Me, parenting while sitting in a parking lot, talking to bickering kids in the back seat:
“Do you guys know what happens to kids who don’t learn to control their mad? They grow up to be adults who have trouble controlling their mad, and that makes their lives a lot more complicated. Being mad isn’t bad, but we need to know how to get it out without hurting someone. Do you understand what I mean?”
My 5 year old: “But we can get tattoos right?”
Me (with eyes closed and forehead resting on the steering wheel): “I honestly haven’t decided how I feel about that yet.”
What is your “mad” telling you?
I stand by what I told my children during that exhausting day in the car. I have seen, both personally and professionally, how mis-handled anger complicates life. We’ve all seen it; there’s the mom in Walmart who has had it “UP to there”, and the high school student who flips a desk. We’ve all seen the road rage guy, the drunk girl in the bar yelling at her partner.
Anger is a human emotion, and it serves a purpose. Without anger in our evolutionary history who knows whether we’d still be here? I also don’t push back on the argument that there’s a LOT to be mad at these days. The world can feel out of control at times, and there’s so much beyond our reach.
Some of us have had poor modeling of anger. I challenge you to think of what you learned about anger as a child. Was it bad, scary, or a tool to get what you wanted (or needed)?
Once you label that internalized meaning, we can start to get curious. That’s right, I said curious - if we continue to judge and try and tame this emotion, it’s like backing the wild animal into the corner.
Lure that tiger out, give it some steak, and start to examine its stripes.
What can your anger teach you?
What else feels out of control that this particular thing is setting you off?
What is this actually about for me right now?
What if I breathe before answering?
Do I need a glass of water?
Am I angry, or am I scared?
When we are children, it’s normative and adaptive to have difficulty regulating our emotions; that’s because we are still learning tools and forming our brain. Now that we are walking around with our fully formed brains, let’s return to basics.
Get curious, examine the meaning of this sensation, and see it all feel a little less complicated.
And sure, go ahead and get the tattoo.
