‘Just take a deep breath and count to ten.’
That’s the sort of advice that people unburdened by anger dish out to those who are. It’s delivered from a position of assumed superiority – anger is something that afflicts the great unwashed, or women. ‘Take a deep breath’ and it’s sexist older brother ‘Calm down dear!’ also further ignite the urge to do damage and as well as reinforcing the superiority gap. They often work. Or at least they do on me. Effing eff you.
Anger comes in a range of colourful varieties. There’s righteous anger, over things that we should be angry about, like shit but profitable food ruining us and bankrupting our health services, shit being dumped in the sea and children with additional needs being managed out of the education system. That’s the kind of anger that when channelled, can change the world for the better. Shouting at the news doesn’t count. Feargal Sharkey pounding away on the Today programme with all his facts does.
My latest book The Strange and Curious Guide to Anger isn’t about righteous anger – the acceptable, placard waving kind, although it does wonder into that territory. It’s more about the destructive, red hot rage that might seem to come from nowhere, if you don’t understand it. It’s the ‘fight for your life’, of the fight, flight, freeze response. It’s the scary for you and scary for me type.
There is much talk of supporting children and young people to ‘manage’ (vomit sound) their anger. If there is any hope of adults being successful in this endeavour, we have all got to learn an awful lot more about it. Adults and children. And we’ve got to give it some more respect and be more honest about it. Boiling anger serves a survival purpose when you live on the edge of imminent destruction. You’re not going to scare off an intruder with a ‘please’ or a ‘would you mind?’ No, when your life is on the line, you need to draw on your fury. You can die from good manners, you know.
And we have all had it – proper, blinding, clawing anger. But what is going on inside us when we experience that rush? Children and adults need the language to describe it and the permission to analyse where it could have come from – it’s origin story and whatever it was that lit the touch paper on that occasion.
Growing up in a world that feels terribly unsafe sets the benchmark for the future. It is the whole world that is unsafe, not the environment right now. Dialling down the alert signals takes time, care, love and consistency, from every one in a child’s life. Part of that is it being normal to talk about our emotional lives. It’s not something that many of us are that good at. ‘HAVE YOU TRIED HITTING A CUSHION?’
The Strange and Curious Guide to Anger is one way of sharing stories and starting conversations about our internal angry worlds. The book dumps the main character Ordinary Jo into a Furious Friday. Better her than us. She wakes up late, she cycles to work in a howling gale, she puts in a shift at the cafe with dripping wet clothes and then she encounters a rude customer. Her day continues to go down hill from there. She cannot contain her anger and it sprays out taking many casualties, most importantly her friend Tony. It feels like Jo’s entire world has come to an end.
Through the story fractured relationships are eventually repaired, robust conversations take place and some future-proofing is put in place. The science accompanies the story. There’s no suggestion that this will be easy for Jo, but there is hope and that’s what we all need.
If you have a child in your life whose anger dial regularly tips into Rage Level, maybe give the book a go. It’s not heavy, blame-y or worthy, and it might just allow a conversation to open up. I’m sorry I can’t give it out for free to every child that needs it, but it’s in a few libraries so put in order in at your local one, if you still have one (righteous rage alert).