Harriet Lerner, Ph.D: The Dance of Anger
“I think it's very important to mention Elise, that even if a woman feels permission to be angry, that anger is such a tricky mischievous emotion that it's so difficult to know what our anger means or what to do with it. So we may know that we’re angry and anger activates us to, to act, to take a position, to do something, but our anger does not tell us what the real issue is, who is responsible for what, what is the best way to proceed with our anger…” So says psychotherapist Dr. Harriet Lerner. Lerner is known and beloved for her many best-selling books about women, family systems, and relationships, including the classic The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships.
Lerner believes that anger is an essential, but oftentimes misunderstood and mismanaged emotion. She set out to write The Dance of Anger to tackle female anger specifically, of which nothing had been written at that time. When women are discouraged from discussing their anger, she tells us, they lose a sense of self, as the pain of our anger preserves our dignity. We discuss the stereotype of the unloving, unlovable, and destructive angry woman, and the way in which female anger is only deemed acceptable when it is on the behalf of others.
Lerner leaves us with tips for beginning to work through our anger productively, starting with moving toward assertive self-definition without asking for permission, and ultimately becoming careful observers of our own role in the patterns that keep us stuck in anger so that we may make positive, lasting change on our own behalf.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
The importance of anger…(5:25)
Are you a nice lady or a bitch…(9:00)
Working through anger productively…(21:40)
Moving towards self definition…(36:36)
MORE FROM HARRIET LERNER:
The Dance Of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Pattern of Intimate Relationships
The Dance Of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships
The Dance Of Fear: Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self
The Dance Of Deception: A Guide to Authenticity and Truth-Telling in Women's Relationships
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE LOEHNEN:
It is such an honor to talk to you because as you know, you are several of the women in my life who have been most impactful in our personal mentors. Like Brené Brown, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh—they both cite The Dance of Anger and your work as one of the biggest door opening, I think, experiences of their lives. Like they really felt themselves, they felt seen in your work. And so to actually speak to you is… I'm beaming.
HARRIET LERNER, PhD:
Oh, well, I'm beaming too. I'm happy to be here talking about one of my favorite subjects.
ELISE:
I love that it was so difficult to get it published, too. It's such a classic that I think it's reassuring to everyone to know that sometimes things that seem obvious to the author, don't always resonate with the barriers to getting the word spread.
HARRIET:
Exactly. The Dance of Anger was rejected for five years, and nobody wanted a book on women's anger. And I could wallpaper the largest room of my old Victorian house in those rejections slips. So I think that says something about people's attitude toward female anger that no one wanted the book.
ELISE:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's even now, I feel like we struggle… there's so much discomfort. Many of us are, are still never trained for conflict or to have, you know, appropriate grown-up resolution. We don't really know how to diagnose our anger, understand what it's about. So let's start there, let's start at the basics. Why did this feel so important? And then as we know, from sort of the resistance to it— what does that speak to?
HARRIET:
The subject was very important to me because when I began my career at the Menninger clinic in the ‘70s, most of the women I saw it in therapy, whatever symptoms and dysfunctional behaviors they brought into treatment, whether it was depression, low self-esteem, fatigue, addiction. Their problems, it was clear to me had something to do with the difficulty of identifying the true sources of their anger, and being able to use their anger from a position of power and self-definition. And also, it's such an important topic. Anger is such an essential emotion. And when I began writing The Dance of Anger , there was literally nothing written on the subject of female anger. There were books about how women nurse their babies in the remote islands of the South Pacific, but total silence and women's anger. And it, it was so obviously a book that needed to be written and a subject that we needed to talk about because anger is such an essential and misunderstood emotion.
ELISE:
In your work..and, you know, the book is fascinating and presents a lot of stories and anecdotes that I think people, I know it's old, but I still think it's really relevant. And do you think it's because we're so disconnected, we're so ashamed of our anger. We're so scared of our anger. We're so confused by our anger. We're told that we shouldn't be angry. Is that, is it just, is it severed in such a way that when we go to dig, we struggle to find the roots?
HARRIET:
I think that that anger is inherently a very tricky and difficult emotion. On the one hand, it's a really important emotion for two reasons. And one is that anger helps us to define the self. It helps us to define who we are, to say, and to know, you know, this is who I am. This is what I think. This is what I feel. These are the things that I will and will not do. So, in the same way that physical pain tells us to take our hand off the hot stove, the pain of our anger preserves the very dignity and integrity of the self. And another reason that anger is so important is anger is a powerful vehicle for change. As witnessed by, you know, our many decades of feminism. And people may not “those angry women,” but it's those angry women who have changed and challenged the lives of all of us.
So it's a really important emotion. And back to your question, women have always been discouraged from expressions of healthy anger and protest. And instead, women are encouraged to cultivate guilt, like a little flower garden. So society encourages women to feel guilty and self-doubting. And the women that I was seeing in therapy, especially before feminism arrived in Topeka, Kansas, where I was in an institution that was the land of patriarchy…that women came into therapy asking the question, “What's wrong with me?” You know, “Why am I not a better mother? Why am I not, you know, a better wife?” So if we remain guilty and self-doubting, then we don't take action except against our own self. So there's that element. And, you know, then there's the element that anger by its very nature can lead us to mismanage it. So there are characteristic ways that women mismanage, anger, even if we feel permission to be angry,
ELISE:
Which is like venting, or turning it o,n ourselves or lashing out, or how do you, or sublimating it and stuffing it down in our bodies? Like what do you typically see?
HARRIET:
Exactly Elise, all of the above. There are two major categories in which women mismanaged anger. And when I was writing The Dance of Anger over a period of many years during all these rejections, my working title was Nice Ladies and Bitches: A Woman’s Guide to Anger. And I liked that title because it captures the two major categories that describe how we mismanage anger. So in the nice lady category that is culturally prescribed, right? In this category are women who give in, go along, accommodate, don't rock the boat. We avoid anger and conflict at all costs. We hold relationships in place as if our life depended on it. So that's one category, right? And actually in this category, it's not just anger and conflict that we avoid. We avoid any clear statement of self. This is what I think, this is what I will and will not do, that we fear—often accurately—will disrupt the predictable security of a relationship and evoke anger and disapproval. So we don't define ourselves clearly. We don't hear the sound of our own voice in the relationship saying what we really think and believe in need. And that again, you know, leads to depression, low self-worth, and unhappiness.
ELISE:
You talk about sort of, maybe we can think about the different, many different spheres, right? Spheres. From cultural to sort of that middle sphere of interpersonal relationships with people at work or friends to the most intimate relationships in our lives, where anger certainly foments. Do you find that the different types of anger are inherently different, or are they all coming from the same source? And that, for example, the anger that you might be expressing towards your partner is really about feeling, you know, discarded, disregarded, or overlooked at work, or feeling really frustrated by what's happening culturally and not having a place to express that or even understanding what it is. Or do you feel like there are different types of righteous indignation depending on the sphere that we're in?
HARRIET:
I think the challenge of anger is very similar, whether we're in a workplace, whether it's mother and daughter, whether it's a romantic relationship or marriage or whatever, But how to manage your anger wisely and well, obviously I'm going to manage my anger very differently with my husband, Steve, who I've been married to for decades, then I will, for example, at the workplace. So let me mention the one other category of mismanaging anger before we move on, because there, you know, there's the nice lady which is culturally prescribed and then there's the “bitch” category. That's the nice ladies and bitches. Because many women, like myself, get angry with ease, but getting angry may be getting nowhere and even be making things worse. So for example, in this category are women who may engage in a lot of fighting and blaming, but it's not leading to any constructive resolution or to instructive problem-solving.
And,although these two categories look as different as night and day, I mean, obviously the nice lady will look very different than the woman who gets the label of strident, or bitchy, or difficult to work for. But actually these two categories, the nice lady and the “bitchy woman,” they are are actually two sides of the same coin. Because after, after all is said and done or not said and done, the outcome is the same. The real issues are not identified and addressed. The woman is left, feeling helpless and powerless, and nothing changes. So the bottom line is that, and this never changes now in all of recorded history, that ineffective fighting, and complaining, and blaming will actually protect rather than protest the status quo. So women who fight ineffectively suffer as deeply as women who can't get angry at all. And there are many great examples of how, even when we have permission to get angry, we muck it up. It doesn't lead to productive change.
ELISE:
I want to work through with you sort of like how we start to sort of in our interpersonal lives, work through our anger. But do you mind if I read you a paragraph from your book about the cultural construct? Because I think it's so clarifying these things are so insidious, this programming that we've all imbibed around, you know, the, “bitches” right? So do you mind if I read here because I think it's still, certainly still holds and we see this in, in current day books about anger, whether it's Rebecca Traister or Soraya Chemaly. Like these are still the themes. So is it okay if I read to you?
HARRIET:
I would love you to read from my book.
ELISE:
So you write:
Women who openly express anger at men are especially suspect. Even when society is sympathetic to our goals of equality, we all know that “those angry women” turn everybody off. Unlike our male heroes, who fight and even die for what they believe in, women may be condemned for waging a bloodless and human revolution for their own rights. The direct expression of anger, especially at men, makes us unladylike, unfeminine, unmaternal, sexually unattractive, or, more recently, “strident.” Even our language condemns such women as “shrews,” “witches,” “bitches,” “hags,” “nags,” “man-haters,” and “castrators.” They are unloving and unlovable. They are devoid of femininity. Certainly, you do not wish to become of them. It is an interesting sidelight that our language—created and codified by men—does not have one unflattering term to describe men who vent their anger at women. Even such epithets as “bastard” and “son of a bitch” do not condemn the man but place the blame on a woman—his mother!
So true, still so true. And now we have shrill, right? We have shrill added to that list.
HARRIET:
You know, it's so interesting at least that we have these words like, you know, castrating and ball-breaking. Because they imply that female anger is all destructive and that men are utterly vulnerable to this, this powerful force. And it’s so ironic.. You know, we, we don't have these words to describe men and their anger at women. And it's so ironic because men do not stay home at night because they're afraid that if they go out in the dark, that some woman in the throes of her pre-menstrual syndrome is going to attack them. It's women who stay home at night because we fear anger and aggression from men. And yet the language, you know, is so interesting because it just speaks to this irrational dread of women's anger. And it's so alive and well today. You know, really educated college women say things like today, like, “You know, I believe in equality, but I'm not a feminist.” Well, why aren't you? How come you don't like that word? Feminist, feminism. “Because I'm not one of those angry women. I'm not one of those.” You know, so it's a great prohibition because no one wants to be seen, you know, as whatever the stereotype is. The angry women.
ELISE:
Crazy. It's so it's so inhibiting and so interesting when you were saying that about castrators and ball-breakers, because I don't remember where I was reading this, but the, the etymology to of testifying, testament, et cetera, is testicles. So we also imbue men…it was like the swearing on your balls, I guess…like we imbue men with this ability to speak the truth from there. I don't know, from their source of life in a way that's so gendered actually it's really, it's pretty wild.
HARRIET:
Yes. Language is so fascinating. Someone referred to The Dance of Anger as a truly seminal work. And I didn't know what, I didn't know like how to change that word to, I don't know. I haven't,…
ELISE:
Ovarian? I mean, it's a fallopian word.
HARRIET:
Right? The language is very, very interesting,
ELISE:
Fascinating. And we don't, you know, understandably we, we shortcut, we move so fast and often we don't stop to think about what we're actually the, the, the backstory of what we're trying to say. And, you know, it's funny just to bang on about the cultural part, too, is, you know, I've interviewed Mary Beard years ago and her work is really about how not entirely, but how women have been silenced throughout literature. You know, you have, Telemachus telling his mother, it's like the first recorded instance of a woman speaking in Western language, and he's telling her to shut up and go away. And that women were really only ever allowed to speak if it was on behalf of other people, and that feels to this day, like you are really only allowed to be angry if it's not in your own interest, but in the interest of some other group.
HARRIET:
That is exactly true. So that groups like, uh, we can be, we can absolutely be angry on behalf of others, for example, less powerful than ourselves, like children, like Mothers Against Drunk Driving,or mothers who are standing in anger for another group, but not if we take out our own cause. That stirs up much more anxiety. I think it's very important to mention also, Elise, that even if a woman feels permission to be angry, that anger is such a tricky, mischievous, emotion that it's so difficult to know what our anger means, or what to do with it. So we may know that we’re angry and anger activates us to, to act, you know, to take a position, to do something. But our anger does not tell us what the real issue is, who is responsible for what, what is the best way to proceed with our anger.
And it's just very, very easy to use our anger ineffectively. Even if we know that we have a legitimate gripe, maybe I should give you an example of that. To make it real. This is an example I put in the book and I want our listeners to bear with me because this example is going to seem very outdated, which it is, but it will illustrate exactly the way all of us get into trouble with anger and mismanage it. And the example that I give in the book is a woman named Barbara, who called me the night before a workshop I was giving. It was called “Talking Straight and Fighting Fair. “ I was doing it in the community with a colleague and she called me to cancel her workshop. My workshop, wait a second.
She called me to cancel her part in the workshop. She didn't want to come. And she told me that her husband would not let her go. And that's why she was canceling. And I asked her, I was curious. I said, “What was his objection” And she said, “You!” and I said, well, I was curious. I said, you know, tell me more. And she said, “My husband said that you are radical women's libber. And that the workshop wasn't worth the money. And that he could not support me going.” And she said to me, “And I fought with him. I argued with him. I told him that you were a reputable psychologist, from an esteemed institution. And that the workshop is worth the money. And I fought with him until I was blue in the face, but I couldn't change his mind.” Oh. And then she added, “But at least he admitted that I need some kind of help with my anger because I behaved like such a bitch.”
So I hung up the phone. And I thought about that little conversation for a long time. Because as I said, although, we might not identify with Barbara, what she does is what all of us may do. So for starters, and jump in anytime, because we're going to talk about the problems here, you know, the ineffective use of real, legitimate anger. First of all, she was siding with her husband over a pseudo-issue. She was fighting over my qualifications, my credentials. That's not the real issue. So what do you think the real issue is in that relationship? I mean, do you want to guess?
ELISE:
Lack of autonomy, lack of self agency, needing permission to do something that she wants to do?
HARRIET:
Exactly. So the real issue relates to things like, how is power and authority shared in that marriage? Who is in charge of making decisions about what the wife can and cannot do? How much flexibility does the relationship have to tolerate change? So she's fighting over a pseudo issue, which we all do. It's very hard to know what it is that we're really angry about. And one complicating factor is that we're wired for fight flight. So it just takes a little bit of anxiety or stress from any source, and we can go into fight flight mode. And in fight mode, you know, people under stress or very quickly divide into opposing camps. We will get over-focused on what the other person is doing wrong, and under-focused on our own creative options to move differently. And de-intensify the situation, or we get into flight mode and we distance, we cut off, we stopped speaking to that person, or we stop speaking about things that matter.
And it, you know, it can be very hard to know what the real issue is. So that's one problem. And going back to Barbara's fighting is that she's fighting over a pseudo issue. And next, she's using her anger energy to try to change her husband's mind. She not only wants to get into the workshop, she wants him to want her to go to the workshop. Right. And the problem, you know, we all sort of have this. Not only want to take an assertive position, we want the other person to like it. So the problem with her using her anger energy to try to change his mind about me and the value of the workshop. Well, there are two problems. One is that he has as much right to his opinion about the workshop as she does. We all have a right to everything we think and feel. And being in a relationship, whether it's a marriage, or a mother daughter requires a profound respect for differences.
So that's one issue. And the other problem with her trying to change her husband's mind is it's not possible. I have been in the business of change for, I would say, 50 years now. And I have never been able to change a person who doesn't want to change. And as we focus our anger energy into unsuccessful attempts to change another person, we lose the ability to change what we really can change. And that is to take a new and different action on our own hands. That raises the question. And I'd be curious about your ideas Elise.
ELISE
I mean, it resonates so deeply.
HARRIET:
What do you think she does that fair? She engage in ineffective side in blaming instead of going to her husband and saying, “Look, dear, I know you see it differently. I, I also have a different opinion. The workshop is important to me and I plan to go.”
ELISE:
Fear of loss of relationship, wanting in some ways maybe to maintain a victim status, which maybe that's a weird response, but I think it's easier to direct your blame and anger towards your partner sometimes, than to actually engage with what it actually means, which sort of goes back to where the beginning of our conversation. And then also porous boundaries. I think I struggle with this where I just don't know where I end and the other person begins. What's me. And what's not.
HARRIET:
I agree with all of those. There are certainly a boundary problem in terms of her lack of clarity that she is in charge of ensuring the quality and direction of her own life. And certainly you mentioned the fear of loss. That's a very important one because if Barbara were to say to her husband, “You know, this workshop is very important to me and I'd planned to go.” What would his response be? I mean, would he say, “Wow, I'm so pleased. I'm so proud of you, Barbara, for this whole new level of assertiveness and self-definition. You know, go Barbara!” Of course not, change doesn't happen that way. And instead what happens when we make a change and take a new position is we get a countermove and the person will say, “You're wrong. You're being selfish. How can you do this. And how can you say that?” And in fact, we don't know how her husband would respond, and indeed we don't know if there's some issue of violence in the marriage, if he would, you know, take physical action if she said I'm going to the workshop.
Or we don't know if he's the breadwinner, you know, the sole breadwinner. And if he would say, “You know, well, in that case, you're not getting money to visit your mother ever again.” And then Barbara would have to decide, what is her next move? You know, would she shuffle back to the broom closet? Or would she say, “You know, we need to talk about this, because I don't want to be in a marriage where, you know, I can’t say what I think and believe, and make decisions on my own behalf.” Would he be able ot hang in. And it's very scary because it may be easy to make one change, but it's really hard to make only one.
So if Barbara takes a new position on the workshop, surely there are a lot of other issues in the marriage that are there. And if she does take a position, she will be more likely to take others, and she will be in the process of change and growth. And will he change along with her? Or you mentioned, you know, the fear of loss, will she ultimately lose him? And I'm not saying all these things are conscious in Barbara's mind. And also you were implying, it's not, you know, that women love to be victims. I mean, that's a false belief. It may be true that she doesn't want to go to the workshop herself. She's scared to go to the workshop so that it would become an easy out to say to herself, my husband won't let me go. But the point of it, the point of it is it's, you know, even if you feel permission to fight, you know, a fog can descend upon your brain very easily.
And we may not know what the real issue is and how to take a strong position on our own hands and how to deal with the counter moves when the other person says, “How can you do it? How can you say it? You'll kill your mother?” You know, how do we stand firm with the position and be able to say, you know, this is what I believe, and this is what I need to do for myself without getting defensive, without getting attacking, you know, and to be able to hold firm to that boundary, to that position. It’s very hard.
ELISE:
No, I'm thinking about my own relationship and, you know, historically, and I feel like I've outgrown this without really being conscious of it, but I, and I think it's probably my training, even to sort of liberal, progressive parents, of wanting, wanting everyone to be on the same page, wanting permission, this relationship building that we're told as our sort of destiny as girls, that with my husband, I used to not ask for permission. But I was, I used to sort of be like, “Is it okay if I go on a hike on Saturday morning since we have two kids, it felt like the fair thing to do.” I don't actually, I just stopped asking, because I realized that my expectation that he would be enthusiastic and bless all of my choices for things that I needed to do for myself, like it wasn't helpful and that I just needed to do what I needed to do for myself without permission.
So I just put it in our shared calendar and he can protest it if he wants. But I had to, I mean, it's such a it's minor, but I did really have to consciously it's like in that movie, The Breakup, with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston when you brought this up this line, but when they're sort of in the midst of their breakup and she's like, “I want you to want to do the dishes.” I don't know if people remember that movie, but it was so amazing. Yeah. “I want you to want to do the dishes.” And he was like, I, he, it just did not compute for him, but I think as women, we have a fantasy that our partner's going to be supportive, and like, you go, you do your thing, you be selfish that they're going to push, they're going to give us implicit permission to prioritize our own needs. And I think part of the liberation comes from being like, actually, I don't need your permission to go work out. I'm just going to go work out.
HARRIET:
Obviously it's a good thing to be able to consider other people. So for example, if you want to work out, and that is the very time that your husband has something very important scheduled, you might work at it another time. And yet, you know, your move toward self-definition and not feeling like you needed permission for things is a very positive move in, in the process. It's really difficult for women. You know, what you're talking about is so important because it relates to the issue that women struggle with: What is my responsibility for other people, you know, what's my responsibility to care for other people, to care for other family members, to rescue other family members when they need it? And what is my responsibility to ensure the quality and direction of my own life, you know, to protect my own life.
And this is such an important issue for women, whether they're dealing with caring for an aging parent, where they feel like they are giving too much, and doing too much, and they're depleted, and their younger brother is doing nothing. And you know, how, how are they to deal with this? And it's important to say that it is a tremendously positive part of women's cultural legacy to care about relationships, to tend to relationships. The problem comes in when we don't protect ourselves. You know, when were giving so much that, or,you know, bailing someone out so much, that it's very much at our own expense. And of course that is going to breed anger, or depression, or fatigue. And it's very easy to blame the person in need, rather than to figure out where we stand, and what we can and cannot do. For example, I've worked with so many women in therapy who are so angry, for example, with an aging parent, who they feel is so demanding and they are giving so much that the daughter, you know, my therapy patient is feeling depleted and exhausted. And it's much easier to be angry, and blaming at their mother, than it is to calm down and do one's best thinking, so that the woman can clarify what she believes her responsibility to her mother is, versus the responsibility to herself.
And so that she can go to her mother in a calm way that's not critical or blaming, and be able to say to her mom, “You know, I'm feeling so tired and so exhausted, that I've been thinking about for myself, getting clear, about what I can do, and the things that are too much for me to do. Because if I keep doing all that I'm doing, I'm going to end up crawling in bed next to you. Because we need more people on board.” And the mother, again, the mother is not going to say, “Oh, how great, you know, I'm so glad to hear that you're going to take better care of yourself. And you're thinking about doing less for me because that's what you need to do for yourself.” You know, the mother might say, for example, “I don't know how you can be so selfish, because I don't want “other people” on the team. And as you know, my mother, your grandmother lived with us, and I did everything for her.” And then, you know, as the daughter is clear and strong without getting defensive, critical, or blaming, or lecturing. Without trying to change her mother, she might say, “You know, mom, I know that, I know you did absolutely everything for your mom, and I'm different from you. And I can’t do all for you, as you did for your own mother. And I'm wondering how disappointed are you in me, that I'm not a person who can do everything that you did for your mom.” And then there might be another conversation where the daughter, she's brave, might ask her mom, “You know, what is it like for you? What was it like for you to be the caretaker for your mom? Like what were the positive things about it, and what were the hard, difficult, negative things about it? Because everything is a mixed bag. And I would love to know more about that.” But what's hard is to shift from blaming the other person to a sense of well, to shift into self-focus. No change will occur with anger if we're not self-focused. By self-focused, I don't mean self-blaming. I mean that we can become good observers of our part in the pattern that's keeping us stuck in anger, and that we stay focused on observing and changing our own part in that pattern. Even if we believe our own part of the problem is 2%. That's what we can change. And if we don't get self-focused, nothing will change because we need to have a sense of responsibility. And by responsibility again, I don't mean, oh, I’ve caused it. I mean, response-ability, think of that word that way response-ability. That we can limber up our brain and when something is not working, we can figure out how to do something differently on our own behalf, rather than keep doing more of the same. And I will say, Elise, that women always ask me, “Why do I have to change? Like, why do I have to be the one to change? “And the answer is so simple, and so difficult, which is that if you're unhappy with the status quo, and you do not make a change on your own behalf, no one else is going to do it for you. So no, you don't have to change, but that is the reality of the situation.
ELISE:
You sort of sent this idea of under-functioning and over-functioning into the mainstream. And I know that was in the context of like clean being overly responsible for other people's emotions, but it also plays into this culture of learned helplessness, or this idea often for women like, oh, just because we can do something we should. And so instead of seething with resentment about like, “Why am I the only one that goes to the grocery store?” It's like finding the temerity in a way to be like, I'm just going to go to the grocery store half the time. And if you want something, then you'll need to go. I mean, that's a stupid example, but I feel like…
HARRIET:
It's not a stupid example at all, Elise, it's a great example. It's like, you know, making meals every night is leaving me tired and grumpy. So, you know, the best nights for me to make me, you know, meals is Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I'd love for you to make meals on the other nights. And if not, we can snack, see what's in the refrigerator. You know, I can take care of my own dinner. It's actually a very good example. And you're also sort of leaning toward another point that sometimes when we overdo things, or over-function, we’re operating at the other person's expense. We’re being too competent, or taking over too quickly, we have the answers to the other person. We try to fix things for them. We give too much advice and too many little corrections, rather than saying, “You know, I don't know, you know, that sounds tough.” And letting the other person learn by trial and error, you know, being there if they ask us for help. But overfunctioners really very quick, especially if you're the older sister of a sister, firstborn woman. Very quick, you know, to be the expert and have the answers, not only for oneself, but for everyone else. And it actually makes it more difficult for the other person to reach for their own competence, and struggle, and gain more competence. whether it's competence and putting a snow suit on a flailing toddler or, you know, whatever it is.
ELISE:
Yeah. It's interesting. I’m very much an over-functioner and so much of my self-esteem is staked on my competence and all of the things that I do. And that's been some of the hardest and deepest work, which I think, you know, I cover up with my busy-ness is those feelings. So this is the big can to open, but it's, you know, my own, my porous boundaries and also this, the performative way in which I, I it's my biggest wound. Right. I must perform in order to be loved. I must do all of those things for my husband. Otherwise he won't love me. It does come back to that loss of relationship. And it's funny because when we've done therapy and that's come up, you know, his look, as you can imagine is like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” Like, but in my mind, you know, I'm so primed for this like, look of what all the things I do for you, and not even out of resentment, but just out of fear, I think of, oh, he'll decide I'm not, I have no utility, and he will discard me. Which is painful to look at, but not actually tethered to reality.
HEATHER:
Exactly, exactly. And it's courageous for you to look at it and to share that with your husband. And I hope also that you really value that competence because it's a fabulous gift when you use it, you know, you use it to, well, you use it in what feels like a balance for you. Yeah. So I guess I'm saying a little self because I under function at least, I mean, I'm coming from a place where I can over-function at work. And when it comes to relationships, I can feel like the expert that should tell everyone exactly what to do to have better relationships. But I really under-function in the practical world, you know, driving, you know, how money is managed or, you know, how does this work and that work. I hand everything over to Steve, who's happy to do it.
And I would love to have your competence, I'm trying to work on it. I'm a youngest child. I’m a natural under-functioner. I love for other people to take over and do the work. And my husband always has done cooking and cleaning because, you know, I, I, what do I know about those things? So, um, you know, all of these things we do to get comfortable when we're anxious and we fear loss, you know, we distance, we pursue, we over-function. We under-function, we triangle, meaning we gossip. Bone of these things are good or bad. It's all we all do. Some of them. And it's a matter of balance. So, you know, when you were talking about your problem with competence, I confess and I was feeling envious.
ELISE:
Oh, that's funny, but it's true. Everyone has their things. And I think that, so we think that our thing is everyone's thing. So, you know, I think in relationships, I've found whether it's with my husband or my parents, or work, it's like, we are just unconsciously hitting each other's sore spots because we can't necessarily relate. Like we just don't have the same things, if that makes sense. So I would love to be, I would love to dump our financial management and cleaning and cooking on my husband. So we're going to have to talk about how I can have more under-functioning in those spheres.
HARRIET:
I would love to give you some of my under-functioning for your over-functioning.
ELISE:
I'll plan, all of your vacations to a T. It is, as you said, self-compassion for me, a lot of the work I've been doing in the last year is just giving, sending compassion to that little girl. And like the reassurance of, you know, you, your presence is enough. Like you don't have to be doing all this doing, but it's really hard. It's it's ancient.
HARRIET:
Yeah. And everything is a mixed bag. I mean, the ability to do so much per person that you live with. I mean, if you're over doing, if you're over-functioning, but you're not feeling resentful, and depleted, and tired, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, there are a lot of women who love to, you know, be the one who's like the competent one and the one who is carrying the emotional and the practical needs. There, there's nothing wrong with it. Except when, where, you know, we get signals that this is at the expense of the self, or the other, the person or the relationship. I think women are always, always hard on ourselves. So whatever we're doing, it's like, it's not exactly the right thing. We should be doing something else.
ELISE:
Well, Harriet Lerner is a legend and she has written so many books, but I, I do always think it's worth remembering that it took her five years to get The Dance of Anger published, which is certainly old, but still relevant. And you can see through examples in the book, how you can modernize them very easily and very quickly. And we talked a bit about under-functioning and over-functioning. And so essentially, just to give you a little bit more context there, this is from her book, she writes:
A form of de-selfing, common to women, is called “underfunctioning.” The “underfunctioning-overfunctining: pattern is a familiar one in couples. How does it work? Research in marital systems has demonstrated that when women and men pair up, and stay paired up, they are usually at the same level of “independence,” or emotional maturity. Like a seesaw, it is the underfunctioning of one individual that allows for the overfunctioning of the other.
And so often, you know, historically I think this is getting slightly better, but historically, a woman and a, and a hetero-normative relationship would do more of the emotional processing and functioning for her husband. That's a very common pattern, particularly back in the day, but you see the sort of the husband who pulls away, the woman who leans forward, it's just this desire, I think, in any relationship, in any super-organism, to find balance. And we do that in strange ways, but as she says, like taking care of your own side of the street, or acknowledging where you may be doing too much or too little, and then not disengaging necessarily, but typically taking ownership for that, without the other person's permission. You know, the producer, Phil and I were chatting after Harriet dropped off. And we were talking about how it's so very much like Byron Katie, which I'm sure many of you have heard of Byron and her work, but she gives this example, which lodges in my head, around her children and their socks, and how they would leave their socks all over the place, their laundry just discarded on the floor. And it was driving her absolutely mad.
And then she had this revelation as part of “The Work,” where she was like, the person who's bothered by the socks is me. And therefore I should just pick up the socks. Like my kids aren't bothered. So me trying to make them concerned about their socks is only adding to my own aggravation. That I think about all the time when I'm sort of irritated that the kitchen is messy. I'm the one who wants to clean. So if I want it clean, I want in clean. But there's obviously a fine line in any functioning relationship to where you're not overdoing it if it's going to increase your resentment and frustration. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. There's so much in the book. There's so much more Harriet said, she'd come back and we can get into it in even more depth.