don't get to say those things, right. And
if you don't get to say those things, they don't
go away. They just get squshed down and squshed down
and squished down. And they they are going to find
a way to speak those those feelings of transgression and injustice.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And I think it's interesting too because you use the
term anger management. And I wrote a lot about this,
because if you google the words anger management, most of
the images you get are white men yelling or pointing
or breaking things or yelling at each other. And that's
how we think about anger and anger management. But in fact,
the rest of us are managing our anger twenty four
to seven, and we're often mismanaging our anger. And that
(10:18):
mismanagement of the anger is I think what you're talking
about when it turns into poor emotional regulation, bad physical health,
long term illness. I mean, there are no direct correlations
between the suppression of anger and a variety of illnesses,
but there are clear relationships between them, clear correlations between
(10:41):
them that we don't understand very well. And so in fact,
for most of us, we need less anger management. We
need better anger competence, better anger understanding.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
I love that. I love that that juxtaposition, or that
that definition of management as repression in a way like,
how can you keep this quiet. That's I love that
I hadn't thought about it that way. That management is
really suppression and quieting. And you know, I'm all about
grief literacy, but anger literacy is so closely tied with that.
(11:20):
So I mean, we're going here now. I had some
other questions, but I think this is a good time
to go to this, like what what's your relationship with
grief and does it overlap with your relationship with anger.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
My relationship with anger evolved over my life. I was
really socialized to ignore anger, to feel shame about anger.
I lost the ability to recognize anger. I had so
distanced myself from that. And it wasn't until I got
to the point where I thought, why am I exhausted
(11:52):
all the time? Why am I tired all the time?
Why am I feeling the way I'm feeling. I didn't
have words for that, and I really came to understand
a couple of things which is related to grief, which
you'll explain in a minute. But once I was like, oh,
I forgot anger in my life. When I started to
really realize it, it felt like I'd felt myself. I'd
(12:15):
found myself again. I was like, I remember this, I
remember a seven eight nine. Before I went into good
girl mode, I remember what it felt like to be
angry and to say something about it as opposed to
not say anything about it. Right, And what happens to
a lot of women because we self objectify very early
in our culture, is we lose the ability to feel
(12:37):
what anger feels like in our bodies and to recognize it.
And that's really a first step for many women. It's
literally saying what is that? And then when we recognize it,
the second step is to use the right language. Because
we are also really often taught in many families and
cultures to minimize the anger that women have. So we
(12:59):
say we're tired, or we're stressed, or we're irritated or
you know, you find all of these ways that women
minimize the thing that is bothering them because in fact,
they have learned that nobody really wants to hear what's
bothering them, and that to say what's bothering them with
force or with determination risks doing the one thing that
(13:22):
women and girls are supposed to do, which is maintain
these relationships, and you break a relationship, which is the
real threat.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, there's a passage in your I think it was
in an article I read of yours where you were
talking about how anger was disparaged in your childhood and
that the effect of that was managing your anger in
a way that suppressed it and cut you off from
it resulted in social isolation, which is what you just
(13:50):
described there as like, which is so bizarre because we
suppress our anger. We pretend we're not angry, We say
that we're tired instead of that we're mad, right, because
we're trying to hold onto those social bonds. And what
what you've explored is like actually suppressing your anger is
what breaks social bonds.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
And my point is that you can't really have a reciprocal,
caring relationship with a person if they don't know you
and what you need, and anger is an expression of
need or want, right. You need people to care about
what is hurting you. And if you can't say that,
then in essence, you're creating a false relationship. If your
(14:30):
spouse or your father, or whoever it is in your
life that you are uncomfortable expressing your anger with, so
girls will express anger towards other girls. You know, there's
a lot of relational aggression that girls have, but they
don't express it in the same way with boys around them,
for example, they don't express it the same way to
(14:53):
their parents. And so you see a lot of what
I think of as horizontal anger among girls, and women
grow up to be women who are very disparaging of
other women, very punitive with other women. But it's not vertical.
It doesn't go along the axes that power flows on.
And that's really important. But what I really learned that
(15:15):
is to me, the nexus of grief and anger. And
this goes along with this idea that we live in
such a binary world, is that we locate our emotions
in a disembodied mind. We think of them as somehow
outside of the body, or closer to the body than
the mind, but not of the body. But anger and
(15:36):
grief are fully embodied. All of our emotions are fully embodied.
And I had to unlearn my education. I had to
unlearn the education of sort of Western Enlightenment selfhood, which
is very much that you're a mind and your body,
and that rationality is different from emotionality and the superior
to emotionality. And you know, we have all of these
(15:58):
hierarchies built into our way of knowing, and those are
really damaging to our our well being, our relationships, our health,
our ability to cope, to be resilient, all of these
things you know, are related.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, that Cartesian split between the head and the heart,
and the head is prioritized above all else, right, right,
Like that it's just such trash and in charge, right,
And so this idea that intellectualism and stoicism and distance
from the carnal body is what we choose. And you know,
I spend a lot of my undergrad undo like following
(16:34):
the links in the chain between that separation and why
we demonize women and why we demonize darker. You know,
the darker you are, the closer you are to the earth,
and that's terrifying for us. And like there's it's really
the link that ties everything together, that demonization of the
body and all of the carnal emotion that comes with
(16:57):
being embodied creatures, right, like grief and love and sadness
and anger and all of those things are just they're
not cool because we don't see them as clean.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
We don't see them as pure or clean or in control.
Like our philosophy, our science, our selfhood is very much
built around this idea of an agenic person in control.
But anger and grief are not about control. Yeah, you know,
they actually highlight the ways in which we are not
in control. And I would say too that everything that
(17:31):
you just described, everything we're talking about, the denigration of
black bodies, the denigration of brown bodies, the denigration of
women's bodies, it's a form of terror management because the
fear of mortality, the fear of decay, the fear of illness,
like all of the things that are part of being
(17:52):
alive and being a being have been put into these
containers of people. And so what you end up with
is a worldview in which mind full, full of mind,
able bodied white man becomes the idealized human being and
then the universalized human being. And in fact, in terms
(18:16):
of anger, is the holder of anger that we are
supposed to emulate or that we're supposed to put our
trust in.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It's all about avoidance of pain, isn't it. I mean,
all of the structures that we've created, all of the
structures of oppression, and who's okay and who's not okay
if that whole impetus is around. I don't like the
things that remind me that I am the people I
love and the things I care about are all temporary
and subject to pain and injury and loss and suffering.
(18:48):
If I don't want to feel those things, I need
to make sure anything that reminds me of that is
demonized shun suppressed, because I don't want to know. Yeah, yeah,
I want to know that I am safe from pain.
And seriously like this, that whole avoidance of the reality
of relatedness and pain is what has built the entire
(19:14):
dominant repressive culture. It's like it's and that shit.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, And we haven't even talked about the sort of
teleology of Christianity. Christianity created a linear time frame in
which we are ultimately without end. Right, there's a limitlessness,
and it's a movement towards perfection and growth, and it's
(19:41):
all based on a renunciation of the flesh and a
mortification of the flesh. And in fact, all it really
does is disconnect us from living. Yeah, right, And I
don't think we can really talk about any of these things,
whether it's white supremacy and male supremacy, fear, grief, anger,
without thinking about just the material reality of life that
(20:04):
our belief systems renounce.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, that separation and that rising above and the amount
of shame in religious systems if you are grieving, right, like, oh,
don't be sad, because you'll see them again later, like
this whole overcoming of death. And I don't mean to
shame anybody's religion or traditions that gives them comfort, but
(20:28):
we do need to name that. So much of the
mechanics of religion is about nothing should hurt you because
there's something better. It's still part of that avoidance of
the embodied reality of pain and grief and relatedness. Like
you can't be fully related and fully connected and fully
(20:52):
in relationship with self, other or the world if you
don't allow yourself to feel what it feels to lose
that connection.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Right. And also, I think, you know, if we go
back to this notion, that sort of inexorable assumption that
we will get to a better place, so you just
trust that. Like I think a lot about the stages
stages of grief, like you should be moving through those stages.
Aren't you at stage three yet? Like you know, aren't
(21:20):
you done with that yet? And in fact, that's just
not the way grief works. It's not the way emotions work,
it's not the way human beings work. And yet we
hold people to that standard, absolutely, and that's really damaging
to them.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, I mean, the stages of grief are trash and
I've certainly talked about that a lot before. What I
find super fascinating about people who are looking at the
world through the stages of grief lens like there are
definitely favorite children in the stages, right, Like, anger is
part of the stages of grief, but don't stay there
for too long. You have to get to acceptance. Like
(21:55):
we made this whole system to make the messiness of
human emotion approachable and measurable, and even within that system,
anger is unwelcome. Right. We get that you might be
a little bit angry, but it's not very evolved to
feel it.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
And you know, it's interesting because I know this is more.
This is definitely spiral thinking we're going through. But again,
there's this idea of a trajectory like trauma and post
traumatic growth, right, And in fact, most grief is ambiguous grief.
And so we have to go back to this notion
(22:36):
of why control is so important, because things like the stages,
or the propulsion, or the linearity and the progress, those
are just about the illusion of control. And I just
think it would be better if we could culturally, philosophically, religiously,
which I know many people try and do, give up
(22:59):
that pressure to be in control, give up the really
an illusion of control, because it is an illusion, right,
and so having the cognitive flexibility to say, actually, I
am grieving. I don't know when it will end. I
cannot force myself not to feel this and just being
in the space being and recognizing it, which is hard.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
It's hard. It's hard for so many reasons. It's hard
because we're not taught that that is normal and healthy
and wise. And we also don't have the tools cultural
and interpersonal. We don't have the tools to navigate that.
(23:46):
We've been talking with best selling authors Ariah Shamali, let's
get back to it, and you said something really interesting
a minute ago, and I'd love to hear more about it.
You said that most grief is ambiguous grief. Can you
tell me what you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
I think a lot of grief it is ambiguous. I
think that it's open ended. I certainly know this. In
my life. There was a period in which I thought, well,
grief is what you experienced when someone dies. Someone dies
in your experience grief. All of us will experience that grief.
Everybody will experience that kind of grief. But in fact,
we grieve for so many other things, and we grieve
(24:22):
in circumstances where a death hasn't happened. And maybe it's
the grief of mass incarceration killing a community. Maybe it's
the grief of refugees who've had to leave their entire
experiences and memories and loved ones and belonging somewhere else.
Maybe it's the grief of climate disaster right losing the
(24:44):
world as we know it. None of that grief is
the kind of closed grief of death. Death is grievous,
but it's a moment, you know, It's again a moment
in time that happens. It has a sort of a
begin and then a middle and an end. And we
have traditions and we go through the process of mourning
(25:05):
in ways that can bring great comfort. But if you
are experiencing ambiguous grief, like my dad had dementia, so
we lost my father, and this is the case for
millions of families. We lost my father over years, in
small increments, and as we lost him, we lost parts
of our relationships with him and with each other. We
(25:27):
lost parts of our identities. Like no one talks about
that kind of open ended ambiguity that happens without you
even realizing it, and then you wake up one morning
and you're a different person, or you feel a sadness.
You don't even have the words for what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I think that's the big thing, And it's one
of the things that I have tried to do with
this show is to broaden our understanding of what grief is.
You know, the grief connected to the death of somebody
you love is difficult and emotional and challenging and has
no endpoint and all of these things. And we have
(26:07):
language to talk about that, like we recognize, how, you know,
the short shelf life that we allow people grieving a
death set to the side for a second, Like we
get it right that you're grieving when your sister dies,
or your mom dies, or your best friend dies. We
don't have language, ritual support structure for the grief that
(26:31):
happens as you lose somebody by degrees, the grief that
happens when your career does not go the way that
you want it to. I think we start getting really
possessive of what the word grief is allowed to be
used for.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, I think that's right, And I think too like,
I don't know if you're familiar with Pauline Boss's work, right,
So I came to her work because I was studying
trauma and resilience. At the very beginning of COVID, there
was a lot being talked about in terms of trauma
(27:03):
and resilience and what was to come. And what really
struck me was that in fact, it wasn't trauma, it
was grief, yeah, and that we were grieving in this
open ended way for things we couldn't name, and she
has a good framework for that. And what's interesting to
me is that we're in such an individualistic culture that
(27:23):
most people perceive resilience as a trait that they have
or that they can develop, when in fact, in terms
of grief in particular and ambiguous grief even more so,
the thing that enables you to adapt and survive and
maybe eventually come to a new place is your relationships. Right.
It's the community that you form around you and the
(27:46):
belonging that you can cultivate or the meaning that you derive.
So that's a relational resilience, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Which is different than this, like buck uplittle camper, be strong,
don't let the world bug you, don't let things get
you down, just plow ahead, endless forward movement. Yes, optimism
by demand, right, it's that thing of like the the
whole resilience narrative really irks me.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
And resilient resilience.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Oh yay, I cannot wait, yay, Oh my gosh, I'm
so glad to hear that. Like the resilience we could well,
we could totally nerd out about this one, but like
resilience just really irks me because resilience is the thing
that we demand of people, Like, yes, difficult things happen,
but we don't want to hear about it. We only
want to hear you rise above. Like it's another it's
another way to silence totally somebody's experience and to separate them.
(28:39):
Yeah yeah, how dare you? How dare you have feelings
that aren't forward moving positive thinking. It goes back to
what we were talking about a few minutes ago of like,
you know, the entire capitalistic structure of forward human progress
would collapse if we allowed ourselves to be sad and angry.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Like hello, another thing. We've been dancing around this. But
productivity culture is a tool, but it's used against us, right,
Like I think a lot about pregnancy loss and even
childbirth as a process of grief that women sometimes go to.
You get work, to a child, and then you realize
what you've lost, right, You realize, oh, I'm not the
(29:21):
person I was before and I'm this new person, or
I have these new relationships. And that doesn't mean you
don't love your child, but there is a difference in
your life, right, And so there's no recognition of any
of that. There's no recognition of what women go through anyway,
or people who have children. There's no sense in the culture,
(29:42):
particularly American culture, that it's tiring, it's hard work, we
need rest, right because in fact, the goal is to
get back to normal, which means optimizing yourself, peak performance,
positive attitudes, like all this bullshit, endless, endless bullshit, and
(30:03):
we just are not kind to people. We just don't
have a caring ethic.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, Like the whole medicalization of grief is about a
return to productivity, right, Like, when can you go back
to work and complete your job without being distracted? When
can you go back to consumer culture? And being up
and positive and optimistic, Like when can we package you
and your grief? Your emotions, your anger, your sadness, your
(30:29):
disappointment are all way too messy for us to make
productive hours out of And that is terrifying for the
systems that exist.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, systems are not interested.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
No, there's something else that I want to bring in here,
Like this territory has been my preferred ground since I
was a teenager, Like, I love this stuff, And when
my partner drowned, I no longer gave a shit about this.
Obviously I care about it again now, But I think
when loss erupts into your life, these conversations feel very
(31:06):
distant and very theoretical.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
And its despondence is the response, I agree with you, Yeah,
because it like nothing matters.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
And that these conversations about the larger cultural and interpersonal
sweeps have no bearing on the actual intimate life that
I am living at this time. And and I get that,
and I think these conversations are really really important because
the culture that we create together, the structures that we
create together, have a direct impact on how your emotional
(31:40):
experience after a big loss, how that gets seen, and
how that gets supported and maybe like in that tight
orb of a big catastrophic loss or a catastrophics injury
or illness, like, maybe that is not the time for
philosophical conversations for you. And knowing that your personal experience
sits within a culture that is armed against you, hostile
(32:04):
to you. You're right, hostile to you. Is part of
why it's so difficult to be a grieving person in
this culture, because the systems are in place to make
the world a very hostile place for grievers. And I
think like situating yourself in that and understanding that that
it's not just you, it's not just you, it's the world,
the world.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And also we're in the culture. We can't be out
of the culture. Really, we have to live in the world.
It's a capitalist society. Most of us have to earn
money to feed ourselves in our families. Like these are realities, right.
But the other thing too is when this is the
case with anger, part of the real reason I wrote
the book was to show how social anger is, to
(32:45):
show how constructed it is. Same thing with grief, right,
same thing with the idea of emotions. We think of
emotions as an internal state of an individual, as opposed
to the way we communicate between in individuals as interpersons.
Emotions make us interpersons we enter into we've become a
(33:07):
new thing when we're sharing emotions with a person or
with a community. But because we are so individualistic, we
fail to think, for example, in terms of communal grief,
historic grief, cultural grief, sort of loss experienced over time
periods that are way outside the average lifespan, and why
(33:30):
those are still relevant. It's like the diagnosis of PTSD.
Diagnosis of PTSD is an individual diagnosis of trauma, and
when the diagnosis was made, it helped a lot of people,
mainly soldiers coming back from wars Vietnam. But in fact
(33:51):
it's simultaneously by saying trauma is resident in an individual's mind,
it simultaneously erased historic of indigenous peoples or trauma related
to racism. For example, it ignored the grief and trauma
of women who experienced rape because it said trauma of
(34:13):
this sort, grief of this sort, anger of this sort
comes from a violent attack by a stranger or in
a war, which nobody could conceive a woman experiencing that
in her own home.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, yeah, this idea that making the diagnosis. Making a
definition legitimizes certain kinds of emotional, relational, neurological response and
at the same time erases any other expression of it.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, because it invalidates everything else, you know, And so
we still, for example, in the DSM, the manual diagnostics
used in the United States complex PTSD, which was suggested
by g. De Herman like in the late seventies early
eighties to describe the experiences, particularly of women living with
(35:06):
domestic violence or sexual violence. It's still not part of
the DSM.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Nope. No, it's starting to get some airtime with authors
like Stephanie fou and imman Neatfield, who we've had on
the show earlier this season. But that's the that's the thing, right,
Like how do we how do hello, it's twenty twenty three,
Like can we start talking about the lives of girls
and women and the you know, the the effects of
(35:32):
millennia of trauma, violence, displacement and what does that do
to a body.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
With like, you know, sort of a post enslavement syndrome,
Like the effects the intergenerational effects of violence and enslavement
on American Black communities doesn't quite fit into the definition
of PTSD.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Doesn't quite no, and there's there's no clear five step
plan to get yourself out of those things to go
be a productive American, like there's just it starts to
get really overwhelming when you start to see how big
the web is. I remember when I was in grad school.
I remember that an advisor of mine was a psychiatrist
(36:17):
within one of the last remaining inpatient long term residential
psych units, and she said, I never checked this out.
So if this wasn't accurate and she was telling tales,
I don't know. But one of the things she said
was that, you know, there's a tendency to romanticize psychosis.
But I can tell you that a lot of my
current patients are women who were researching deep women's history
(36:41):
and the history of people of color, and it broke
their brains and they couldn't they couldn't mesh the pain
and suffering that they were seeing, like how far that
rabbit hole goes with daily lived culture, and it broke
something in them. And I think that this is one
of the reasons that we don't always explain or this
stuff is one in our own pain, this bigger sweep
(37:04):
of pain feels distant and irrelevant and I think another
thing that really strikes me sometimes and I love this stuff,
but I think another thing that really strikes people is
it's so immense and so violent and so hostile, and
it's everywhere, and how do we find a corner of
(37:27):
that to hold on to and not lose our minds?
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Well, that's funny. I've been talking about this, actually this
exact topic now, talking to myself about it, but also
to friends I know that would understand this. You know,
for years I wrote almost exclusively about sexual violence, and
what happened in that process was not only did I
(37:50):
know my own experience of sexual violence in the culture,
which I really always known, like really from the age
of eight or nine, but I then experienced secondary trauma
from the process of listening to other people's stories, studying, writing.
And I don't think people understand enough about secondary trauma
(38:12):
and the grief you feel like you just describe the
grief you feel when you realize what a massive task
we have ahead of us. So I struggle a lot
with the notion of hope, because in fact, the despondence
that can settle on you is honestly in some ways,
I think in my case it felt self indulgent because
(38:33):
I could afford to be despondent. I read a lot,
and I think a lot about people who've gone through
this process over the last century and written about it
and talked about it, and they've come to a place
of hope and hopefulness as a practice as what has
to happen. And try and learn from them, because it
is easy to fall down that rabbit hole and think,
(38:55):
my god, how will we dig ourselves out? And I
will say this, I've done many podcasts in the last
ten years, five years, ten years, but very few people
ever want to go down this path because in fact,
they want to give people something positive. Yeah, you know,
they want to end on a high note. And I'm like, well,
(39:16):
maybe I'm not your gal right now.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Singing my song.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I'm like, okay, but did you know that before you
asked me? Because in fact, there's some things where you
just have to sit with the badness, which isn't really
fun for people at a dinner party, I understand.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
I've been talking with Saraah Shamali, author of the best
selling book Rage Becomes Her. Part two of our conversation
is out next week. Be sure to check the show
notes for ways to learn more about Sarria's work and
stick around for your questions to carry with you for
part one of this episode right after this break. Each week,
(40:06):
I leave you with some questions to carry with you
until we meet again. Now you know what really struck
me in this conversation? Okay, well two things. Lots of things,
but I'm only going to share two. It has been
nearly two decades since my twenties. Actually, quick math, it's
more than that. Whatever, But that was the time when
I was really diving into research on anger and oppression
(40:28):
and how that intersects with women's rights and environmental destruction
and activism. So it was really cool to go back
there with Soria. Number two thing for this part of
the episode. At one point, I think it is maybe
in part two of our conversation, but Sarria and I
were talking about books and how anger itself is an
(40:49):
endless well of material. So if you have a book
on anger in you, please do it. Please please write
that book. There's just so much to say, there's so
much to say about anger. There's a part two of
this conversation coming up next week, so I'll miss that
one and be sure to let us know what came
up for you during this conversation on anger and grief
(41:13):
and connection. Everyone's going to take something different from today's show,
but I do hope you find something to hold on to.
Check out Refuge Grief on Instagram or here after Pod
on TikTok to see video clips from the show and
leave your thoughts in the comments on those posts, and
be sure to tag us in your own anger conversation
starting posts on your own social media use the hashtag
(41:35):
here after Pod on all the platforms we love to
see where this show takes you. Remember to subscribe and
do leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
listen to shows. Those reviews help more than you know
want more. Hereafter Grief education doesn't just belong to end
of life issues. Life is full of losses from everyday
(41:58):
disappointments to events clearly divide life into before and after.
Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or
platitudes or simplistic think positive posters is an important skill
for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every
human trying to make their way in the world after
something goes horribly wrong at Megandivine dot Co. Hereafter with
(42:23):
Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine,
Executive producer is Amy Brown, and Elizabeth Fozzio. Edited by
Houston Tilley. Music provided by Wave Crush
If you google the words anger management, most of the
images you get are white man yelling work pointing or
breaking things or yelling at each other. And that's how
we think about anger and anger management. But in fact,
the rest of us are managing our anger. Twenty four
to seven.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is It's okay that You're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Devine. This week on the show, we
are talking about anger, that much maligned, much needed, normal,
healthy emotion. My guest this week is Sarriah Shamalley, author
of the incredible book Rage Becomes Her Settle in Friends.
This hot topic coming up right after this first break
(00:46):
before we get started. Two quick notes. One, this episode
is an encore performance. I am on break working on
a giant new project, so we're releasing a mix of
our favorite episodes from the first three seasons of the show.
Some of these conversations you might have missed in your
original seasons, and some shows just truly deserve multiple listens
(01:07):
so that you capture all of the goodness. Second note,
while we cover a lot of emotional, relational territory and
our time here together, this show is not a substitute
for skilled support with a licensemental health provider, or for
professional supervision related to your work. Take what you learn here,
take your thoughts and your reflections out into your world,
and talk about it. Hey, friends, I am so excited
(01:34):
for this episode. Getting to talk to Sarriah Shimali is
a bucket list item for me, to be honest, one
of the main reasons this show exists at all is
so that I have a legit reason to talk to
interesting people about difficult things. Now you're going to hear
about it in the episode itself, But I spend a
lot of my twenties exploring the connections between grief, anger,
(01:57):
women's rights, colorism, and in environmental destruction, just like your
average light topics. But getting to talk with somebody who
also finds those topics fascinating and deeply interrelated was just
a joy. Now that is another thing you don't hear
very often connected to anger.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Joy.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Sarria and I cover a lot of territory in our
time together, but I wanted to preface the entire conversation
by saying that when you unleash your anger, you also
access joy, connection, creativity, and all the things we've been
taught will never happen if you allow yourself to be
angry for more than a hot second. Sarah and I
(02:39):
had such a great time together and talked for so long.
This episode is now a two parter. The joy stuff
comes in part two, so be sure to come back
for that next week because it's important and it's an
awesome conversation. Part one here we definitely dunk on the
stages of grief. I mean, how could we not when
we are talking about out both anger and grief. But
(03:02):
more than that, we get into the real reasons why
anger is considered an unevolved, negative, dark emotion, something you're
supposed to move through very quickly, and something you should
definitely not express if you've ever found yourself swallowing your
rage because it wouldn't be polite, And honestly, who hasn't
done that? You are going to get so much out
of this conversation.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We start fast and we cover a lot Part one
right now. Next week's part two. Both of them go
into the listen several times fold for sure. Sarah, welcome
to the show. I am so thrilled to talk with
you today. Now, anger is actually one of my absolute
(03:45):
favorite topics in the world. It's really tied to grief,
of course, and we'll get into that later, but I
kind of want to start out by saying, the most
common complaint that I get from my own work is
that I'm too angry. And I really appreciate that feedback
from people, because to me, that says like, if you
think I'm too angry, then I'm doing my job.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I'm just wondering what's the right amount of anger for them?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Right? What is the right amount of anger? Which is
like this, I feel like we're gonna probably spend our
entire time together talking about the bullshit around the right
amount of anger. But what is it about anger that
freaks people out?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I think it depends on who's getting angry, right, So
I think it particularly freaks people out. If the dispossessed, oppressed,
powerless get angry, that's one kind of freak out, right,
because anger is an entitlement. You get your entitled to
be angry. Some people don't have that entitlement. I think
(04:39):
it causes discomfort. We don't like discomfort. You know. It
causes sadness, It causes shame, it causes guilt, It elicits
all of these negative and fearful emotions. Yea, And in fact,
it'll its its anger when the angry person is violating norms.
So gender norms, angry women are an oxymoron. We understand
(05:04):
angry men. We really don't want to understand angry women.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
No, And honestly, I think we excuse and allow angry men,
but I don't think we understand angry men because we don't.
It's like, there's one channel for anger, and it's like
this violent, explosive, pissed off, destructive thing, which I just
I think that really dis is anger.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah. And also it's the one emotional channel that men
have the right to without challenge, right. I mean, the
fact is we attribute emotionality to women, and then we
use women's emotionality to punish and discipline and regulate them.
But in fact, the result for men is that if
they feel emotions that are softer, that are more feminine,
(05:49):
they are conflicted, they feel shame, they're punished. You know,
little boys who are sad or anxious or fearful are
bullied by homophobes. I mean, it starts so early. And
so the one form of emotional expression that is conflated
with masculinity is anger, and that's super dangerous and damaging.
It's damaging to the individual, it's dangerous for society. But
(06:13):
you know, even in adulthood, we really see the ways
in which it gets distributed. So for a white guy
to get angry is understandable to people because it's how
we define certain type of leadership. It's how we think
of a certain type of god, right, the angry, vengeful father,
and so that confirms our stereotypes. So it doesn't make
(06:34):
people so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, it's bizarre that something so violent, punitive, oppressive doesn't
bug people, right, as long as it comes from the
right source.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
The right source. I mean, if a black man, a
black leader, a black president articulates anger, people are not comfortable.
I mean, when Obama was president, we had an entire
comedy routine sketch that the anger translator, the key, Key
and Peel had an entire uber that was just based
on that. You know, and for men who don't have
that kind of power. You know, a black man who
(07:06):
sounds angry or looks angry, he doesn't even have to
sound or look angry. He just needs to be a
black man. Much more likely to be criminalized for that.
You know, that followed as a leader in the broader community.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, And I think this comes back to something we
hinted at a little bit when we first got started,
which is like the uses of anger, What anger expresses,
what it points to? Can we talk about that maybe
a little bit for folks who are like, Okay, the
only anger I know is like the anger that burns
the world down that white men have access to. So
(07:40):
when we talk about anger, what are we talking about?
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I mean, I think first of all, we could of
live in a culture that thinks they're good emotions and
bad emotions, right, that are very sort of binary and
oppositional understanding of the world, and emotions fit into that framework.
So the first thing I would say is there are
no good or bad emotions, and in particular, is a
signal emotion. It's the emotion that warns us of threat
(08:06):
or trouble or problems. And so from that perspective, we
evolve to have anger so that we could survive. Right.
And So the question that I sort of ask in
the book is why do we sever this key emotion
from femininity? Because when we do that, we take away
the ability for a girl turning into a woman to
(08:31):
identify the problem name the problem, label the problem, figure
out the relationships that matter to the problem, and then
seek to change it. We're far far more comfortable pathologizing
an angry girl or woman, or silencing her or medicating
her then listening to what she has to say, right.
(08:52):
But in fact, if she can't do any of those things,
she can't really help herself, you know. And so I
think by the time when you get to what you
describe the explosive, destructive, violent anger, the angers are ready dysfunctional.
It's already been suppressed or repressed or sort of tessellated
into a really corrosive force in a person's life.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, that backlog of anger only has escape and explosion
as it's rough, like you know, the the image of
sort of volcanic rage, right, Like, there's this constant pressure
push this down. Don't name it, don't say it. Don't
say that you don't like something, don't say that something
isn't working for you. I often say or talk about
(09:33):
how you know, for me, anger is a sense of injustice.
It's a message that something is not right for you, right,
And we don't get to say those things, right. And
if you don't get to say those things, they don't
go away. They just get squshed down and squshed down
and squished down. And they they are going to find
a way to speak those those feelings of transgression and injustice.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And I think it's interesting too because you use the
term anger management. And I wrote a lot about this,
because if you google the words anger management, most of
the images you get are white men yelling or pointing
or breaking things or yelling at each other. And that's
how we think about anger and anger management. But in fact,
the rest of us are managing our anger twenty four
to seven, and we're often mismanaging our anger. And that
(10:18):
mismanagement of the anger is I think what you're talking
about when it turns into poor emotional regulation, bad physical health,
long term illness. I mean, there are no direct correlations
between the suppression of anger and a variety of illnesses,
but there are clear relationships between them, clear correlations between
(10:41):
them that we don't understand very well. And so in fact,
for most of us, we need less anger management. We
need better anger competence, better anger understanding.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
I love that. I love that that juxtaposition, or that
that definition of management as repression in a way like,
how can you keep this quiet. That's I love that
I hadn't thought about it that way. That management is
really suppression and quieting. And you know, I'm all about
grief literacy, but anger literacy is so closely tied with that.
(11:20):
So I mean, we're going here now. I had some
other questions, but I think this is a good time
to go to this, like what what's your relationship with
grief and does it overlap with your relationship with anger.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
My relationship with anger evolved over my life. I was
really socialized to ignore anger, to feel shame about anger.
I lost the ability to recognize anger. I had so
distanced myself from that. And it wasn't until I got
to the point where I thought, why am I exhausted
(11:52):
all the time? Why am I tired all the time?
Why am I feeling the way I'm feeling. I didn't
have words for that, and I really came to understand
a couple of things which is related to grief, which
you'll explain in a minute. But once I was like, oh,
I forgot anger in my life. When I started to
really realize it, it felt like I'd felt myself. I'd
(12:15):
found myself again. I was like, I remember this, I
remember a seven eight nine. Before I went into good
girl mode, I remember what it felt like to be
angry and to say something about it as opposed to
not say anything about it. Right, And what happens to
a lot of women because we self objectify very early
in our culture, is we lose the ability to feel
(12:37):
what anger feels like in our bodies and to recognize it.
And that's really a first step for many women. It's
literally saying what is that? And then when we recognize it,
the second step is to use the right language. Because
we are also really often taught in many families and
cultures to minimize the anger that women have. So we
(12:59):
say we're tired, or we're stressed, or we're irritated or
you know, you find all of these ways that women
minimize the thing that is bothering them because in fact,
they have learned that nobody really wants to hear what's
bothering them, and that to say what's bothering them with
force or with determination risks doing the one thing that
(13:22):
women and girls are supposed to do, which is maintain
these relationships, and you break a relationship, which is the
real threat.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, there's a passage in your I think it was
in an article I read of yours where you were
talking about how anger was disparaged in your childhood and
that the effect of that was managing your anger in
a way that suppressed it and cut you off from
it resulted in social isolation, which is what you just
(13:50):
described there as like, which is so bizarre because we
suppress our anger. We pretend we're not angry, We say
that we're tired instead of that we're mad, right, because
we're trying to hold onto those social bonds. And what
what you've explored is like actually suppressing your anger is
what breaks social bonds.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
And my point is that you can't really have a reciprocal,
caring relationship with a person if they don't know you
and what you need, and anger is an expression of
need or want, right. You need people to care about
what is hurting you. And if you can't say that,
then in essence, you're creating a false relationship. If your
(14:30):
spouse or your father, or whoever it is in your
life that you are uncomfortable expressing your anger with, so
girls will express anger towards other girls. You know, there's
a lot of relational aggression that girls have, but they
don't express it in the same way with boys around them,
for example, they don't express it the same way to
(14:53):
their parents. And so you see a lot of what
I think of as horizontal anger among girls, and women
grow up to be women who are very disparaging of
other women, very punitive with other women. But it's not vertical.
It doesn't go along the axes that power flows on.
And that's really important. But what I really learned that
(15:15):
is to me, the nexus of grief and anger. And
this goes along with this idea that we live in
such a binary world, is that we locate our emotions
in a disembodied mind. We think of them as somehow
outside of the body, or closer to the body than
the mind, but not of the body. But anger and
(15:36):
grief are fully embodied. All of our emotions are fully embodied.
And I had to unlearn my education. I had to
unlearn the education of sort of Western Enlightenment selfhood, which
is very much that you're a mind and your body,
and that rationality is different from emotionality and the superior
to emotionality. And you know, we have all of these
(15:58):
hierarchies built into our way of knowing, and those are
really damaging to our our well being, our relationships, our health,
our ability to cope, to be resilient, all of these
things you know, are related.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, that Cartesian split between the head and the heart,
and the head is prioritized above all else, right, right,
Like that it's just such trash and in charge, right,
And so this idea that intellectualism and stoicism and distance
from the carnal body is what we choose. And you know,
I spend a lot of my undergrad undo like following
(16:34):
the links in the chain between that separation and why
we demonize women and why we demonize darker. You know,
the darker you are, the closer you are to the earth,
and that's terrifying for us. And like there's it's really
the link that ties everything together, that demonization of the
body and all of the carnal emotion that comes with
(16:57):
being embodied creatures, right, like grief and love and sadness
and anger and all of those things are just they're
not cool because we don't see them as clean.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
We don't see them as pure or clean or in control.
Like our philosophy, our science, our selfhood is very much
built around this idea of an agenic person in control.
But anger and grief are not about control. Yeah, you know,
they actually highlight the ways in which we are not
in control. And I would say too that everything that
(17:31):
you just described, everything we're talking about, the denigration of
black bodies, the denigration of brown bodies, the denigration of
women's bodies, it's a form of terror management because the
fear of mortality, the fear of decay, the fear of illness,
like all of the things that are part of being
(17:52):
alive and being a being have been put into these
containers of people. And so what you end up with
is a worldview in which mind full, full of mind,
able bodied white man becomes the idealized human being and
then the universalized human being. And in fact, in terms
(18:16):
of anger, is the holder of anger that we are
supposed to emulate or that we're supposed to put our
trust in.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It's all about avoidance of pain, isn't it. I mean,
all of the structures that we've created, all of the
structures of oppression, and who's okay and who's not okay
if that whole impetus is around. I don't like the
things that remind me that I am the people I
love and the things I care about are all temporary
and subject to pain and injury and loss and suffering.
(18:48):
If I don't want to feel those things, I need
to make sure anything that reminds me of that is
demonized shun suppressed, because I don't want to know. Yeah, yeah,
I want to know that I am safe from pain.
And seriously like this, that whole avoidance of the reality
of relatedness and pain is what has built the entire
(19:14):
dominant repressive culture. It's like it's and that shit.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, And we haven't even talked about the sort of
teleology of Christianity. Christianity created a linear time frame in
which we are ultimately without end. Right, there's a limitlessness,
and it's a movement towards perfection and growth, and it's
(19:41):
all based on a renunciation of the flesh and a
mortification of the flesh. And in fact, all it really
does is disconnect us from living. Yeah, right, And I
don't think we can really talk about any of these things,
whether it's white supremacy and male supremacy, fear, grief, anger,
without thinking about just the material reality of life that
(20:04):
our belief systems renounce.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, that separation and that rising above and the amount
of shame in religious systems if you are grieving, right, like, oh,
don't be sad, because you'll see them again later, like
this whole overcoming of death. And I don't mean to
shame anybody's religion or traditions that gives them comfort, but
(20:28):
we do need to name that. So much of the
mechanics of religion is about nothing should hurt you because
there's something better. It's still part of that avoidance of
the embodied reality of pain and grief and relatedness. Like
you can't be fully related and fully connected and fully
(20:52):
in relationship with self, other or the world if you
don't allow yourself to feel what it feels to lose
that connection.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Right. And also, I think, you know, if we go
back to this notion, that sort of inexorable assumption that
we will get to a better place, so you just
trust that. Like I think a lot about the stages
stages of grief, like you should be moving through those stages.
Aren't you at stage three yet? Like you know, aren't
(21:20):
you done with that yet? And in fact, that's just
not the way grief works. It's not the way emotions work,
it's not the way human beings work. And yet we
hold people to that standard, absolutely, and that's really damaging
to them.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, I mean, the stages of grief are trash and
I've certainly talked about that a lot before. What I
find super fascinating about people who are looking at the
world through the stages of grief lens like there are
definitely favorite children in the stages, right, Like, anger is
part of the stages of grief, but don't stay there
for too long. You have to get to acceptance. Like
(21:55):
we made this whole system to make the messiness of
human emotion approachable and measurable, and even within that system,
anger is unwelcome. Right. We get that you might be
a little bit angry, but it's not very evolved to
feel it.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
And you know, it's interesting because I know this is more.
This is definitely spiral thinking we're going through. But again,
there's this idea of a trajectory like trauma and post
traumatic growth, right, And in fact, most grief is ambiguous grief.
And so we have to go back to this notion
(22:36):
of why control is so important, because things like the stages,
or the propulsion, or the linearity and the progress, those
are just about the illusion of control. And I just
think it would be better if we could culturally, philosophically, religiously,
which I know many people try and do, give up
(22:59):
that pressure to be in control, give up the really
an illusion of control, because it is an illusion, right,
and so having the cognitive flexibility to say, actually, I
am grieving. I don't know when it will end. I
cannot force myself not to feel this and just being
in the space being and recognizing it, which is hard.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
It's hard. It's hard for so many reasons. It's hard
because we're not taught that that is normal and healthy
and wise. And we also don't have the tools cultural
and interpersonal. We don't have the tools to navigate that.
(23:46):
We've been talking with best selling authors Ariah Shamali, let's
get back to it, and you said something really interesting
a minute ago, and I'd love to hear more about it.
You said that most grief is ambiguous grief. Can you
tell me what you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
I think a lot of grief it is ambiguous. I
think that it's open ended. I certainly know this. In
my life. There was a period in which I thought, well,
grief is what you experienced when someone dies. Someone dies
in your experience grief. All of us will experience that grief.
Everybody will experience that kind of grief. But in fact,
we grieve for so many other things, and we grieve
(24:22):
in circumstances where a death hasn't happened. And maybe it's
the grief of mass incarceration killing a community. Maybe it's
the grief of refugees who've had to leave their entire
experiences and memories and loved ones and belonging somewhere else.
Maybe it's the grief of climate disaster right losing the
(24:44):
world as we know it. None of that grief is
the kind of closed grief of death. Death is grievous,
but it's a moment, you know, It's again a moment
in time that happens. It has a sort of a
begin and then a middle and an end. And we
have traditions and we go through the process of mourning
(25:05):
in ways that can bring great comfort. But if you
are experiencing ambiguous grief, like my dad had dementia, so
we lost my father, and this is the case for
millions of families. We lost my father over years, in
small increments, and as we lost him, we lost parts
of our relationships with him and with each other. We
(25:27):
lost parts of our identities. Like no one talks about
that kind of open ended ambiguity that happens without you
even realizing it, and then you wake up one morning
and you're a different person, or you feel a sadness.
You don't even have the words for what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I think that's the big thing, And it's one
of the things that I have tried to do with
this show is to broaden our understanding of what grief is.
You know, the grief connected to the death of somebody
you love is difficult and emotional and challenging and has
no endpoint and all of these things. And we have
(26:07):
language to talk about that, like we recognize, how, you know,
the short shelf life that we allow people grieving a
death set to the side for a second, Like we
get it right that you're grieving when your sister dies,
or your mom dies, or your best friend dies. We
don't have language, ritual support structure for the grief that
(26:31):
happens as you lose somebody by degrees, the grief that
happens when your career does not go the way that
you want it to. I think we start getting really
possessive of what the word grief is allowed to be
used for.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, I think that's right, And I think too like,
I don't know if you're familiar with Pauline Boss's work, right,
So I came to her work because I was studying
trauma and resilience. At the very beginning of COVID, there
was a lot being talked about in terms of trauma
(27:03):
and resilience and what was to come. And what really
struck me was that in fact, it wasn't trauma, it
was grief, yeah, and that we were grieving in this
open ended way for things we couldn't name, and she
has a good framework for that. And what's interesting to
me is that we're in such an individualistic culture that
(27:23):
most people perceive resilience as a trait that they have
or that they can develop, when in fact, in terms
of grief in particular and ambiguous grief even more so,
the thing that enables you to adapt and survive and
maybe eventually come to a new place is your relationships. Right.
It's the community that you form around you and the
(27:46):
belonging that you can cultivate or the meaning that you derive.
So that's a relational resilience, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Which is different than this, like buck uplittle camper, be strong,
don't let the world bug you, don't let things get
you down, just plow ahead, endless forward movement. Yes, optimism
by demand, right, it's that thing of like the the
whole resilience narrative really irks me.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
And resilient resilience.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Oh yay, I cannot wait, yay, Oh my gosh, I'm
so glad to hear that. Like the resilience we could well,
we could totally nerd out about this one, but like
resilience just really irks me because resilience is the thing
that we demand of people, Like, yes, difficult things happen,
but we don't want to hear about it. We only
want to hear you rise above. Like it's another it's
another way to silence totally somebody's experience and to separate them.
(28:39):
Yeah yeah, how dare you? How dare you have feelings
that aren't forward moving positive thinking. It goes back to
what we were talking about a few minutes ago of like,
you know, the entire capitalistic structure of forward human progress
would collapse if we allowed ourselves to be sad and angry.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Like hello, another thing. We've been dancing around this. But
productivity culture is a tool, but it's used against us, right,
Like I think a lot about pregnancy loss and even
childbirth as a process of grief that women sometimes go to.
You get work, to a child, and then you realize
what you've lost, right, You realize, oh, I'm not the
(29:21):
person I was before and I'm this new person, or
I have these new relationships. And that doesn't mean you
don't love your child, but there is a difference in
your life, right, And so there's no recognition of any
of that. There's no recognition of what women go through anyway,
or people who have children. There's no sense in the culture,
(29:42):
particularly American culture, that it's tiring, it's hard work, we
need rest, right because in fact, the goal is to
get back to normal, which means optimizing yourself, peak performance,
positive attitudes, like all this bullshit, endless, endless bullshit, and
(30:03):
we just are not kind to people. We just don't
have a caring ethic.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, Like the whole medicalization of grief is about a
return to productivity, right, Like, when can you go back
to work and complete your job without being distracted? When
can you go back to consumer culture? And being up
and positive and optimistic, Like when can we package you
and your grief? Your emotions, your anger, your sadness, your
(30:29):
disappointment are all way too messy for us to make
productive hours out of And that is terrifying for the
systems that exist.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, systems are not interested.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
No, there's something else that I want to bring in here,
Like this territory has been my preferred ground since I
was a teenager, Like, I love this stuff, And when
my partner drowned, I no longer gave a shit about this.
Obviously I care about it again now, But I think
when loss erupts into your life, these conversations feel very
(31:06):
distant and very theoretical.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
And its despondence is the response, I agree with you, Yeah,
because it like nothing matters.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
And that these conversations about the larger cultural and interpersonal
sweeps have no bearing on the actual intimate life that
I am living at this time. And and I get that,
and I think these conversations are really really important because
the culture that we create together, the structures that we
create together, have a direct impact on how your emotional
(31:40):
experience after a big loss, how that gets seen, and
how that gets supported and maybe like in that tight
orb of a big catastrophic loss or a catastrophics injury
or illness, like, maybe that is not the time for
philosophical conversations for you. And knowing that your personal experience
sits within a culture that is armed against you, hostile
(32:04):
to you. You're right, hostile to you. Is part of
why it's so difficult to be a grieving person in
this culture, because the systems are in place to make
the world a very hostile place for grievers. And I
think like situating yourself in that and understanding that that
it's not just you, it's not just you, it's the world,
the world.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And also we're in the culture. We can't be out
of the culture. Really, we have to live in the world.
It's a capitalist society. Most of us have to earn
money to feed ourselves in our families. Like these are realities, right.
But the other thing too is when this is the
case with anger, part of the real reason I wrote
the book was to show how social anger is, to
(32:45):
show how constructed it is. Same thing with grief, right,
same thing with the idea of emotions. We think of
emotions as an internal state of an individual, as opposed
to the way we communicate between in individuals as interpersons.
Emotions make us interpersons we enter into we've become a
(33:07):
new thing when we're sharing emotions with a person or
with a community. But because we are so individualistic, we
fail to think, for example, in terms of communal grief,
historic grief, cultural grief, sort of loss experienced over time
periods that are way outside the average lifespan, and why
(33:30):
those are still relevant. It's like the diagnosis of PTSD.
Diagnosis of PTSD is an individual diagnosis of trauma, and
when the diagnosis was made, it helped a lot of people,
mainly soldiers coming back from wars Vietnam. But in fact
(33:51):
it's simultaneously by saying trauma is resident in an individual's mind,
it simultaneously erased historic of indigenous peoples or trauma related
to racism. For example, it ignored the grief and trauma
of women who experienced rape because it said trauma of
(34:13):
this sort, grief of this sort, anger of this sort
comes from a violent attack by a stranger or in
a war, which nobody could conceive a woman experiencing that
in her own home.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, yeah, this idea that making the diagnosis. Making a
definition legitimizes certain kinds of emotional, relational, neurological response and
at the same time erases any other expression of it.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, because it invalidates everything else, you know, And so
we still, for example, in the DSM, the manual diagnostics
used in the United States complex PTSD, which was suggested
by g. De Herman like in the late seventies early
eighties to describe the experiences, particularly of women living with
(35:06):
domestic violence or sexual violence. It's still not part of
the DSM.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Nope. No, it's starting to get some airtime with authors
like Stephanie fou and imman Neatfield, who we've had on
the show earlier this season. But that's the that's the thing, right,
Like how do we how do hello, it's twenty twenty three,
Like can we start talking about the lives of girls
and women and the you know, the the effects of
(35:32):
millennia of trauma, violence, displacement and what does that do
to a body.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
With like, you know, sort of a post enslavement syndrome,
Like the effects the intergenerational effects of violence and enslavement
on American Black communities doesn't quite fit into the definition
of PTSD.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Doesn't quite no, and there's there's no clear five step
plan to get yourself out of those things to go
be a productive American, like there's just it starts to
get really overwhelming when you start to see how big
the web is. I remember when I was in grad school.
I remember that an advisor of mine was a psychiatrist
(36:17):
within one of the last remaining inpatient long term residential
psych units, and she said, I never checked this out.
So if this wasn't accurate and she was telling tales,
I don't know. But one of the things she said
was that, you know, there's a tendency to romanticize psychosis.
But I can tell you that a lot of my
current patients are women who were researching deep women's history
(36:41):
and the history of people of color, and it broke
their brains and they couldn't they couldn't mesh the pain
and suffering that they were seeing, like how far that
rabbit hole goes with daily lived culture, and it broke
something in them. And I think that this is one
of the reasons that we don't always explain or this
stuff is one in our own pain, this bigger sweep
(37:04):
of pain feels distant and irrelevant and I think another
thing that really strikes me sometimes and I love this stuff,
but I think another thing that really strikes people is
it's so immense and so violent and so hostile, and
it's everywhere, and how do we find a corner of
(37:27):
that to hold on to and not lose our minds?
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Well, that's funny. I've been talking about this, actually this
exact topic now, talking to myself about it, but also
to friends I know that would understand this. You know,
for years I wrote almost exclusively about sexual violence, and
what happened in that process was not only did I
(37:50):
know my own experience of sexual violence in the culture,
which I really always known, like really from the age
of eight or nine, but I then experienced secondary trauma
from the process of listening to other people's stories, studying, writing.
And I don't think people understand enough about secondary trauma
(38:12):
and the grief you feel like you just describe the
grief you feel when you realize what a massive task
we have ahead of us. So I struggle a lot
with the notion of hope, because in fact, the despondence
that can settle on you is honestly in some ways,
I think in my case it felt self indulgent because
(38:33):
I could afford to be despondent. I read a lot,
and I think a lot about people who've gone through
this process over the last century and written about it
and talked about it, and they've come to a place
of hope and hopefulness as a practice as what has
to happen. And try and learn from them, because it
is easy to fall down that rabbit hole and think,
(38:55):
my god, how will we dig ourselves out? And I
will say this, I've done many podcasts in the last
ten years, five years, ten years, but very few people
ever want to go down this path because in fact,
they want to give people something positive. Yeah, you know,
they want to end on a high note. And I'm like, well,
(39:16):
maybe I'm not your gal right now.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Singing my song.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I'm like, okay, but did you know that before you
asked me? Because in fact, there's some things where you
just have to sit with the badness, which isn't really
fun for people at a dinner party, I understand.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
I've been talking with Saraah Shamali, author of the best
selling book Rage Becomes Her. Part two of our conversation
is out next week. Be sure to check the show
notes for ways to learn more about Sarria's work and
stick around for your questions to carry with you for
part one of this episode right after this break. Each week,
(40:06):
I leave you with some questions to carry with you
until we meet again. Now you know what really struck
me in this conversation? Okay, well two things. Lots of things,
but I'm only going to share two. It has been
nearly two decades since my twenties. Actually, quick math, it's
more than that. Whatever, But that was the time when
I was really diving into research on anger and oppression
(40:28):
and how that intersects with women's rights and environmental destruction
and activism. So it was really cool to go back
there with Soria. Number two thing for this part of
the episode. At one point, I think it is maybe
in part two of our conversation, but Sarria and I
were talking about books and how anger itself is an
(40:49):
endless well of material. So if you have a book
on anger in you, please do it. Please please write
that book. There's just so much to say, there's so
much to say about anger. There's a part two of
this conversation coming up next week, so I'll miss that
one and be sure to let us know what came
up for you during this conversation on anger and grief
(41:13):
and connection. Everyone's going to take something different from today's show,
but I do hope you find something to hold on to.
Check out Refuge Grief on Instagram or here after Pod
on TikTok to see video clips from the show and
leave your thoughts in the comments on those posts, and
be sure to tag us in your own anger conversation
starting posts on your own social media use the hashtag
(41:35):
here after Pod on all the platforms we love to
see where this show takes you. Remember to subscribe and
do leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
listen to shows. Those reviews help more than you know
want more. Hereafter Grief education doesn't just belong to end
of life issues. Life is full of losses from everyday
(41:58):
disappointments to events clearly divide life into before and after.
Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or
platitudes or simplistic think positive posters is an important skill
for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every
human trying to make their way in the world after
something goes horribly wrong at Megandivine dot Co. Hereafter with
(42:23):
Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine,
Executive producer is Amy Brown, and Elizabeth Fozzio. Edited by
Houston Tilley. Music provided by Wave Crush
Host
Megan Devine
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