Shut Up, Elsa (on holy anger and unmasking)

I was really angry recently. Livid. Enraged. Someone I had been respectful and kind with had reported me at work for a minor mistake which I'd sought to correct and had apologized for. I was telling a coworker about the situation and how angry I was about it and they said, there's a Disney song about this called "Let it Go." Surprisingly, this didn't calm me down.

It made me mad. I'll tell you why.

"mad libs" get it? because my first name is libby and I'm mad

I'd found out about the snitches the day before and was outraged. I had gotten my talking to about it first thing in the morning and even after working all day, I was still upset. I had vented to coworkers and friends. I'd listened to aggressive music. But I was still boiling over that night so I got on my rowing machine and rowed. And rowed. And rowed. It released the anger from my body, but it was still on loop inside my mind. So, I got curious. I asked myself why was this SO upsetting? It was injustice which makes me angry as a social justice type autistic but it was more than that. I eventually figured out that the snitches in question had been nice to my face but I'd always had a feeling in my gut it wasn't genuine, that they were kinda laughing at me. My friends had assured me they mustn't be and I told myself I was being paranoid. After all, there are a lot of doctors who are downright awful to clinical staff. I'm nice goddamnit. Why try to get me in trouble when I've gone out of my way to be good to you? But that wasn't it.

This experience of thinking someone is being genuinely kind to you and then finding out they were actually making fun of you is a core autistic experience. And it's traumatic. In this moment I wasn't a 47 year old physician. I was a 13 year old girl getting laughed at by the popular girls. By girls who had been my friends the year before. Weird, different, gullible and so lost in the new jungle of junior high and adolescence. I couldn't decipher which things about me were weird and socially deadly and which weren't. And I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to treat someone that way. What was funny about tricking someone into thinking you're their friend?

me but as bread

I sat with my sadness. I cried. I still felt angry after that, but it wasn't all consuming anymore. If I'd never allowed myself to feel that extreme anger, I'd never have had this breakthrough, this little piece of healing my inner child deserved.

So the next day as I shared the story of the prior day's betrayal, my (male) (neurotypical) coworker's reply really bothered me. Let me say, the comment was well intended and from someone I consider a friend. We often try to get one another's goat, so to speak. But as I drove home from work that evening, I kept thinking about it.

I'd come to a realization back in 2024 about my anger. I'd always been an angry person. In kindergarten I was outraged that a boy Nicky Taylor only picked on girls so I organized some collective action against him (I got all the girls in the class to block him during carpet time any time he tried to sit between two of us. It worked. He left us alone) My social justice work went from there. I hated bullies and loved speaking truth to power. And for this, I was labelled many things, but the gist of it was I was angry. And that was a very bad thing, especially since I was a girl.

As the years went on, I internalized this idea that I was too angry. I still did my social justice work but I tried not to get so worked up. If I did, I tried to bottle it up, to not express it, to deny it even to myself. Even leftists guys don't want an angry girl. But the thing about trying to deny a part of yourself, is that it fights back. We have an innate need to exist, all parts of us, even the ones we wish would die. So it would bubble beneath the service until I'd explode.

Sometimes I'd explode at someone else but usually the anger was just turned inward against myself. What I realized with my c. 2024 epiphany was that my anger was a holy thing and if I kept denying it, it would keep coming out in unhealthy ways. I needed to make peace with it and honor all the good it had done throughout my life. Only then would it stop being an issue. I thought about all the good things it had motivated me to do, all the hard times it had helped me get through. I stopped being ashamed, stopped apologizing and stopped using it to punish myself.

Neurodivergent people feel emotions more intensely. We get overwhelmed more easily whether it's from sensory overstimulation, endless demands on our executive function, or one of the many other stresses of living in a neurotypical centric society. Most people don't seek to understand this and may resent having to accommodate us, even in the smallest ways. Many neurodivergents have a deep desire for justice and fairness. Almost all of us have a trauma history and many turn this into a desire to fight for the vulnerable. We're seen as troublemakers by those in power and even by people in our lives who don't want to be associated with our own activism and advocacy. We are told we are too much. To calm down. Even by mental health professionals who should know better. If we are female, it's even worse.

The truth is, your anger is a gift. It's beautiful. It can help you learn about yourself, it can protect you, it can empower you, it can inspire amazing music and world changing movements. You just need to get to know it so it can be what you want it to be and not overwhelm you.

I always tell my kids it's okay to be angry but we have to make good choices about what to do with it. I often have to tell myself this too. And now I guess I'm telling you. Because Elsa wasn't saying we should calm down, she was saying we should drop the mask and stop denying how powerful we are. Stop being afraid of ourselves or what people think of us. So, belt it out, bitches. Let that shit go.