This February I walked with someone who noticed an unconscious youth and identified it as alcohol poisoning--when he kept walking by and justified leaving the young man behind with a cynical remark ("survival of the fittest"), and onlookers also left the kid, I became extremely angry--relentlessly angry. It was around then that I realized a lot of the people I was around also kept a similarly apathetic attitude.
I since adapted a framework used for intervening with bias (e.g. racism/unconscious bias) in professional environments (initially developed by Cook Ross) and applied it to doing something a bit better with that anger than trying to destroy things or getting myself into accidents with my rage:
1. Identify
Whatever makes you angry/how it impacted you--(this is a first step where you can take out the anger and feel it through unbridled) -- express it in a way that safely calls attention to the issue, while remaining consistent with your ethical and moral values.
2. Inquire
Ask/humanize/try to empathize with the cause of anger--talk to someone, or investigate (this is where grounding again with reason becomes critical, and disarming the situation with genuine curiosity)
3. Innovate
Create ways to handle & prevent future situations from happening, if appropriate & feasible, invite the person who angered you to come up with a solution together(this is when peacemaking/peacebuilding happens by co-creating solutions)
Since then, I've learned it's exactly what many people do to end abusive behavior or relationships (minus the inquiry step, depending on the situation), especially the subtler kinds of abusive behavior:
For recognizing behaviors that tend to go under-the-radar but eventually don't sit well:
http://coda.org/index.cfm/meeting-documents/patterns-of-recovery/ or (printable version)
For a guide on how to intervene with those tendencies minus a lot of junk psychology (on using anger to inform how to end a codependent relationship, not necessarily ending all relations with the individual):
http://mindfulconstruct.com/2010/07/09/end-a-codependent-relationship-the-healthy-way/
I've yet to synthesize the following article into the above frameworks, though I believe it's worth posting because it was thoughtfully created and includes in-process guides that appear to be written from experience (e.g. don't exhaust your mind + body at the same time when channeling anger):
http://www.fastcompany.com/3048912/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/how-anger-can-help-unlock-your-creativity
I since adapted a framework used for intervening with bias (e.g. racism/unconscious bias) in professional environments (initially developed by Cook Ross) and applied it to doing something a bit better with that anger than trying to destroy things or getting myself into accidents with my rage:
1. Identify
Whatever makes you angry/how it impacted you--(this is a first step where you can take out the anger and feel it through unbridled) -- express it in a way that safely calls attention to the issue, while remaining consistent with your ethical and moral values.
2. Inquire
Ask/humanize/try to empathize with the cause of anger--talk to someone, or investigate (this is where grounding again with reason becomes critical, and disarming the situation with genuine curiosity)
3. Innovate
Create ways to handle & prevent future situations from happening, if appropriate & feasible, invite the person who angered you to come up with a solution together(this is when peacemaking/peacebuilding happens by co-creating solutions)
Since then, I've learned it's exactly what many people do to end abusive behavior or relationships (minus the inquiry step, depending on the situation), especially the subtler kinds of abusive behavior:
For recognizing behaviors that tend to go under-the-radar but eventually don't sit well:
http://coda.org/index.cfm/meeting-documents/patterns-of-recovery/ or (printable version)
For a guide on how to intervene with those tendencies minus a lot of junk psychology (on using anger to inform how to end a codependent relationship, not necessarily ending all relations with the individual):
http://mindfulconstruct.com/2010/07/09/end-a-codependent-relationship-the-healthy-way/
I've yet to synthesize the following article into the above frameworks, though I believe it's worth posting because it was thoughtfully created and includes in-process guides that appear to be written from experience (e.g. don't exhaust your mind + body at the same time when channeling anger):
http://www.fastcompany.com/3048912/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/how-anger-can-help-unlock-your-creativity
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