What Do You Do With The Mad That You Feel?

It comes as no surprise that a small town with narrow winding paths and unexpected pockets would have its hidden secrets. With longer, warmer, sunnier days and increasing activity on the island, businesses are getting busier. Suddenly, I've begun to notice various store owners and employees in little side streets – often relatively far from their establishments – opening what appear like doors to other businesses or just side doors to buildings. It turns out these are hidden storage rooms and buildings that support one of the smaller, local grocery stores and the Greek pie/bougatsa shop among others. I've seen business owners grabbing cases of water, tubs of margarine, boxes of cheap "house" table wine. I can't even tell if it's one storage per business, or if this is some kind of collective storage project. 

However it works, I enjoy that after eight weeks and three other visits – the last of which was itself nine weeks – Skala still has mysteries to unlock, even if they are no more consequential than secret table wine. Then again, if they're hiding table wine and margarine, what else could they be hiding???

This morning I was wondering the same thing about my heart. If I can come to understand Emily, take stock of myself, recognize that Emily's behavior isn't who she is as a person, figure out what I want and need, position myself to let go, embrace the several potential graceful paths to a new future – then why are there still pockets of anger in my heart? Why can't I just release those?

I suppose the first question is why does it really matter? Feelings are feelings and they come and go. If I'm angry, why not just be angry – whether or not it makes complete sense? Why not just let it be – in time it will probably run its course?

Because anger scares me. In fact, anger terrifies and tortures me – both the anger of others and my own. To me, anger is like nuclear waste – volatile, poisonous and best kept away, maybe disposed of in specialized facilities if such things existed.

Why is that? Well, there are several dimensions to it.

First, anger is an action emotion. It can be volatile or it can be cold and poisoning – but it beckons people to act on it. Anger has purpose and it longs to be released or resolved. Moreover, philosophers from the Ancient Greeks to Mr. Rogers have recognized its damaging potential. In Greek Mythology, Ares, the God of War was a rather disliked brute among his fellow Olympians. He was a hot-head, fairly dumb and more reckless than brave. Ares more or less embodied anger, although one could argue his father Zeus had some anger issues himself with all his throwing lightning bolts and punishing people when he wasn't sleeping around and interfering with people's lives. 

Even in the Torah/Old Testament – Moses has a bit of a temper and it's always when he loses it that he gets in trouble. Ultimately, it was his temper that kept him from entering the Promised Land.

Fred Rogers diligently tried to avoid letting anger affect him and had several practices to manage it. His wife once told a reporter that he was not a perfect person and actually had a temper that he worked hard to keep managed. One of his trademark songs was specific to teaching children how to deal with their anger:

What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong…
And nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?

It's great to be able to stop
When you've planned a thing that's wrong,
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song:

I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish
I can stop, stop, stop any time.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there's something deep inside
That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a woman
And a boy can be someday a man.

Note how many times the word stop appears. The success of Fred Rogers was his understanding of how to talk to children and address their emotional space. Adults can easily forget what a child's world or outlook is like and Mr. Rogers did a great job of breaking big topics into child-size bites. This song taught self-regulation before the term was coined – and how many adults in your life really taught you how to deal with your anger other than to shove it or that it was inappropriate at certain times and there were things you COULDN'T do with it. 

In the nature vs nurture debate, I believe people lean nature. I'm not sure the exact percentage, but if I had to guess, I'd say we're about 70 percent hard wired. Nonetheless, the 30 percent nurture is an important 30 percent and often has to do not so much with what we think, feel or experience things – but what we make of them or how we understand them.

In my upbringing, anger felt very destabilizing. This is no way an indictment of my parents, because as one – I understand how everyone is just doing their best and we can't always know how we impact our kids. As a child, my mom's anger made me feel like love and acceptance were on the line. Her anger could be hot and intense. However, it could also turn cold and she would physically withdraw – often going to her room which may well have been to calm down, but I interpreted it to mean she couldn't stand being around me anymore and/or she was stewing and preparing the next helping of hot anger. Moreover, as I got older, my mom insisted on arguments be logical – sort of like a path to proving who was right. If I felt strongly about something, I needed to have my arguments ready – to be clear and sharp. I had to be able to keep my focus when overwhelmed by anger or hurtful words. It was a very tall order. 

There were two other fundamental problems with this approach. For one, there was the assumption of a singular "right". There was not room for multiple valid perspectives, resolving complex issues, mutual contributions to better outcomes. Maybe some of those could come, but first a winner had to be declared and winning was important. Secondly, a major part of conflict isn't about the events and facts – but the underlying feelings and perceptions. Often it doesn't matter if someone seems justified in their feelings, if we want to resolve issues with them, we have to meet the where they are and figure out a path to reconciliation. Of course, we can offer alternate perceptions and lenses that we feel someone might be missing or that could help – but in the end, not everything is logical and it doesn't have to be.

The result – which I'm sure is not what was meant – is that I felt that either I was not heard/understood or that anger risked my mother pulling back and being cold. Or both. Sometimes she stayed cool and resentful for what felt like long periods so even when the "fight" was over, there was still cold anger. Sometimes there would be cold periods followed by another round of hot anger, often with hurtful words. Therefore, anger was very risky – there could be a high price to pay.

My father's approach to anger with me was more benign. My dad would hold his anger in, let it build and then some issue or another that perhaps wasn't so big on its face could pop the balloon and get a disproportionate reaction. That said, once my dad got it out, he generally moved on and was quick to repair. 

Either way, I don't remember anyone ever helping me understand what to do with my anger and certainly no one made anger feel safe.  Honestly, I didn't pay enough attention to Mr. Rogers and probably could have tried some of his suggestions. 

Today, I still run conflict avoidant. Yet one of my weaknesses is that I seem to switch between a few approaches to anger depending on how flooded or not I am with it. Whenever it seems possible or expedient, I lean toward accommodation – which has its place sometimes, but I have done it too much, sold myself short and not left enough ground for my own happiness. Sometimes this has a similar outcome to my father's approach to anger – I accommodate until it's too much for me and then the other person – ostensibly Emily – is thrown off when I come off like Popeye The Sailor Man, "That's all I can stands, 'cause I can't stands no more!" 

When I want to confront an issue, I try asking to talk calmly about something. I use a lot of words like, "I feel…." "It bothers me when…." "This could be my thing, but…." "I'm really struggling with…." "It hurts my feelings when…." and I try to respond with "So, what I hear you saying is…." "It sounds like…" "How do you mean that?"  

Then there are the times when it slips. If I feel like someone  - particularly Emily – is either not respecting my calm talk or is coming at me hot (particularly if they hit below the belt), all of those feelings of defending myself with my mom come back and I'm ready for the fight. In my brain, the other person might as well be an invading army and I'm going to push them back to the Oder-Neisse line. In the end, it's a triple tragedy: I hate experiencing that kind of anger, I hate how I make someone else feel – and I feel terrible afterwards, even if I was "right". 

Anger comes from the amygdala – sometimes called our "lizard brain". Just because we're no longer hunting wooly mammoths or running from predators doesn't mean our brain has evolved that much – and we mistake unkind words and bad memories for bears and tigers. The last thing I want to do is sever love and trust. I immediately fear the risk of strain on the relationship in which I show strong anger. Anger is usually followed by severe remorse and anxiety for me.

Interestingly, I rarely have this issue with my kids. I may be short or get upset with them for something in a moment – like the years of Sennen interrupting everyone and teaching him we need to take turns talking – but we never have ongoing anger or resentments. We don't really have arguments. If they're upset, I try to hear them and work with them. I never take it personally – they're kids. I also try to help my kids strategize. Did they get what they wanted from that choice? Did it work for them? What could have been a better approach? We talk about "the social rules' – the societal norms we have to meet whether or not they feel good in the moment. Sometimes I even just acknowledge their feelings while not offering to accommodate them. "You sound really angry. I can hear how mad you are. I'm really sorry you're feeling so angry." Most importantly, when I slip up, I like to admit I made a mistake. I didn't see it right. I shouldn't have gotten as angry as I did about their behavior. Emily and I both let them know that parents are just people and we make mistakes. I apologize. I think it's important.

Still, this anger I have toward Emily – what purpose does it serve anymore? It feels like a liability – another opportunity to mistake some hurtful words for bears and tigers. The practical thing would be to truly let that anger go – for it to dissipate. I would do better in my conversations with Emily ahead and I would just be happier and healthier not carrying anger – it's toxic. She apologized for berating me in front of the kids, but I can't let it go. She apologized for telling me how happy she was to move into a new chapter of life more focused on us and our relationship at our 10th anniversary and then three months later telling me she was at the tail end of a very long process of deciding she no longer wants to be married. I felt so lied to, betrayed and humiliated. I haven't been able to let it go.

Mr. Rogers seems to have his characteristic understanding for me:

Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.

Maybe this speaks to another fundamental truth: the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Hatred requires still caring. We love and hate what we care about. When we no longer care, we're indifferent – we move on. Forgiveness is easier when we let go and move on. One way to solve difficulty with forgiving the people is to no longer love them. It sound terrible written out that way, but we do it surprisingly often. Friendships we let drift away when they sour, family members we stop making an effort with, ex-spouses who might not recognize each other on the street anymore. It happens.

Is that an option? Is it a good option? What about the, "I'll always love you…" that people do when they break up or divorce? I suspect it's more of a fondness, not really love. I don't think about ex-girlfriends with love, but maybe with a fondness or a hope that they're doing well in life. Some warm feelings for the time we shared.

Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and I need to have that kind of distance from Emily in order to get to the forgiveness and really saying goodbye to the anger?

I'd like to think I could do yoga, locate the anger, breathe and release it. I'd like to think, in the words of Mr. Rogers, I can stop, stop, stop any time. And what a good feeling to feel like this. 

All too frequently, I have questions I wish I had asked people I loved before they died. There were so many questions I never knew to ask and life doesn't allow you a lifeline to "Phone A Dead Friend". The last time I spoke to my Great Aunt Rose, she told me she the secret to her happiness, youthfulness and longevity was to let go of life's hurts, "Forgiveness is good! I forgive you all!" she said with laughter. Aunt Rose, can you back up and tell me more about how that works?