How to Triage Rage

What are your smokescreen emotions?

I’m angry. The why isn’t that important, because the first why is a bit of a smokescreen. What I want to write about today is what happens when you look under that first why, when you triage the rage.

Triage, as you no doubt know, is the process of rapidly assessing injured people to understand who needs what kind of care and in what order they need to be seen. Prioritize those who are most impacted, and let those who are stable wait until resources are available.

The first why, the presenting narrative, the part my intellect wants to fasten onto as the Thing To Be Fixed, is that a contractor didn’t do something the way I wanted. This is someone I pay to do work and they didn’t do the work that I wanted them to do. I sent a pointed email. They responded in an unhelpful manner. My old friend Mary Virginia, had she read the email response, would have laughed, and said “them’s fighting words.” She has known me since we were 12 and she knows what pisses me off, and that I have a bad temper. Often I will just start a conversation “and then he said….” and then I tell her the thing said and she’ll laugh and say “them’s fighting words.” She already knows before I tell her why a thing pisses me off.

My reaction was disproportionate to the precipitating event. That’s clue number one that something lies underneath. I was so angry. I stalked about the house, then went for a swim. Usually, the pool is quiet in the afternoon, but for some reason – new year’s resolution arrivistes perhaps – the pool was crowded. One half of one lane was taken up entirely by someone making arm circles. Which he could easily have done at the end of the pool, freeing up said lane, but no.

Clue number two. The rage continues. It’s not contained to the person or circumstance. It metastasizes to encompass the arm circle lane-hogger, the wide swimmer, the tattoo guy posted up in front of the water fountain filling the world’s largest water bottle. It goes on.

I tell clients who are often frustrated at work to try to get some exercise to metabolize their emotions, even if it’s just a walk around the block. When I got in the pool – three minutes after I arrived, when the arm circle guy kindly put up his floaty weights and waved me over - I swam like a fiend. As I swam, I noticed Clue One and Clue Two. I remembered why I find anger to be so satisfying. Anger can give us a burst of energy, a spurt of adrenaline. It can offer a focus on something I think I can control, or address or change.

I realized, somewhere around lap fifty, that what’s underneath for me is grief. A specific braid of grief, three things going on at once that are pretty tough for me. Waking up, again, brimful of grief for my son who died nineteen years ago just because his birthday is in a couple of weeks is not what I want to be doing. I have expectations of myself that do not include being floored by grief decades after his death. I can’t do anything about the grief or that loss. So, I focus on anger to shift that beam of feeling to something where I can pretend I have some kind of agency or power.

I know plenty of people who are conflict averse. I’m not one of those people. But even conflict averse people can turn to anger like a kind of emotional triple shot of energy. They might not say anything about it, or write a pointed email. But it’s in there, coursing through their veins. Anger can be a very effective smokescreen.

The smokescreens are emotions or behaviors we default to rather than experiencing what’s underneath. With me, this time, it’s anger so I don’t have to feel the grief. I’ve seen people – including me – use insecurity, being a victim, depression, busyness, caretaking, ambition – the list goes on – to avoid. Addictions of all kinds are way to avoid.

So, if you, like me, find yourself having a reaction that is incongruent with the reality, and experiencing emotions that continue to escalate in your mind even after the precipitating event, the first why, is over, try this.

· Talk to someone you trust. Vent, but not for more than five minutes. Then see what they think. Mary Virginia’s “them’s fighting words” is our code that she understands that I’m upset and validates my feelings while still reminding me that I do have a temper and can sometimes overreact.

· Metabolize. For me it’s exercise, you know what works for you. Moving your body is always good, but playing music or video games or journaling or meditating work for some people as well. Give yourself some emotional space to let those intense emotions pass through you.

· Get curious. Does this situation remind you of anything? I was sexually harassed in my career, and I get really angry when I see men mistreat women at work. If I know that what’s happening now reminds me of something that happened then, I can check in with myself or a trusted friend to see if I’m misperceiving the now thing because I’m looking through the then lens.

· Do you have a smokescreen emotion or behavior? What is it? Are you using it now?

· Does it feel like there might be something underneath your first why? What might that be? You might get clues that are non-verbal, or ideas might come up as memories or when you are moving your body. Pay attention to those.

If we can learn to triage our rage, or whatever we are using as a smokescreen, we can find out what it is that really needs compassion or healing or naming. My contractor’s work isn’t what needs to be addressed. It’s the weight of the braid of grief right now. Which is harder to do, it’s harder to be in that space of tenderness and powerlessness.

We’re all human, we’re all carrying things. I wasn’t planning on writing a substack this week because I’ve been working on book revisions and thought I was written out. I also wasn’t planning on getting in the workout I got in today. So, something good can come out of this after all. Maybe.