Transforming Anger into Wise Action

The horrible news of late has made it hard for me to focus on work or anything except what happened in Ulvade and Buffalo. Strong negative emotions like anger do that. Emotion scientists believe the purpose of anger is to draw our attention to injustice and provide us with the energy to act. If you really pay attention to what’s happening in your body when you’re angry, you’ll see that to be true. The adrenaline and other "fight or flight" hormones that get released energize you to DO something.

Unfortunately, although anger is really good at drawing our attention to the most urgent problems, it’s not always helpful at guiding our actions toward effective solutions. Hence the phrase “blind fury” – we get so angry that we can’t see anything but the problem and the energy of our rage explodes out in all directions, rarely solving the problem and usually creating more. We've allowed the energy of our anger to sweep us out of our rational mind. Then we get so frustrated and exhausted from raging and seeing no progress that we retreat to spare ourselves from that vicious cycle, and the problem remains unsolved. The precious energy of our anger has been wasted.?

It doesn’t have to be that way.???

What should we do instead? How do we interrupt that vicious cycle that gets us nowhere and use the precious energy of our anger to power us down a path toward real change??

First, feel your anger; don’t feed it. Stay informed but don’t obsessively check the news or endlessly repeat the horrible stories to yourself. That will only amplify your anger to blind fury which doesn’t help anyone. In fact, when we’re in that extreme state of “fight” the part of our brain that helps us think critically actually shuts down, and we default to familiar patterns like ranting, raging, and blaming, which make us feel better in the moment as we release some of our energy but rarely do they improve the situation. So, when you feel anger rise, breathe deeply. Feel the energy and breathe. Breathing will help bring balance to your mind so you can access the executive functions of your brain and see clearly.?

Next, from this calm state, get curious about what's really important to you, what your highest intentions are. Ask yourself what you really want to see happen. Then look around. With a more open mind, you will see the bigger picture more clearly and notice all that's available. The discomfort of anger will still be there, but instead of wastefully throwing it around, you will learn where to focus the energy of anger like a laser and use it to much greater effect.?

Is this easy or comfortable? No. It’s actually really frickin’ hard. But you know what else is really hard and uncomfortable? Repeating the same old patterns and waking up to horrible news again and again and again. Which hard, which discomfort are you willing to endure?

I’ve been sitting with anger the last several days, and believe me, I'm feeling a lot of it. I don’t have the answers yet, but I do know that if we are going to find the answers, we need to be able to effectively channel our anger so we can use it wisely instead of wasting it. The challenge of working with powerful energy like anger is that it wants to move fast and can easily pull us back into convenient, easy, familiar patterns and habits that don’t work and exhaust us into inertia when they don’t.?

So, pay attention to what’s happening in the world, my friends. Remember to breathe deeply, look around at what’s available to you, and do something different. Act where you can.

What might that look like? It’ll be different for everyone, but perhaps instead of ranting or blaming on social media, why not call or email your congressional representatives and insist they represent the values and goals of their constituency (you) as is their duty? Why not donate or volunteer with organizations that are working toward responsible gun laws? (See links below) These suggestions may make you uncomfortable, but that's only because they're unfamiliar. Don't let the discomfort steer you back toward familiar and ineffective habits.

Don’t waste your anger. Channel it and act wisely. Whether we like it our not, we are ALL responsible for what happens or doesn’t happen next.??

Contact your US Senators: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

Contact your US House Reps: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative#:~:text=If%20you%20know%20who%20your,the%20U.S.%20House%20switchboard%20operator.

The Brady Campaign (https://www.bradyunited.org/)

The Newtown Action Alliance (https://marchforourlives.com/)

March for Our Lives (https://marchforourlives.com/)

#enoughisenough

#stopgunviolence