Managing My Anger
The concept of “anger management” is often framed as being exclusively a form of therapy for people who fly into fits of rage that harm themselves or people around them. Anger management is treated like it’s an exotic problem, the kind that only merits treatment if you are a fundamentally broken human.
But everyone has moments of anger, and pretty much none of us are given tools for handling them. Our schools and culture completely fail to provide any coaching for how to ride the waves of feelings, any feelings, whether they’re positive or negative, or if they go up or down.
When you’re a kid in school, if you behave badly, you’re punished. Sent to detention or perhaps given a task. At my elementary school we were given “garbage duty,” which was to go clean up trash around school grounds. I suppose that’s intended to make you feel like actions have consequences that you should want to learn to avoid. But I suspect the only real lesson learned is that your actions have consequences so long as there is someone with more authority than you around to impose their way over yours. Once free of their authority, the echo of the intended lesson can fade quickly.
Whether or not you get any emotional coaching of any kind at home is completely a crap shoot. Even emotionally balanced parents, which are an extremely rare occurrence, can only lead by example and hope their…
