The last footnote about wondering if sometimes anger is healthier than empathy caught my attention. As someone who has been angry a LOT lately at/about my paid work, I've gotten curious why I, and so many women I know, react to anger by crying. What am I doing there? Do I feel ashamed for feeling anger? Am I suppressing and redirecting inward what would otherwise be an outward, more "typical" expression of anger?
I'm curious whether there's something about empathy that's different from "emotional labor" as you mentioned especially about women in paid work positions.
(Is that last question related to the previous one? If so, I'm not catching the connection.)
Why not think crying is a natural and/or appropriate response to anger? (What am I missing here?) I imagine that when we're angry, it's often because we're also hurt, which would make sense of crying. But I also wonder how much of it is just conditioning. Maybe men want to cry too but they've been so trained not to that they don't. Or they do, just not with witnesses. Anyway. I don't know enough psychology or physiology to know the answer to this. So this is just educated guesswork.
The last footnote about wondering if sometimes anger is healthier than empathy caught my attention. As someone who has been angry a LOT lately at/about my paid work, I've gotten curious why I, and so many women I know, react to anger by crying. What am I doing there? Do I feel ashamed for feeling anger? Am I suppressing and redirecting inward what would otherwise be an outward, more "typical" expression of anger?
I'm curious whether there's something about empathy that's different from "emotional labor" as you mentioned especially about women in paid work positions.
(Is that last question related to the previous one? If so, I'm not catching the connection.)
Why not think crying is a natural and/or appropriate response to anger? (What am I missing here?) I imagine that when we're angry, it's often because we're also hurt, which would make sense of crying. But I also wonder how much of it is just conditioning. Maybe men want to cry too but they've been so trained not to that they don't. Or they do, just not with witnesses. Anyway. I don't know enough psychology or physiology to know the answer to this. So this is just educated guesswork.
Not connected - there's a single carriage return that doesnt show up because of perfect spacing and then I couldn't edit after I saw it.
The "feeling hurt" thing is a good supposition. But yeah, not enough knowledge in the fields to fully examine.
I initially thought you meant "ghosting" in the context of Halloween. But this was way better;) Great read, Erica!