Susie Orbach, from ‘Anger Part 2’
"The taboo on anger is especially - although by no means exclusively or inclusively - directed against girls. And when the directive, ‘Nice girls don’t get angry’ is internalized, it can have damaging effects. It can act as an internal break on a girl or woman’s ability to assert herself. Wary of the consequences of feeling anger, she becomes watchful of her emotional responses in general. She restricts them to those that are acceptable; but this diminishes her capacity to be emotionally in tune with herself, to know what she feels, to feel comfortable with her emotions and to act from a knowledge of them.
For girls and women whose self-identity depends to some extent (and what women’s doesn’t?) on keeping relational connections alive through their capacity to understand, to empathise, to be in tune with others, indeed to focus a good deal of attention on the emotional needs of others, experiencing personal needs can feel threatening. To recognise one’s own needs creates a psychological separation from others. It means that our own needs do not necessarily meld with the meeting of needs in others. If one has serviced others’ needs for a long time a recognition that personal needs have been ignored or trampled on - both by oneself and perhaps by others - can rouse one to anger. Recognising anger when one has been misheard, unseen, taken advantage of, is an assertion of self. This act can feel dangerous and unfamiliar".
Susie Orbach, ‘Anger Part 2’, What’s Really Going on Here? (1994) p. 58.