The Anger Advantage: The Surprising Benefits of Anger and How It Can Change a Woman's Life

In this summary of seven years of qualitative research, the authors (Women's Anger: Clinical and Developmental Perspectives) explore anger's various forms of expression and suppression and its impact on women's lives, relationships and well being.""Unspoken gender rules play into the diversion of women's anger,"" they argue, but when anger is acknowledged and""attended to,"" it can be a definite asset. In a chapter on anger among friends, they describe how a fight between two girls led to a dispute between their mothers; dispelling the""anger myth"" that friendships don't involve differences of""opinions, needs, and desires,"" the authors cogently analyze the situation and offer a self-test to help readers plan healthy responses to conflict. Anecdotes from real women and citations from expert research illustrate the ways in which dismissing anger can create problems, while allowing anger to surface in constructive ways can life-changing. Other chapters address anger's place in relations with family, spouses or significant others and work colleagues. The authors stress that""making big changes take time. Give yourself plenty of space, time, and self-care as you begin to work with the tools."" Some of their assessments feel too broad (""couples in conflict feel annoyed, and that's normal as they constantly negotiate and renegotiate their togetherness and separateness"") to be advantageous, and some of their anger-expressing scenarios feel inauthentic, but their insights into anger and the ways women can use it is intriguing and skillfully presented.