How to Digest Your Rage
Last Wednesday morning I listened to Reverend Doctor Raphael Warnock’s acceptance speech. He talked about how his mother’s hands that once picked someone else’s cotton had picked her son in the voting booth to be Senator of the United States. I wept. My tears felt like a release - of joy, of pent up stress and grief from the past four years, hope for a better year to come. It felt like a new beginning.
I was weeping again by 2:30pm, but this time out of fear for friends and colleagues in the Capitol, out of sorrow for our democracy, and in horror at the display of white supremacy and insurrection that law enforcement seemed to be doing little to stop. I wept knowing that if these were people of color, many shots would have been fired and blood shed.
Since Wednesday, I’ve alternated between rage and exhaustion. I have virtually screamed with friends and colleagues. I have posted angry Tweets. I have had a hard time focusing or getting up in the morning because I am so. very. tired.
And, there is a lot that I am not doing. I’m not worried about my anger. I’m not beating myself up for my lack of focus. I’m not stress-eating. I’m not sacrificing the routines that serve me like exercise and meditation and poached eggs on toast. I have not turned to wine. But that does not mean I’m not processing: I am 100% not ignoring my emotions and trying to push through.
In my positive psychology program, we learned that emotions, like food, need to be properly digested or they will get stuck. When we push through the sadness and anger and push our emotions down, we aren’t digesting them. The emotions can’t flow.
There’s a common misconception among humans that our thoughts and our emotions are the same thing and that we can somehow control all of it.
Here’s what actually happens. Our human brain evolved by putting the pieces necessary for survival in place first. This area of our brain is called the limbic brain. It’s the part of your brain that controls basic functions, movement, response to threats and stressors, and emotions. It’s evolutionarily a very old part of our brains. On top of the limbic brain is wrapped the newer neocortex, where our rational thought, attention, executive function, and a bunch of other higher level functions happen. Essentially the functions that separate you from a lizard. (More here if you’re interested).
Basically, part of your brain is based in emotions and part of your brain is based in rational thinking. NYU professor Jonathan Haidt calls this the Rider and the Elephant. The elephant is the emotion part of your brain. The rider is the rational part of your brain that provides direction to the elephant under normal circumstances.
When we’re stressed or stuck in undigested emotions, our elephant takes over. Sometimes it gets out of control and tramples the forest. Do you ever get so angry that you know what you’re saying or thinking is not rational, but you can’t help it? That’s your elephant rampaging.
I’ve been asking myself, how do we acknowledge and use the rage we’re feeling right now without our elephants destroying the forest? How do we digest and process our rage?
We give our riders tools to help.
For example:
Let yourself be angry. I am communicating and deeply feeling my rage. I’m sitting with it. I am not pushing it away.
Find the other feelings under your rage and let them flow. Under my rage is sorrow and I am inviting myself to cry. This helps me complete the stress cycle.
If you are tired, rest. A lot. Way more than you think you “should”. Do not try to push through.
Use self-compassion. I do not beat myself up for being angry or unable to focus or tired. I am human. Humans sometimes feel rage or are tired. White supremacist insurrectionists tried to overturn our democratic election. Of course I am angry and tired. That is a natural and human response.
Double down on routines that help you. I know the routines that strengthen my rider: sleep, mindfulness, exercise, eating food that nourishes me, processing by writing and talking. I am blocking time to do those things.
Giving my rider tools also gives my rage boundaries. Those boundaries also allow me to be clear-eyed enough to understand the amount of work our country needs to do, and to recommit myself to it once I’ve digested this rage a bit more. They also keep me from staying stuck in this place, frozen by undigested rage and sadness. We need all of these things to move forward and fight for the world we know is possible.