102: Navigating Anger as a Childless Woman

Anger is an emotion that comes up a lot with my childless clients who wanted kids.  Anger can be a really complicated emotion because it's not only an emotion in and of itself, but it can also disguise other emotions. 

What makes it even tougher to manage is that most little girls are taught not to express the tough emotions.  Anger is something boys are allowed to show, but not girls.  Yes, even in today's society.   So you might be someone who was conditioned to suppress anger, and maybe other negative emotions as well. 

Join me on this episode as I share:

• the difference between true anger and anger that disguises other emotions
• why we feel anger and the mistakes you might be making to avoid it
• what to do about anger specific to your childless path

If you are ready to let go of anger so you can feel at peace with your path, send me a DM on Instagram or an email at sheri@sherijohnson.ca with the word "anger".

References from this episode:
Atlas of the Heart  by Brené Brown

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

If you are a childless woman looking to up-level her life in a major way, join the Love Your Beautiful, Unconventional Life Retreat, coming up at the end of February 2025.  Book a Retreat Call with Sheri here if you have questions or want to know more!

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

Transcript

Anger is an emotion that childless women feel a lot.
It comes up all the time in my coaching program with my one-on-one clients, and the big
question is really how to deal with it, how to manage it.
Nobody really likes to feel anger.
I think sometimes we can get comfortable being angry, but ultimately it feels pretty crappy.
So on today's episode, I'm going to talk about how to navigate anger as a childless woman, why we feel it, what mistakes you might be making, and what to do about it.
So stay tuned if you want to know more about that.

Hi, I'm Sherry Johnson, and you are about to discover how to embrace your life as a childless
woman who wanted to have a family and never could.
This is where we combine mindset shifting tools with practical tips so you can break free
of outdated societal norms that condition us all to believe that women without kids just
don't measure up to the moms.
It's where we take action on processing grief and accelerating the healing journey so
you can feel free.
When childless women awaken their self-worth, they transform from hopeless and inadequate
to worthy, accepting, and purposeful.
Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of light bulb moments that will shift your perspective
as a childless woman about yourself, about your any power to change yourself, your future,
and maybe even the world we live in.
If that's what you want, then keep on listening.
Welcome back to the Awakening Worth Podcast.
Today, I'm doing a solo episode talking about navigating anger.
This is something that comes up so much as childless women that feels like there's a lot
to be angry about.
You might not even be calling this anger.
Even if you feel like you're not feeling anger, I'm going to encourage you to stay with
me because you might be feeling some anger but it might be disguised as something else.
Let's first talk about what you might be feeling and what anger really is.
I've divided it up into two categories.
There's legitimate anger or what I would think of as true anger.
This comes up for two reasons.
One, you might have noticed or felt some sort of injustice in the world or maybe in your
world.
The second one is when boundaries are violated.
Your boundaries usually, but might be seeing somebody else's boundaries and I suppose that's
the injustice.
Let's talk about injustice first.
I'm going to talk about my own experience with what I felt was an injustice and then there
might be, I'll give you some other examples as well.
I felt injustice, the thing that I'm thinking about that comes top of mind is what I felt
during the pandemic when my company implemented 10, this is not my company, sorry, this is the
company that I worked for at the time in the, it was in huge corporation.
They implemented 10 extra personal days for parents.
Not for people who didn't have kids just for parents and those personal days were to be
used for child care when we were all locked up for six days for whatever the parents needed
to use them for.
And I didn't really even think about this until later when I found myself working like a
dog, taking on all the extra work in my department for the parents who were taking those days off
and for the parents who were trying to manage taking care of their kids and finding time to
work when they've got kids running around at home.
And don't get me wrong.
I understand how difficult that was for parents.
But I didn't foresee how burnt out I would become myself as a result of that.
And it was only later after I found myself in that situation feeling completely stressed
burnt out with no time for myself doing so much extra work that I started to think well,
why can't I have those 10 extra personal days because I am feeling like I need some extra
time off here.
We feel angry about that kind of injustice and we also feel that something like we feel
this when there's something that could be actioned.
When we want to take some sort of action, I think at the time I sort of felt that my
company could do something about this.
There was an easy answer.
Extend that 10 extra days to the non-parents as well.
And there's lots of times when we feel that an injustice has been done.
So to give you some examples outside of the of your childless experience, here's an
injustice that I felt and some anger that boiled up inside of me when I watched a man named
Tim Ballard speak.
He spoke at a conference that I was at. He was a keynote speaker and he was amazing.
He is the founder of something called Operation Underground Railroad.
And that foundation helps to uncover child sex trafficking rings and to bring those children
to safety.
He was actually featured in a pretty new documentary that is out called The Sound of Freedom.
So I would recommend that you watch that documentary.
It's so good.
And but when I first heard Tim Ballard speak and heard the stats on how many children are
being trafficked and it's not just children, but this was what he was talking about in particular.
It, you know, something boiled up inside of me.
Their boundaries were being violated and I saw the injustice of that and it really maybe
want to do something about it.
So that injustice is something that you might have felt.
And it might also feel like an injustice for you.
Here's another example for that relate specifically to being childless.
It might feel like an injustice to you simply to watch others have what you feel is also
your own birthright and yet you don't get to have it.
So whether that's a partner or a baby or family, whatever that is.
So that might feel like an injustice and unfairness.
And then there's also boundaries being violated.
So in the example with the sex trafficking, that's sort of me outside watching someone else's
boundaries being violated.
But this can also happen when our own boundaries are violated.
So I really like the example when we disagree with someone.
So this could be with a partner with a friend with a parent.
It happens all the time with politics.
It happened probably a lot going back to the pandemic when you disagree with somebody's
opinion, with somebody's views.
And for me, I feel as though I'm okay with debate.
I'm okay with argument.
It's okay to disagree with me.
But my boundaries are being violated when you start hurling insults at me or when you
start cursing at me or when you shut me down.
So those are some of the things that feel like my emotional boundaries have been violated
and that will get me angry.
So those are the, what I call the legitimate types of anger, not legitimate, but the true,
emotion of anger.
I distinguish that from another category of anger.
And this is a group of emotions that anger can be a disguise for.
So things like envy, frustration, hurt, sad shame and embarrassment, humiliation, grief,
feeling isolated or lonely.
Those feelings underneath can show up as anger.
So you know, an example for me, I when I was trying to get pregnant and was on that infertility
journey, I felt envious of the women around me who got to get pregnant, who got to have
their babies.
And I would sometimes feel anger around that anger.
Why don't I get to have that?
And then I also felt shame and a sort of embarrassment that my body wouldn't do what it
was supposed to.
And that would somehow sometimes come out as anger.
And as a big one for me, I will sometimes get frustrated when I'm in my control mode.
And I'm trying to control what someone else is doing or I'm trying to make something work.
And I feel frustrated.
And then I'll get angry.
And that anger is really a mask for that frustration.
When we are hurt, so someone says something to us that feels hurtful, so someone says,
well, one of my clients shared this with me, not too long ago in a coaching call where
one of her colleagues was being berated and hurt by someone who was saying, well, what's
the point of your life if you don't have children?
What's the purpose?
And that feels hurtful for any of us who don't have kids.
We can feel hurt for that person and we can feel anger as a result of that.
So those are some examples of how anger can disguise other emotions.
And sometimes it can be really hard to pinpoint the emotion that the anger is disguising.
So hopefully that gives you a bit of a better understanding of how anger might be showing
up.
Maybe it's showing up in your life.
Maybe it's not.
I'm going to talk about the mistakes that you might be making in a second.
So stay with me if you haven't felt this kind of anger in relation to your childless journey
because something that you might be doing is putting a lid on it.
And as little girls, most of us are taught to be nice girls.
We're taught that we're not supposed to show anger.
So you might actually be someone who is so adept at suppressing that anger that you don't
even feel it anymore.
Or you might be someone who doesn't express it.
So if you're someone who feels your blood boiling, but then you're trying not to feel that way.
You're trying not to express it.
You're in front of someone.
Maybe that you feel you can't say anything to that is a real, that is a mistake.
And we can be told some real, or we can receive, I suppose, some real mixed messages as little
girls while we're growing up.
For me, I wasn't supposed to raise my voice, but I was told to be more assertive.
And then at work, if I got too assertive, I was told to back off.
So growing up, I was pretty shy.
I didn't show a lot of emotion.
I was quite a stoic little kid.
And I was told, you know, you're not supposed to raise your voice, you're not supposed to
show a lot of emotion.
But then my parents kept saying, but you need to be more assertive.
You know, you need to go out and say what you think.
And then I was told to back off when I got too assertive.
So that's a real mixed message.
If you were someone who maybe was told or have been told, stop taking it so personally, or
don't be so dramatic every time you expressed anger.
If you were told those things, then you're going to start to tell yourself, stop taking things
so personally, don't be so dramatic.
That becomes very conditioned and it becomes a belief that you're not supposed to show
that anger.
We also live in a society where anger is actually quite a masculine emotion.
Or we're taught that men are allowed, men, little boys, they're allowed to show their anger,
but girls aren't.
And I say no to that, this is, anger is a very human emotion.
And it's an emotion that we are all allowed to feel and express.
And so the mistake that we're making is trying to suppress that, trying to put a lid on
it.
The other mistake that you might be making, and I made this mistake too.
So there is no judgment if you're making this.
It's mistaking righteousness with self-righteousness.
So righteousness is getting angry about those injustices when boundaries are violated.
Self-righteousness is venting behind closed doors to people who you think are going to understand.
People who are going to validate your anger.
It's gathering our jury to judge someone for what they said to us or what they did.
It's trying to validate that.
And that might be, you know, if you're angry because of an injustice that can, that righteous
anger can slide into self-righteousness if it turns into a judgment and gathering of your
jury or venting.
And the reason that can be a mistake is because you walk away from the venting, still feeling
the anger.
It doesn't actually allow you to release it.
So that's something that I really need to sort of check myself when I feel there's an
injustice and need to really sort of compare that to, is there an actual injustice there?
Or is this just my being hurt and I'm also judging someone for what they might feel is right?
I hope that made sense.
I do have a quote here that really sort of resonated for me.
It's a quote by John Mark Green who is a poet and a writer.
He said, "The self-righteous screams judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons
dancing in their own closets."
So whenever I'm hurling judgments at someone else, I start to look at, "Well, how am I
maybe judging myself?"
Those are the skeletons dancing in my closet.
So what happens when this is fixed?
When we stop making the mistakes, when we allow our anger to be released?
This by the way is part of the first pillar of my meaning beyond motherhood framework.
We hear a lot about grief in the world of women without kids, those who wanted them anyways,
and anger sort of gets lumped in with that.
To talk about, I hear people talk about triggers being activated by things that people say,
by their own sense of unfairness in the world.
That sort of anger that I talked about earlier, but it gets lumped in with grief.
And those are actually different.
When you, I mean, anger can be a cover for grief.
So there's a question to ask yourself, is this anger disguising the grief that I feel?
Or is it a separate emotion?
And when you consider your anger as a separate emotion, then you can release it for what it
is.
And that will feel so liberating, not just emotionally, but also physically.
Or as you might be aware, has a very physical component to it.
We feel like our blood is boiling.
Your face might get red.
You feel all that tension just rising in your body.
And if we suppress that, if we try to hold that all in, all those hormones, those neural
transmitters, everything that that's causing you to feel that physical, the physicality
of that emotion is going to stay in your body.
So it's really important to actually release it.
And when you do that, it's going to feel so better.
It's going to make your body feel better.
It's going to make your mind and your spirit feel better.
It's very, it's actually quite, it's relief.
That's what it is.
So here's what to do about this.
First of all, when it comes to emotion, all emotions need to be released.
So I talked about anger needing release, but grief also needs to be released.
Joy needs to be released.
Have you ever walked into, I don't know, been in a situation where
you are trying not to laugh?
Or where you feel that your joy might be misinterpreted and so you suppress that?
Or for me, it just wasn't cool to show joy.
I grew up in a family where emotions were not expressed freely.
And so I thought it's not cool to go crazy at a ballgame that I'm watching and cheer
and feel that joy when there's a score or a run comes in during the baseball game.
So even suppressing that kind of joy can also be detrimental to your body.
You're not allowing the emotion to be felt and then to be released.
So the way to do this, what you need to do is first identify the emotion.
So I talked earlier about how anger can be a disguise for other emotions.
So the first step is to identify what are you really feeling?
Is it anger?
Has there been an injustice?
Has there been, has your boundaries?
Has a boundary of yours been violated?
Or is there maybe another emotion that you're feeling underneath of the anger?
And I have, I repeatedly mention the book that I love for being able to do this.
It's called Atlas of the Heart by Bruney Brown.
She really goes through all of the range of human emotions that we might have and just
reading about them and understanding them a little bit better can help you to understand
what it is that you're really feeling.
So that's number one, identify the true emotion.
Number two, what's the wound underlying that emotion?
There's, there's something happening on the surface.
There's your logical mind that says this is making me angry.
But if there's something, if there's an emotion underneath of that, then what is the wound
that has caused you to feel this again?
What is the wound that's being pressed on?
What's being triggered in you?
And when you identify the wound and that might be, you know, a very recent wound or it
might be something from much longer, you know, from back in your childhood.
So for example, for me, I can feel angry when, when I am made to feel like I don't belong.
And underneath of that, there's this sense of, of not belonging.
It's, it's not actually anger.
It's a feeling of shame that I don't belong or that there's something wrong with me.
And I might feel that in the moment, but that's something that I have felt before.
So I need to go back to the original wound when I felt this before.
This is something that's actually really hard to explain without spending, you know, a significant
amount of time to really sort of go through the steps of this and, and help you to under,
help you to identify this.
So this is something that I really get into deeply in my coaching programs, but that I don't
really have the time to do on a single podcast.
But suffice it to say that the second step is to un, and identify the wound underlying the
emotion.
Step number three is allowing yourself to feel it, feel the emotion, not just the surface
anger, but the underlying emotion. And then number four is to forgive.
And that might be to forgive the person who, who you're associating that emotion with
or it might be forgiving yourself.
We can get pretty angry at ourselves for doing something for hurting someone else for doing
something wrong for, or perceiving that we've done something wrong.
And so sometimes there is an element of forgiveness for yourself.
And that also isn't an easy, you know, it's easier said than done just forgive yourself.
There's actually a process to that.
And again, I walk through that in my, in my program, it's part of pillar number one.
And it is a super important part of the process, forgiving yourself or forgiving the person
that you're associating the emotion with.
So those are the four steps on, on what to do when you're feeling angry and how to release
that.
Okay, so we covered what you might be feeling and the difference between like true anger
and then all of the disguises that you might be feeling angry for.
We talked about the mistakes that you might be making when you're feeling anger.
We've talked about what happens when this all gets fixed.
And what to do when you're feeling anger or any of those underlying emotions.
So now that you know what to do, you might be wondering how to actually implement these
steps and to get a better understanding of, of how to go about releasing this anger.
And if you're ready to do that, you're ready to let go of anger that you're feeling as
a childless woman.
I invite you to send me a DM on Instagram or you can send me an email too if you're already
on my email list.
Type the word anger and I will show you how to release it.
So that is it for today's episode.
I invite you to come back next week.
I'll be doing another solo episode next week and I would love you to come back.
If you found value in this episode, I would also be forever grateful if you subscribed,
followed, let me review, rated the podcast, whatever the action is on whatever platform
you're listening on.
Please do that because it's going to help get the word out.
Bye for now.