The Anger Dare

In the wake of the Aurora Theater Shootings, as the world goes crazy with judgment and fear, I have a challenge for you. 

Let's do this without anger.

That's right, I dare you. 

Eliminate anger from your vocabulary for the next month. 

(There are those darned crickets again.) 

Anger: (Webster) a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism.

            (Bing Dictionary) a strong feeling of grievance and displeasure. 

That doesn't sound that bad, does it?  It's not.  I'm talking about the common use of the word "angry" which usually leans more in the direction of antagonism.  I tend to talk a lot about what words mean vs. how they are used, and anger is a big one.  I think it is very rarely used in the dictionary sense, which is pretty mild.

 

No, in it's purest sense, there's nothing really wrong with anger.  It's just that the word anger, and all it's synonyms, are worn out from overuse.  Many people in the
world today know how to have one of two feelings:  Happy and Mad.  No one really has a problem with happy.  Rarely do people come to therapy with joy management issues.  If we're not happy, we're mad.  Except mad goes nowhere.  Mad is full of adrenaline and while it feels powerful, it merely masks whatever else we're feeling.  So we get mad, and we act out . . . and then eventually it ends, the adrenaline goes away, and nothing gets resolved, because whatever the issue was, it was moot because people are desensitized to anger.  Either they don't hear an angry person because they're so entrenched in their own flight response or they don't hear the person because they are entrenched in their fight response.  Either way, the message is lost.     

So let's give it a rest.  For one month, don't use any of the following words:  mad, angry, pissed, furious, ticked-off or annoyed (especially at the end of the phrase "he/she/it MADE me _____").  I would be tempted to add irritated and frustrated, as they are frequently synonyms for angry as well, but I will allow them, with some strict limitations that they be used according to Webster's Dictionary.  I'm picky like that.  For the record, I'm only letting in things that are physically irritating, like the scratchy tag on your shirt collar, a flickering fluorescent light (actually I would go for ANY fluorescent light), or the whining tone in my children's voices as they tattle on each other in the back seat (what, did you think I was immune to that??).   

In that time, let's learn to identify the underlying feeling instead, and broaden our vocabulary.

Step 1:  Let's start with identifying feelings.  Any time you notice that you're tempted to describe your feeling as "angry" or one of its derivations, pick a different word.  Anger is ALWAYS a secondary emotion.  There is ALWAYS another feeling underneath it.  Find it.  See the chart at the right for some suggestions.  I'll be posting more about what to do with those other feelings throughout the month.  You can't do anything helpful with angry.  Angry turns people off.  Angry sends people away.  Angry doesn't think very clearly and tends to say things in an overly dramatic and hurtful way.  Often, you have to spend time after angry repairing the damage until you get back to a place where you can move forward.  In the dance of one step forward and two steps back, angry is two steps back. 

Join me in this challenge!  Let's make it viral!  I want to hear your stories!  Comment!  Email me!  Speak up! 

Think I'm crazy?  Ok, maybe that's a topic for another time.  My clients LOOOOVE this exercise!  After a while, you won't miss these words.  Possible side effects:  better relationships, less stress, improved communication . . . and less botox because you won't get those little frowney lines between your eyebrows. 

*Photos Courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

The Extinction of Anger

So how about I go for shock value in this post and just announce that anger is an obsolete emotion. 

Silence.  Hear the crickets? 

Yes that’s right.  In my humble opinion, true blue, bona fide unadulterated anger has very nearly NO place in today’s civilized world.

Let’s take anger back to an uncivilized world and see if we can figure out why this emotion that causes so much trouble exists anyway.  Besides, we’ve about beat the flight response to death, might as well hit the high notes on the other side of the coin.

Imagine that our good friend Joe Caveman has just returned from the hunt, anticipating a hero’s welcome as he drags in the mammoth he clubbed.  Instead, Joe and his pals discover that a pack of tigers has devoured pretty much the entire village.  Joe feels disappointed.  He feels despair.  Joe sits down on a log and bemoans the loss of his family, his community . . . and Joe becomes dessert for the tiger.  If Joe is going to stay alive, his best bet is to skip right over the devastation of it all and open up a can of prehistoric whup a** on those saber-toothed furballs.  Joe needs that adrenaline rush to defend himself, and rebuild.  Joe Caveman does NOT have time for grief.  When the danger is gone, and the defenses are secured, Joe will create a ritual for grief.  Perhaps he will call it a funeral. 

In today’s world, we have a shortage of true threats to life and limb.  Remember the instinct is FIGHT or FLIGHT.  Later suggested to be Freeze, flight, fight or fright (Bracha et al) which isn’t as catchy, but gets the order right.  Instinct says first freeze.  Senses are heightened, nerves are ramped up.  Next line of defense is to get the heck out of there.  Discretion is the better part of valor.  If you can’t get away, turn around and fight.  Get ANGRY and DESTROY the thing that threatens you.  Bracha suggested that if fight failed you and the end was near, your brain kicks into sort of a shut down fright state that is somewhat dissociative and protects you from a conscious awareness of the horribleness about to happen.  Really folks, when was the last time you experienced a situation on par with that response?  Ever??  Fortunately, that is the case for most of us.  Now raise your hand if you think the idea of life without anger is just crazy talk.  Every one of you with your hand in the air needs to work on boundaries and assertiveness.  There are those out there who do have big T trauma in their past.  You folks may need to address that before you tackle boundaries, but it’s part of the same deal anyway.

Anger protects us in a situation where other emotions make us feel vulnerable.  Assertiveness and healthy boundaries eliminate the NEED for anger because we recognize that when a person is stepping across the invisible line into our space, we recognize that, while inappropriate, it is not life-threatening, and we create a response that is strong ENOUGH to hold that invisible line (more to come on limits and boundaries).  We calmly and respectfully let the other person know that their behavior is not ok, and we would like them to stop.  They either will or they won’t, and then we have some more choices to make.  What we don’t have to do is use an emotional grenade launcher to blow them into the next county with our reaction. 



Photo by Freewine

 As I have mentioned before, as a society we don’t have good boundaries.  Back in Joe’s day, members of the community relied upon each other for survival.  Joe didn’t decide he didn’t feel like hunting that day because he knew if he didn’t hunt, his family didn’t eat.  If Joe got injured, the community stepped in if they could.  I imagine parents didn’t have to work so hard to get kids to do chores because it was easier for kids to see how the world worked better if everyone pulled their own weight.  There were social norms and customs that made sense.  Everyone understood WHY it was important to act a certain way, and they just DID it.  Those who didn’t were ostracized and shunned and did not do very well over the winter.  There were consequences for misbehavior, and the community wasn’t afraid to enforce them.  Today, we are disconnected from one another.  If you flip someone off on the highway, or snap at the waitress, there are no consequences.  Some people make a career out of seeing how far they can go in that direction.  Anyone who has ever waited tables knows that some people seem to think that part of the dining experience is being able to abuse your server because the customer is always right, right? 

There’s a lot that goes into these habits.  From a very young age, we get taught to ignore our boundaries.  Say YES when someone asks you to do something, whether it works for you or not.  Don’t make waves, don’t be a problem.  We don’t get taught how to resolve conflict.  We get taught to either pretend it doesn’t exist or get angry.  Not helpful.  Parents pull out the power card when they don’t want to deal with an issue.  “Because I said so” teaches children that their needs do not matter, and by the way who cares anyway so shut up and leave me alone.  A few years of that and anyone would get angry.  Throw in some role models who yell at each other and you pretty much guarantee that you’re perpetuating the problem.  Of course not all parents fit this bill, but from my view in the cheap seats, parents who practice some sort of strategy in raising kids are outnumbered by those who, at best, know they don’t want to do what their parents did, but have no plan and end up flying by the seat of their pants in a generational pendulum between too controlling and too permissive. 

Many people out there have 2 main emotions:  happy and mad.  Expand your feeling vocabulary and imagine a life predominantly without anger.  It’s a life with other uncomfortable feelings, feelings like disappointment, frustration, disappointment, grief, overwhelm, embarrassment and helplessness, but those feelings give us something to work with.  If you’re mad, about the only thing to do is wait for you to get over it.  And hope the damage isn’t too much to repair.  When we use anger as information that we're feeling something deeper and identify that feeling instead of just acting out of anger in a boundary-less, self-riteous way, we become more authentic.  Try it for a week.  Eliminate the word “anger” and all it’s cousins (mad, pissed, peeved, irritated, etc) from your vocabulary and substitute the feeling driving them.  When you’re really good at that, you can start addressing those real feelings and solving some relational problems instead of perpetuating the cycle of “blow up, sweep it under the rug till it comes up again, blow up . . . “  How cool would THAT be?  Resolve an issue for GOOD?  That’s just crazy talk, right?  ;-)