You know that feeling you get when something happens that’s so far outside of what OUGHT to be happening that it seems to grab you by the shoulders and SHAKE you? When something sooooo threatens the very fabric of your life that you practically burst into FLAMES over it??

 

Yep. I’m feelin’ you—and I’m also totally clear that we all have a range of things that impact us this way. What’s insignificant for some of us can be MONUMENTAL for others.

 

Meanwhile, in my own country today, I’m continually knocked over by what I’m seeing—and not seeing—in this surreal election cycle that I could spend every single day of the next 11 days until November 5 IN FLAMES from dawn to dusk.

 

(And forget about SLEEP! Although I don’t know about you, when I’m that angry, I can’t relax enough to close my eyes and get the restorative sleep I need. No surprise that a lack of sleep simply fuels my anger.)

 

Fortunately, I’m not at the mercy of my feelings about this election because I have a truly nourishing relationship with my anger. I know it for exactly what it is:

 

Anger is a totally normal human emotion that that every one of us hard-wired to feel. Oddly enough, though, few of us are trained to harness it—parents don’t sit down with their kids to “have the talk” about anger the way that many parents try to do about sex (even if that “sex talk” is often such a crapshoot of information–and dis-information—that it’s a virtual goldmine of comedy…)

 

Since nobody ever teaches us about how to harness our anger alarm, we’re left to our own devices to figure it out. Granted, anger can be every bit as destructive as it is helpful—unfortunately, many of us have been socialized to believe that ALL anger is dangerous or simply “bad.” No surprise that few of us ever investigate it any further.

 

So where do we make our decision about anger? When we’re kids. And few of us ever change our minds about it.

 

On the one hand, if you grew up in a home like mine, where anger was a loud, physical, regular occurrence, you might believe that anger is bad and totally destructive. You might grow up determined to NEVER FEEL IT—and to never bring it into any relationship you care about. That was my choice (and you might remember from my Playbook a few weeks ago, that my wonderful therapist, Gwen Nichols, saw my boatloads of suppressed anger written aaaallllll over me when we began our work together.)

 

Of course you could also grow up in a home like mine and decide for yourself that anger is a VERY effective way to get everyone to quickly do exactly what you want—every single time. You might choose to get highly skilled in using anger as a weapon as you grew up. (This would of course, make you a prime candidate for Anger Management training after being identified as “too aggressive” or “passive-aggressive” as an employee in later life…)

 

On the other hand, If you grew up in a home where no one ever raised their voice and “never was heard a discouraging word” (like that old song, Home On The Range) you might be totally unprepared when you get older and someone in school, or on a job or in a relationship blows up in anger at you. You might totally shut down—or you might surprise yourself by totally blowing up in their face—because anger is a universal human emotion.

 

When we have no clue about how anger works, we never even FEEL this emotion until our alarm is going off so powerfully that it turns into a raging wildfire…Worse than that, when we have no idea how our anger got so quickly out of control, we know even less about what we can do about it!

 

No matter how you grew up, it’s worth mentioning again that the odds are very high that nobody ever sat you down for The Anger Talk, even though we’re all very familiar with the term Anger Management (mostly from laughing at those characters in movies who get sent to it…)

 

That whole scenario is so normal for so many people, yet to me, it feels like two metaphors collapsed into each other: The cart is pulling the horse—after said horse has blown the doors off the barn on the way out.

 

How About YOU?

Now that we’ve had The Anger Talk, what do you want to be different for you? Now that you know that anger is a universal human emotion that helps us to stay safe, where in your life could you use some more of it?

 

Meanwhile, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Next week, we’ll unpack how both healthy and unhealthy anger get triggered—and then wrap things up the following week with some Everyday Communication Sorcery for how you can get into action to embrace your healthy anger.

 

And finally, if you’re in the US, I hope you’ll use your healthy anger to get into action and help us save democracy with your vote!