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Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Born To Be Wild
By Lady Ochel C. Espinosa
IN ITS purest sense, anger is a normal, not to mention healthy emotion. It is a warning signal that something is perhaps, wrong. It can alert an individual of the potential for physical or psychological trauma. Anger can provide the energy to resist emotional or physical threats, allowing defense or escape.
Anger aids in our awareness of emotional and physical boundaries and helps individuals set healthy limits. Anger can also mobilize us to make much-needed changes in our world when we are faced with injustices.
When not properly expressed, however, anger can come out "sideways" in the form of road rage, hurtful humor, procrastination, illness, memory loss, chronic lateness, gossip, depression, or violence. Boiling Point shows us the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger and the importance of working toward emotional, physical, mental, social and cultural balance in order to experience healthy, constructive anger rather than anger's more destructive counterparts.
In what may be the most important book you will ever read, you will learn how to be more accountable to yourself, and how to communicate with others to effectively connect with one another in relationships and in the broader community. Through increased awareness and sensitivity, we can stop the rage that threatens to destroy us.
Waiting in Vain
On one particular occasion I was waiting in line to reschedule a flight that had been canceled because of poor weather conditions. The man in front of me was becoming increasingly agitated. He had been muttering to himself, pacing and slapping his tickets against his hand. As the minutes passed, his voice grew louder, "I can't believe these people. This has happened to me one too many times and it's not going to again. They are going to put me on a flight right now, or I'm going to take my business somewhere else! I'm a hundred-thousand-mile flyer, for God's sake."
I thought to myself that his hundred thousand miles in the air weren't going to do him any good if the plane crashed in the middle of the typhoon we were facing. Yet he, and many others like him waiting to be rescheduled that day, appeared not to notice the weather. They seemed to feel the airline was deliberately plotting to ruin their lives.
When he reached the front of the line, the man screamed and hollered, and threatened the ticket agent, who remained incredibly calm and focused. He was still screaming and threatening as he walked away with his rescheduled tickets in hand.
Standing behind me was a mother with three little children. At one point the oldest, who appeared no more than five, asked her mother, "Mommy, why is everyone so angry?" Her mother replied, "I don't know, honey, some people are just angry."
The gentleman in the airport wasn't expressing healthy anger; he was enraged because he was powerless and out of control. His display of abusive behavior was most likely his common response to frustration. Yet if I asked most people to describe his actions, they would probably say he was angry.
More Than Words
"Anger" is a word that is commonly used to describe a wide range of emotions. Curious how the general public viewed anger, I asked a small number of people for their definitions:
Nine-Year-Old Girl from Assumption Iloilo: "Anger is a mood and it makes me feel like crying. But it's better to plain get angry than to take your anger out on people or animals. It's not fun being angry."
Sixteen-year-old girl from Iloilo National High School: "Anger is a feeling that nobody likes to deal with caused by something that hurts. It's a feeling I fear because when someone's angry, no one knows what they are capable of doing. It is a powerful, uncomfortable and awful feeling and yet we are surrounded by it."
Twenty-three-year-old Medicine student from Central Philippine University: "Anger is a feeling that is manifested in many different ways by each person. Some people will lash out at everything and everyone around them, while others will just let it bubble inside and act as if nothing is wrong."
Thirty-four-year-old businessman: "Someone is angry when they have reached or gone past the point of being reasonable-when emotions start to influence thoughts and actions."
Twenty-seven-year-old fast-food chain manager: "Absolutely no control over a situation. Feelings of powerlessness."
Thirty-two-year-old grade school teacher: "Anger is rage inside you that you can't cope with or deal with."
Given the degree of violence surrounding us every day, it was not surprising that most individuals attempting to define anger actually describe rage.
Wrong signals
Anger is a healthy emotion. It is a warning signal that something is wrong. It can alert an individual to the potential for physical or psychological trauma. Anger can provide the energy to resist emotional or physical threats, allowing defense or escape. Anger aids in our awareness of emotional and physical boundaries and helps individuals set healthy limits.
A majority of people in our society appear afraid of healthy anger and are taught from a very young age not to feel it or express it. Many women are socialized to "be nice," not to "make waves," while men are still taught to "fight back" rather than allow themselves to feel normal emotions of vulnerability or powerlessness. Many people are taught not to express feelings at all, while at the same time being systematically desensitized to the violence around them through music, television, movies and video games.
We are a society out of balance. This lack of balance is made apparent in many ways: mentally, emotionally, socially, culturally, spiritually and physically. In forthcoming chapters, I will explore this lack of balance and its dramatic effects on individuals, relationships and society. The effects include symptoms ranging from continual underlying depression and difficulty in relationships to the rage expressed by the airline traveler, as well as many others.
Disconnection is literally killing us.
Comments to LadyOchel@atenista.net
(August 9, 2006 issue)
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