Misdirected Anger: Release and Turn Toward Compassion
Are you seeing it? Are you hearing and feeling it? People are angry and misbehaving left and right. I’m hearing stories of nurses being accosted, teachers yelled at, students being more disruptive than before, as well as reckless and dangerous driving statistics increasing. David Brooks, New York Times journalist, recently wrote an op-ed piece,“America is Falling Apart at the Seams,” depicting this crisis. The heart wrenching part of his article is it didn’t offer any solution, just highlighted the calamity.
It feels dramatic to say America is falling apart at the seams, but there is ample evidence to showcase our current crisis. The impact of covid’s continuing mayhem from illness to vaccine debates creates so much confusion and frustration. Systems we counted on before like schools, hospitals, health care, and the government are fractured under enormous pressure and situations our country has never faced before. As we experience and witness the fissure in our country, we are reasonably feeling fear which may emotionally show up as being scared, overwhelmed, and defeated. Often when people feel emotions of fear, it can turn into anger because anger is an action oriented emotion. Anger can be utilized to create protests or use our voice to make change, but misdirected anger can act like an explosion leaving hurtful shrapnel in it’s wake.
My current concern for our country and our citizens is that we are experiencing a tsunami of misdirected anger. When things go wrong, it is human nature to look for someone or something to blame. But blame is not helpful. We are so angry as a country right now and desperately looking to blame, but there really isn’t any one person or thing to blame and so the anger and blame gets thrown around to the nearest, most obvious, sometimes most unassuming victim. How does it help to yell at a nurse, a teacher, a student, a spouse? It doesn’t. It is the act of fear, visible as rage, wounding rather than releasing pent up emotion.
The Solution: Release and then Turn Toward Compassion
The first step is learning and identifying positive outlets for your fear and anger. If you feel like screaming, scream into a pillow or punch a punching bag or kick a medicine ball. Go for a run or lift some weights. Find a physical outlet for the pent up emotion. If the physical outlet isn’t your style, you can write or journal or vent to a friend or a therapist. The goal is to release your emotion without it hurting another person. Take responsibility for your emotional distress and release it in a way that feels healing not harmful to yourself and those around you.
The second step is turning toward compassion. The key to healing as a country is compassion. What is compassion in this context? Compassion is having empathy for others and adding in an action. The empathetic part is understanding that no one has been left unscathed during the last several years of the pandemic, cultural polarization, governmental divisiveness, and economic hardships. We are all truly in this together. Have empathy for one another and then add in a step, big or small. Compassion could be a simple “thank you.” Use your blinker, put your cart back at the store, open a door for someone, give a compliment. Or go big, volunteer, donate to a fund that is important to you, join an organization that creates change.
We all need to pitch in. Take the steps to own your emotions, find a healthy outlet for them, and share compassion.