Women need to stop being so 'nice', says US psychotherapist

Underneath the niceness society expects of women is a fiery independent nature that's buried deep, says Lisa Marchiano.

Marchiano - a licensed social worker, podcaster, author and Jungian analyst - says traits like ruthlessness, shrewdness and even rage are banished by women and can emerge as bitterness, resentment, anxiety and depression.

In her new book, The Vital Spark Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire, she explains how that vital spark gets pushed into the shadow.

"Karl Jung tells us that we're born with all kinds of potentials, and as we grow and develop and interact with our parents and our caregivers, we learn which qualities are valued and encouraged and which ones we really are not supposed to let show," she told RNZ's Afternoons.

"I think it's partly culture. I wonder if there isn't a part of it that's innate as well, that we come into the world as women ready to be very attuned to the needs of others."

Qualities like disagreeableness, shrewdness, rage and desire can become buried in women, she said.

"I'm not saying that you should become those things. I'm acknowledging that those are potentials, those are capacities that you have, and if you could develop them, they would be like an arrow in your quiver.

"So, sometimes it's right to be ruthless, and what I mean by ruthless is the ability to do something that's in your best interest, that's going to be in service to your growth and development, but it might make someone else uncomfortable."

Anger, she said, is a particularly difficult emotion for women to handle.

"It's okay to be angry, you can't necessarily take it out on other people. I will say that when we get better at integrating our anger, then it does become a more effective tool and it does less damage.

"So, the person with a really integrated sense of anger can express it deftly and with a certain amount of finesse, speaking from the anger, maybe rather than getting swept away in a kind of blind rage."

It then becomes a useful tool, she said.

"To assert boundaries for example, or repel an attack, but it doesn't unnecessarily wound people."

In her own practice she sees the effects of women swallowing resentments, she said, and a tendency to put the needs of others first can strangle a relationship in the long run.

"We think sometimes that we're doing the right thing by taking care of everyone else and cutting ourselves off from our own needs, but that's actually not the truth."

She had an experience like this herself when she realised a therapist she was seeing wasn't a good fit for her.

"I was tied up in knots about it, and I had this dream that I was being driven around in a car by (The Sopranos character) Tony Soprano.

"Well, Tony Soprano is very good at being ruthless, and I think it was the psyche's somewhat humorous way of saying, Lisa, you've got to get in touch with your own inner Tony Soprano and do this thing that maybe is going to hurt her feelings a little bit, but it's certainly not the right thing to do, to stay in treatment with someone who isn't really a good fit that is not in your best interest."

Shame also cuts us off from what we really want, she said.

"Shame is huge for all of us, it's huge for women and it's huge for men."

"I have that chapter on desire, that really deep sense of knowing that something's super important to you, and shame is one of the things that cuts us off from that.

"I can't tell you how many times people have said to me, 'Oh, I want to tell you this thing, but I'm so embarrassed'."

Clients have told her about career desires or educational aspirations they were too afraid to pursue, she said.

"It's a kind of profound sense of inadequacy that most of it's like a swamp in the soul. Most of us get caught in at one time or another."