By Ashley Mussbacher (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 15, 2014
When we were kids it was common to hear someone say, during a game of soccer or tetherball, that he or she was imagining a brother or sister’s face in place of the ball. Not surprisingly said ball would end up getting kicked or hit as hard and as far as we had ever seen. For me, a punching bag has always been available to vent my anger — and no, I’m not talking about a person.
But from my personal experience in an anger management program, there is no worse way to vent anger than to act on it, be it against an inanimate object or not. It’s a common misconception that venting frustration and anger is healthy.
This is an old way of thinking tracking back to witchhunts and Medieval medicine; during the Bubonic plague in the late middle ages in Europe, it was believed that popping boils and releasing black bile from under the skin would cure patients. However, all this achieved was further spread of the disease. We commonly fall into the belief that letting the bad out of the body or mind is better than bottling it in. In actuality, by acting on our anger we’re actually training ourselves into a bad habit.
Think of it like how cats train humans. Cat scratches furniture, because it feels the need to dull its claws (or to evoke a reaction from a human who is surfing the internet for funny cat gifs — we’ve all been there). In response (usually), the human reacts angrily at the non-digital cat, and bitter feelings are left on both sides, except that the cat has succeeded in not only in dulling its claws but getting the human’s attention. However, we know from being human (I assume) that those bitter feelings will manifest into dislike, until every time you see the cat instead of a cute cuddler you’ll see a dull-clawed couch-scratcher. Eventually, this hatred destroys your friendship and by extension, your life.
Don’t get me wrong, I love cats, but if catharsis doesn’t work then what about bottling the anger? Bad idea. Remember Hubba Bubba Bubble Gum? If you do, then you know that the advertisers broke our little nine-year-old hearts, because it was possibly the worst gum for blowing bubbles. Now imagine the mediocre bubble as your head. Point made.
So you must be asking, well if I shouldn’t act on my anger or bottle it then what the hell do I do? Three things.
Don’t laugh at this: meditation. In Disney’s Mulan, big cuddler Chen-Po stops a red-faced Yao from feeding Mulan (disguised as Ping) a knuckle sandwich by picking him up, rocking him back and forth, and chanting calmly. Since I take all my life’s lessons from Disney, I know this works. In the scene, Yao immediately becomes passive and forgets his anger. Chanting isn’t necessary in this exercise, and neither is a four-foot-tall red-faced man named Yao, but breathing certainly is.
This second step comes hand-in-hand with meditation, and involves a bit of foresight or good common sense. Think of the word “consequences.” It’s a scare tactic to use on yourself. Is that moment of lashing out worth losing the respect of others? It’s the same as paying it forward, except backward.
There is no third step. Even if you think there should be. And if you get angry, because I misled you like your favorite childhood bubble gum did, then read the article over again.
