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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

anger management


I hesitate to even admit this, but if the last two weeks of my life had to be described in a single word I am pretty sure that word would have to be anger.  I feel lucky to say that in general, my life is pretty anger free, so this sudden swing in the whole vibe of my existence has been noticeable - which is a good thing I guess.  What kind of anger you might ask?  Well, it's been a potpourri of anger, coming at me from all sides, all angles and in all forms.  I think the anger-fueled array of experiences I have had in the last two weeks can best be expressed in list form (plus I'm just always looking for an exuse to make a list) - so here goes:
  1. My nanny got angry with me. So she quit.
  2. My husband left me on Mother's Day morning to get on an airplane.  To go to a conference.  In Virginia Beach.  I was little angry.
  3. My boss got angry with me for not responding to one of his requests as promptly and with as much detail as he expected.
  4. My son got a bad haircut he didn't want in the first place.  This made him surprisingly angry.
  5. My husband "broke" the front end of his new/old BMW trying to put the license plate on right after the body work got finished.  He was quite angry.
  6. He later called me "childish" and "annoying" all in the same night/same conversation leaving me feeling angry.
  7. I got angry right back and wrote a scathing email to him the next day.
  8. We had to give the loaner hampster back to my sons Kindergarten class.  My daughter was angry.  I promptly went to the pet store and bought her a replacement.
  9.  
Sensing a theme?  None of this stuff is exactly earth-shattering and I realize that on the spectrum of actual problems these all fall on the low and relatively unimportant end - but it added up.

Instead of trying to pretend that everything was all hippies and dolphins I figured it best to recognize and acknowledge all this bad energy and face it - learn from it even.  As civilized people sometimes it feels like we're expected to have evolved into a Buddhist monk-esque state of bliss where traffic jams, snarky comments and emotional bruises can't affect us.  We expect that somehow we should have moved beyond the place where we allow ourselves to feel anything short of happiness, grace, forgiveness and positivity.  I mean have all the inspirational quotes and posts we read on facebook, twitter and Pinterest taught us nothing?  Have I not been reading my own blog?

I give you Exhibit A - a sign I recently contemplated purchasing for my home but then decided not to:


I mean seriously, how could anyone who lived in a house where this hung on the wall ever get angry about anything?  Actually, I'm a little angry at myself right now for ever considering hanging this thing in my kitchen.  What was I thinking.

To that point, I recently heard someone refer to the act of removing someone from your life as "Bless and Release".  I interpret this as a very evolved way of saying "don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out of my life".  Or "it's been real".  I love it.  Bless and release.  Someone should make a sign for that on a piece of salvaged barn board and sell it on Etsy.

I got curious about anger, and whether or not in this day and age it's even an okay thing to feel.  Are we, as educated, socially responsible, spiritually evolved citizens of 2013 even allowed to feel anger anymore?  Did anger walk out when recycling and self-help books walked in?  Or is anger an emotion left only to be experienced by people who are mentally weak, self-unaware or somehow involved in politics?  Kidding of course.  Maybe.

Here is how the American Psychological Association defines anger:

Anger
is an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Anger can be a good thing. It can give you a way to express negative feelings, for example, or motivate you to find solutions to problems. But excessive anger can cause problems. Increased blood pressure and other physical changes associated with anger make it difficult to think straight and harm your physical and mental health.

Interesting right?

The first thing that jumped out for me were the words "increased blood pressure and other physical changes associated with anger" - and here's why.  A friend in the medical field once told me that when you reach the elevated state of true anger (imagine a very heated argument) there are actual physiological changes that take place in your body.  Your heart rate quickens, your body temperature elevates by a degree or two, and you literally become incapable of reasoning or making rational decisions.  "They" (whoever they are), have done studies, and it takes exactly twenty minutes for your body to recover back to a normal state where you are once again able to think/act like yourself.  So the next time you get out-of-your-mind-hand-through-a-wall-mad don't just take a deep breath and count to 10. Take a deep breath and count to 1,200.

The second thing that jumped out for me was the second sentence. "Anger can be a good thing."  I especially like the way anger can help motivate you to find solutions to problems.  My first reaction to that idea was to reject it, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it's true.  Sometimes it takes that little twinge of "I've had it" - just a little drop of pissedoffidness to light the spark that takes you to the next better thing. When you look back over the course of history there are countless examples of anger and dissatisfaction that when managed correctly, turned into positive change for people, countries, governments, etc.  On a smaller scale you might get angry that your favorite jeans don't fit anymore so you drop 5lbs and feel great.  See?  Anger can be okay.

Here's the rub - there is a difference between anger and hate.  Hate is defined as:

hate
noun
, often attributive \ˈhāt\1a : intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury

Hate is a totally different animal, which according to Merriam Webster can be the result of uncontrolled anger.  Allowing your anger to go unrecognized, unchecked and unattended can result in feelings of hatred which (as far as I'm concerned) doesn't have an upside.  So I answered my own question (for myself anyway, I'll let you draw your own conclusions on the topic).  For me, I guess a teensy weensy bit of anger sprinkled in the cracks of a primarily happy existence is okay - healthy even.  It's the Sriracha on the fresh Vietnamese spring roll of life that makes things a little more spicy.  If you were to drink the whole bottle however, it would taste like absolute crap.



*Yum right?*

I'm going to stop feeling like a Neanderthal for feeling angry now and again.  I will continue to count my blessings, my hippies and of course my dolphins when life is going with the flow and everything is falling into place like I hoped it would.  But when the hippies and dolphins are out back taking a smoke break and all logistical hell breaks loose I will give myself a hall pass to feel a little anger.  I'll allow myself enough time to swim around in it until I figure out what to do next. 

The challenge is not letting the anger set up shop - not letting it stay so long that it establishes a permanent residence in your heart.  Let yourself feel it.  Acknowledge it and figure it out.  Then swiftly kick it to the curb and replace it with a feeling more pleasant to live with...an emotion you wouldn't mind hanging on the kitchen wall.


“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” - Buddha didn't say this, someone at an AA meeting did.  (Which makes it cooler.)

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Getting Fed

eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Six years ago my husband and I were sitting in the executive offices of a church going over the details of our son's impending baptism.  We sat on the sofa as unsure new parents listening to the same wonderful man who had baptized both of us as babies (in that very same church) talk about the rite of baptism - the history, the significance etc.  Toward the end of the conversation as we were wrapping up he asked us if we planned to attend that particular church as a family in the future.  Since we had given the topic little thought we were honest and said we weren't sure, that we hadn't really decided yet.  His response was interesting.  He said "It doesn't matter to me where you decide to worship, whether it's this church or any other is fine with me.  Just so long as in a spiritual sense, you're getting fed." 

I love that way of putting it.  I loved the way he treated the soul, or the spirit, as something that needed to be fed just as much as the body.  Few people would argue the mind/body/soul connection and the importance of maintaining all three, but something about the language he used just really hit the mark for me mentally.  We spend so much time putting "first things first" in our lives that it can be hard to remember to set time aside to do the things we love, the things that feed our soul - but it's important.  If we don't make time to do the things we enjoy we become stressed out, depressed, and spiritually starved.

This "food" is different for everyone.  For some it is exercise, non-fiction, cooking and church.  For others it's indie movies, shoe shopping, poetry and the ocean.  My husband feeds himself with skiing, music, mountain biking and old BMW's.  I feed myself with books, gardening, blogging, music and Windex.  Nobody loves cleaning a kitchen counter more than I do.  Nobody.

Sometimes the things that feed our soul are so small they can be easy to miss.  The other day I was driving down the road on a perfect Spring day.  The windows were down, the sun was strong and the air was crisp.  At just the right moment that one perfect song came through my iPod via Pandora (*side note:  Pandora is magic.  Seriously, how does that software always know exactly what you want to hear exactly when you want to hear it?  It constantly amazes me - magic I say.)  I turned the volume up so loud the dashboard was vibrating and I couldn't hear anything but the music.  The sound of the wind, my car, and the notice dings of new e-mails coming through my phone all disappeared.  The music made my skin prickly and my heart beat faster than usual.  I could feel that song in every square inch of me and I thought to myself - 'This feeling.  This is it.  This is what it feels like when your soul gets what it needs'.  I've heard athletes feel this sort of rush all the time...but I'm just going to have to take their word for it.

Patrick's favorite T-shirt is from Copper Mountain in Colorado.  It has a skier doing some crazy jump on the front with his skis all crisscrossed and under the image it reads "fuel for the soul".  I like to make fun of him for being "soooooo hard core ", but the truth is that skiing and biking really do fuel his soul, his spirit - whatever name you want to give it.  If a month or so goes by and he hasn't been outdoors to recreate somehow he becomes irritable, depressed and generally unpleasant to be around.  When we first got married I didn't understand how important these things were to him and I would try to guilt him into staying around the house more.  It didn't take long before I realized that a) it's not worth fighting a losing battle and b) he really needs to do these things in order to feel his best.  I've also just grown up and realized there is no sense in trying to stop someone you love from doing the things that make them happy.

The trick is finding the ever elusive "balance" between getting fed and being a pig about it.  Taking what you need to be a better partner, a better parent, a better person is critical...no doubt.  Equally important however, is taking enough to be satisfied without stuffing yourself and leaving the people around you feeling hungry.  Self-sacrifice and putting your family first is the name of the game in parenting.  A friend of mine told me once about being a parent that "if it's not a little hard, you're probably not doing it right."  I will admit that when it comes to feeding myself, I prefer to err on the side of always wanting a snack because I'm never really full.  My mommy guilt and Yankee upbringing always have me not taking quite enough of what I need for myself.  I know lots of moms who feel the same way.  I guess I reason that there will be a day when I can indulge in all the "me" related activities my soul desires...but if I wanted that day to be today I shouldn't have had two kids.

I think a great place to start is simply knowing what it is that fuels us.  So when the opportunity presents itself - when we have the chance to feed our soul, we know how to do it.  When we find ourselves down and needing to be lifted up we know what will help us get back on our feet.  Recognizing and practicing the things that bring us joy is as important as making sure we have something green on the dinner plate. 

Don't let yourself go hungry.  Make sure that once everyone at the table of your life has what they need, you sit down and feed yourself too.  Carve out the time to make sure all three elements of You are being given the attention and the fuel they need to thrive.  Even if it means taking your plate into the bedroom and eating in front of the TV. 

Gotta run.  Dinner is almost ready, and I'm starving.