When Anger Becomes A Weapon

This past Sunday, my son Alex and I were getting out of our car in the driveway. It was mid-day, and the beautiful sunny day was suddenly interrupted by the skidding of tires and the eruption of a man with a loud voice at the intersection near our house.

The man was screaming at the driver in front of him, as they were stopped at a red light. Periodically, people display road rage in the most inappropriate places (is there ever an appropriate place for road rage?), and this was one of those moments. The poor man in the white car in front of this screaming man was trapped between a road rager and a red light. He had nowhere to go until the light changed.

The angry man got out of his car, slammed his door shut and taunted the man in front of him, "I dare you. Put it up. Put it up." The entrapped driver did his best to ignore the raging, fist wielding man behind him, and thanks to good luck, the light changed and he drove away.

Unsatisfied by his first encounter, our road raging protaganist pulled his car over, blocking the car in back of him, and went at him. I could not hear his initial screamings, but could feel the venom and contempt in whatever he uttered. The man in back of him, driving a green truck, yelled back, telling him to "shut up."

This only further inflamed the road rager, and he got out of his car, once again, and said, "I dare you. If you were a REAL man, you'd fight me." He said many other things, which I refrain from printing in this blog, including racist and sexist comments, a fine selection of swears and put downs, and about everything he could drag in to taunt the man behind him to engage in a fist fight. He then got back in his car.

The man in the green truck refused to take the bait, commenting that he would be put back in jail if he gave this man what he was asking for. The road rager chose to take this as fuel to his fire and then started verbally assaulting the man behind him about why he might have been in jail before and how worthless he must be to have ever been in jail. He got out of the car a second time, this time approaching the driver's window with his fists, and I am very impressed at the self-control the green truck's driver exercised in the face of this very direct threat.

Finally, the light turned green again, and the man in the green truck was spared further psychological abuse. The road rager decided he'd had his fill of raging at other drivers, got in his car, turned around awkwardly, and started driving down the street our driveway is on. I walked closer to the edge of the driveway to get a look at this man who felt such a need to verbally assault and taunt other drivers--just because they were there. I was a bit afraid myself, that if he saw I was watching, he might come after me with a vengeance. I tried to be inconspicous, hiding in the shrubs a bit, and he drove by.

All I could say was, "wow!"

Anger is a primal human emotion, and being able to feel and express appropriate anger is very important for defining our boundaries, defending our position when under attack, and having a sense of entitlement to take up space, have a voice or be treated with respect. Rage is different than anger, and most often appears when someone's boundaries have been violated and there is the need to "redraw the line" back, further away from the intruded upon or wounded party.

The image of having a neighbor throw their trash across the fence into your yard, and your politely, yet firmly, taking the trash and returning it to the source, is a healthy expression of anger. Anger need not be violent. Anger need not be cruel. Anger need not involve verbally hurtful statements. Anger can be clean, grounded and contained and deliver its message elegantly and even respectfully.

When anger becomes a weapon, as it was for the road rager at the intersection near my house, the person doing the raging is often taking a deep hurt from past experience and projecting it forth into the present. Sitting on a raging volcano, the slightest provocation unleashes the emotional lava which simmers just under the surface much if not all of the time. The rager does not think about the implications of his/her behavior on his/her target. The rager does not think about the consequences of his/her action. The rager just spews his emotional lava with great intensity, as though purging himself of a hot potato, without making the connection between the source of this anger and the incident in the here and now.

While the road raging man could greatly benefit from therapy, introspection and some anger management tools, I am afraid he is unlikely to encounter them unless he ends up in jail after "going off" on another innocent person at the wrong time. Would the road rager have behaved the same way in front of a police officer? Or is he smart enough to know that then he would likely be held accountable for his conduct and stopped?

Uncontained anger, sadly, is a weapon that is passed on from "victim" to "victim" in an unconscious chain of actions. Pain brings more pain. Victim becomes victimizer. Until one's wounds are held, honored and explored safely in a healing setting, it is very hard to put the "weapon" down.

I hope the road rager one day finds a healing place. But until then, I wouldn't want to be in front of him or in back of him at a traffic light!

The Power of the Heart and Neural Buddhism

Today, I chaperoned my 14 year old son, Alex's, Coming of Age class on a field trip to the Shambhala Meditation Center in Brookline, MA. In the Coming of Age program, the kids spend a year doing community service, learning about different faiths and belief systems, take a class about relationships, love, intimacy and sexuality, work with a same gender mentor, and write a statement of their own beliefs and values (a credo) for the graduation ceremony at the end of the year. Today's field trip was a journey into Buddhist practice.

In an interesting confluence of events (or what we can call synchronicity), my friend Steven Otero asked me if I had heard of "neurobuddhism." My response was initially, "no," but within a matter of moments, I had googled the term and quickly started getting up to speed about this interesting thread that might be injecting some spirituality into the hard core materialism of brain science.

I was fortunate enough to come across a wonderful essay by NY Times Op-Ed columnist, David Brooks, dated May 13 2008 and entitled, "The Neural Buddhists." One section of the article grabbed my attention. Having been a vocal advocate and educator for the literal power of the heart, since the heart generates the strongest electromagnetic field in the body, and heart waves can entrain brain waves, some of the sentiments of neurobuddhism, as Brooks explained it, seem to speak of properties I associate with "the power of the heart."

Brooks writes, "First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships."
In a workshop, a support group or even a business meeting, our heart fields reflect a dance of "the dynamic process of relationships," even without our conscious knowledge that this is actually taking place. In spite of the many way we feel isolated in today's compartmentalized world, when we are to face with others, our hearts are wired to participate in a dynamic relational dance. Even if intellectually, we may feel alone, when gathered in a real-time group, our hearts know we are interconnected and not alone.

"Second," continues Brooks, "underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions." Qualities of heart transcend culture, geography and religion. What the heart knows to be true is very basic and human. Loving one another, respecting the natural world and caring for our children are core to our cardiac fiber and our emotional DNA. While religions can get us into political battles, heart-deep values can bridge most any divide.

"Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when the transcend boundaries and overflow with love," adds Brooks. This is the very experience I create in heart-based workshops, be they "healing the traumatized heart," "healing and nurturing the heart," "keeping the vital heart" or even "integrating sexuality and spirituality.
When our heartfields interact, we create a profound, deep and powerful container, where healing is exponential to what we could do just 1-on-1.

When we learn to slow down and focus through the heart (which is its own form of meditation, and perhaps a variation of the Buddhist practice we were guided through today), we are present to ourselves and others, and the moment's experiences and sensations flow through us with ease.
We lose the limitations of our often-busy and ever-thinking mind. We feel the energy of those gathered around us. There is a spiritual richness in the air that we can both breathe in and often touch.

If we proceed to Brooks' fourth point, "God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is," we could say that journeying deep into the heart allows us a sacred, God-full experience, and a sense of interconnection with all that is.
The nature of the heart is pure, spiritual and sacred. The energy of love is universal energy generated and received by the heart.

Often, people have asked me if my work as a heart-centered body psychotherapist wears me out. I have always answered, "No!" Working from a heart space is actually nourishing, enlivening and inspiring. Call it a kind of living meditation-- a relational meditation in the moment and over time. Even when someone's heart space is blocked or inaccessible due to trauma and the anger or wall that often protect the traumatized heart, the act of creating the emotional safety to let the person open and heal, is itself a sacred act.

I would be willing to bet that is a research scientist studied the brain wave patterns that took place between therapist and client doing heart work, they would find some very interesting data that helped bridge the gap between science and spirituality.