Is it useful to discharge anger by hitting a pillow?

Many people have done this "exercise" in therapy workshops or encounter groups, and been encouraged to continue it at home, "to get their anger out." For some it can become a regular way to "dump" anger. I have known two cases where the principle has been taken to the extreme. In each case a man built himself a special room at home, in which the walls, floors, and boarded-over windows were padded with thick mattressing. After work each day the man would go into the room, strip down to his shorts and go berserk—kicking and screaming and pounding the walls. But neither of these men would say boo to a goose. Both were mild and soft in everyday life, although deeply frustrated. The anger could not be mobilized toward other people. In one case, therapy and the abandonment of the padded room enabled the man to focus anger and direct it into assertion in daily life. The other man preferred the padded room to therapy.

These cases represent an absurd extension of the "safety valve" principle which many pillow-pounders have also adopted. But pillow-pounding is not adequate even as a safety valve. For one thing, it is seldom done with the eyes focused and with a frown. I have seen people pounding pillows with their eyes open in wild, unfocused panic—like the man pounding the snake. Eventually they became more frightened than ever—of their own anger. It would be best to focus the eyes on a point on the pillow, and frown while pounding. But there is still another drawback: the pillow is soft. To let out the hard emotion of rage onto a soft surface is again frightening, and ugly. It is like pounding a baby. It is much more appropriate to pound with a rolled-up newspaper on a hard surface. But even this, as I suggested in Chapter 5, is better as a way of exploring your capacity for anger, than as a regular exercise or safety valve.

Again the problem is at the level of the eyes. If you pound away with a rolled up newspaper on the back of a chair to express your anger to another person, you may find yourself superimposing their image on the surface you are pounding. But this eventually contributes to what we call in therapy an "eye-block": a cutting of contact during emotion. Focused anger demands a direction. It is probably best for the emotional health to direct anger to the person who has aroused it. But, of course, this is not always feasible. The consequences might be some kind of punishment, loss of a job, or unbearable pain to someone else. There is less harm in repressing the action of getting angry, than the feeling. If the feeling is acknowledged it may indeed press to be "taken out on something." Businessmen know this when, after difficult conferences, they go off and pound their rage out on a racketball- or squash-court. But they do not need to imagine someone's face on the squash ball. It is possible, quite consciously, to divert accumulated anger into vigorous activity.

"Consciously" is the key word. Some people can repress even the feeling of focused anger, which remains only as a kind of dull restlessness which demands discharge in compulsive ways. For example, daily jogging or swimming, both healthy activities in their own right, can become compulsive safety-valve discharges of emotional, or sometimes sexual pressure.

EFA's value in dealing with anger is that the therapy recognizes the anger expression even in those who deny it, and EFA recognizes the admixture of fear when this also is denied. Deeply buried anger is probably a matter for therapy. But when some mixture of anger and fear begins to break through habitual denial, and to cause the person distress, EFA can step in to focus the anger. Usually this helps the person realize that obstacles which have seemed insuperable can be effectively "attacked"—in the sense of assertion, or controlled aggression. EFA, as effective therapy, uses "anger explorations" not as regular exercises, but as a means of getting a person in contact with their anger before the emotion is effectively, and safely, directed elsewhere.

How can EFA deal with anxiety about examinations, stage appearances, etc.?

This is another very common question which illustrates that for most people temporary anxiety and stage fright before important occasions are a greater problem than obvious panic or terror. My answer is to re-emphasize the connection which so often exists between anxiety and suppressed excitement. But even when understood, the problem does not easily go away. It may indeed be helpful to gag forcibly, to take a brisk walk, or to try and let off steam through some diversion. But even so, the gnawing anxiety in the stomach may remain. I do not think that any person who is autonomically lively can easily tolerate long periods of waiting. Extremely patient, phlegmatic people are often emotionally rather flat or dull. In the last analysis, stage fright is probably a function of character structure. It is a paradox that EFA is less effective in low-grade anxiety than in panic or terror. EFA works best when emotion is stirred up and ready to flow, so that the EFA can clear away the obstacles to the flow. But if the angry person represses or delays examining his or her feelings, the flow has nowhere to go. On the other hand, I do not believe that relaxing into diversionary activity does any harm. I have known people who have worked day and night before crucial university final examinations, and who have found themselves sitting in front of the paper, when the time came to write the examination, completely paralyzed and blank. Low-grade anxiety often leads to compulsive behavior which is counter-productive. I had a client in therapy who was a marathon runner. When he ran he would always breathe in a very harsh way, his jaw half-clenched, puffing and blowing so loudly that he noticed other runners tended to avoid staying alongside him. He was convinced, for various physiological reasons, that this was the most effective way to breathe. I thought it was a sign of anxiety, and challenged him to try running with his jaw slack, and breathing lower down into the abdomen. He was worried that this would slow him down. But when he tried—it at the next marathon, he cut a few minutes off his time, and felt less tired afterwards.

The point is that very often mechanical procedures to reduce or deny fear—compulsive work-routines, incapacity to relax or take a break—themselves often reinforce low-grade anxiety. One way to reduce stage fright or examination fright may be to allow, not block, periods of panic which can flush out some of the fear. Another is to acknowledge the excitement being felt at the coming challenge.

Are there any emotional differences between men and women?

Behind this question is usually the observation that "women cry more easily, men express anger more easily." Most people would agree with this, but they sense something wrong with it. Are these differences innate?

The short answer is that emotional differences between men and women are largely socially conditioned, not innate. It may be true that under some circumstances such as during the menstrual cycle and birth, women are more open to emotion than men (see the next section, on post partum depression), but this means emotion in general, not simply grief or anger. Men and women are physically similar in those parts of the body which most participate in emotion: the face which expresses it, and the throat and lungs and trunk from which breathing fuels and drives it. Although some medical textbooks still repeat that women are "chest breathers" and men "abdominal breathers," in so far as this may be true it is a social deformation: the anatomy of the male and female breathing systems is almost identical. It may be claimed that anger depends on a strong musculature, especially in back, chest and shoulders, and that men have this. But this is true of physical aggression, not of the anger expression which can come through with powerful intensity even in a small child. I have seen hundreds of men and women in therapy. Their rage, fear, joy and crying are in no way different.

Nevertheless, more men than women have difficulty in crying. And more women than men have difficulty in expressing anger. The causes are not hard to find. Most small boys are told it is not manly to cry; whereas most small girls are expected to cry easily. Most small boys can get away with angry behavior, even to the point of nastiness—"boys will be boys"; whereas most small girls when angry are seen as exhibiting unladylike and ill-mannered behavior. These attitudes survive into adulthood. Many men feel it would be soft to cry; so, of course, they cannot allow themselves to be soft in any circumstances—not in playing with children, making love, or responding to affection. But women are expected to cry frequently, even to "sob hysterically." Many men take out their tension in anger at those around them, and are forgiven as being "under stress." A woman doing the same thing will probably be labelled "bitchy."

These attitudes are those of a patriarchy. In current Western society they are breaking down somewhat, but the progress is socially fragmented. In the business environment which is becoming the model for all work, almost all emotion is suppressed, as both men and women are supposed to become corporate drones, although with the compensation of institutional narcissism—feeling important, glossily dressed, moving briskly in an internally climatized environment which gives them mysterious headaches and pains which have to be doped down for fear of explosion. In the home environment, and in the less formal workplaces, there is more emotional give and take, but this has no public status. Even children are not expected to be emotional in public. The current version of patriarchy ends up squashing public emotional expression in both men and women. But in private, and in the arena of the family, more men seem to be learning to cry, more women to rage openly.

There is still a common tendency, though, for the main masking emotion to be grief in women, anger in men. Typically, a woman who bursts into rage which then falters, will dissolve into tears. A man who feels impotent in the face of superior force or bullying will sometime later begin to bluster angrily. Since these reactions are socially expected, they often bring immediate advantage. The crying woman wins a condescending pity. The blustering man wins a temporary acquiescence. But neither is really satisfied! For the woman has really wanted to make her point. And the man has really wanted to be taken care of.

EFA is very helpful in these situations, since it enables the person to recognize part of the emotion which is being masked, and encourages the feeling's expression. First, though, on the principle of going with the surface emotion, if the masking emotion is encouraged to express itself fully, its shallowness will be revealed, and it will fizzle out so that the expression of the underlying and more powerful emotion may be grasped and grappled with.