I feel it, too. Crumbling climate. Roe v. Wade overturned. Gun love. Democracy’s demise. And so on. As a therapist and coach, I used to help people transcend their anger towards what feels like the unrelenting death march of the political class. But no more. The national and global crises show no signs of abating. Anger is understandably inevitable. Now I help people convert anger to something more empowering and limited in duration, so they can feel what they rightly feel and not compromise their balance and valued relationships. As you know, anger doesn’t stay in its lane.
The problem isn’t that we are angry. It’s that we, too easily, become anger. A once fluid, changeable thing gets activated and quickly turns heavy and solid. We get stuck in anger. It’s like breastsroking through a clear pond … and into quicksand. Only this quicksand anger has no built-in limits. You cannot rely on it to dissolve at a predictable time so you can get back to swimming. Thus, many of us politically-engaged folks are walking around caked in mud. Let’s shake it off and dodge the quicksand pit so we can fight injustice, not ourselves.
If we’re going to skillfully be angry and not become anger, we need an internal program for knowing how to navigate anger safely without wasting precious energy.
The good news? You already know how to do this. It’s wired into your subconscious mind. With a little guidance and practice, it will save your blood pressure. Here’s why:
Your subconscious mind determines over 95% of your thoughts, emotions and actions so your conscious mind doesn’t get overwhelmed with processing a gazillion bits of information every second. Its priority? Your safety. It will make you uncomfortable just to motivate you to escape or fight a perceived threat to your safety. Since threat-response wiring is still in a primitive form, it doesn’t listen to the more evolved human advancements like logic and reason. Otherwise, you could just talk yourself out of any habitual self-defeating pattern and poof!; it would vanish. Doesn’t happen that way though, does it?
So, your subconscious mind sees saber tooth tigers where your conscious mind sees public speaking anxiety or last-second Patriots field goal attempts or zombie politicians. Thus, by modern day measures, your subconscious mind overreacts. It equates zombie politicians with saber tooth tigers. I know, I know, sometimes it is exactly correct. But at the nervous system level, you don’t want your subconscious seeing saber tooth tigers every time the BREAKING NEWS banner appears on your smartphone screen.
If feeding your subconscious mind with reason won’t quell anger, what will?
Feeding it metaphors.
Metaphors? Like cool as a cucumber, hope as the thing with feathers (thank you, Emily Dickinson), or poised like an acrobat. Our subconscious minds swim in the language of metaphor (dreams, eh?).
The secret sauce to being angry and not becoming anger is to create a metaphor that embodies how you want to do anger. Importantly, it needs to have built-in limits, an endpoint that returns you to a healthy baseline. The anger strategy is embedded in the metaphor so you don’t need step-by-step instructions. Mine is a sheathed sword. An overused sword dulls and becomes less effective, so built into the metaphor is knowing that engagement is short-lived.
How would you like to symbolize your state of becoming angry? Does it rise and fall like a wave? Does it sprint and then rest, like a cheetah? Find a quiet place. Still yourself for a few minutes. Then ask: “What do I want my anger to be like?” Of course, you can explore what it is like already, but feel free to be aspirational instead. It needs to resonate with you, to feel like it fits you, not just because it sounds cool. Your metaphor reflects something about how you see yourself.
One client summons his inner hawk. When it’s time to engage anger, he lets himself swoop in, directed and firm, then he returns to a “nesting state.” The job is done and the anger is too. His loved ones no longer have to steer around his old lingering grumpiness
Sometimes identifying the metaphor is enough to activate it. The metaphor resonates deeply and you’ll be aware of it when needed. The resonance can be seen as a message from your subconscious: “Ah, I can work with this image. It leads to safety.” Practice can help, too.
Give yourself the metaphor you need to be angry, not become your anger. Keep your head, heart, and relationships intact as you help save the world from the zombies.
Chuck Genre is a psychotherapist and integrative life coach (www.chuckgenre.com) who lives with his family in Leverett.