On my way into work this week I witnessed two drivers engage in a scary road rage dual.  They were driving erratically, cutting each other off and using “expressive gestures,” shall we say.  It was upsetting to watch as it put them, and all of us around them, in danger.  All for what, I thought?  Being slighted by someone passing you?  Or merging ahead of you?  But then I thought about the old saying, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.  I’ve hurled a few rocks myself, if I’m totally honest. And who hasn’t?  In telling my tale from the morning commute to co-workers, we all noticed how easily people lose their cool.   Did it start in the pandemic, people so isolated and stressed?  Is it the political and economic climate?  Regardless of the cause, we all could use some help with our reactions when we get upset with someone.  Especially with the people we love the most, who we tend to snap at the most as well.  So today, I’m reviewing the 5 R’s of Anger Management (from Yolanda Briscoe, PsyD), as it’s a helpful reminder that HOW we choose to respond to people is totally within our control, no matter the provocation.

Anger itself is not a bad thing, in fact, it can be really healthy.  Anger is a natural feeling in response to a perceived threat.  But often our first response, created out of our fight/flight/freeze reaction, will be actions disconnected from the thinking part of our brain.  In our quick reactions, we tend to act (including texting and emailing) without thinking through the consequences.  Most arguments or confrontations are a result of the escalation of initial reactions.  So the first R is Reaction.  Practice stopping yourself from that first reaction, knowing that NO reaction IS a reaction.  Doing nothing IS doing something.  You are preventing yourself from doing something impulsive that you may indeed regret.

The next R is Retreat.  Practice slowing things down and using breathing or counting, or whatever works, to step back and calm down.  Reducing the sense of immediate threat will help you re-engage your frontal lobe to assess the current situation more accurately.  Sometimes this may actually mean asking the other person for a bit of time to calm down.  Then Re-evaluate.  Try to be curious.  What was it that activated you?  What was behind the anger, perhaps sadness, hurt, fear, anxiety?  Ask yourself, what was it that you wanted/needed that you didn’t think you got?  Also, be honest with yourself about your potential role in the conflict.  Did you make things worse, lash out out of frustration?  Were you trying to control something/someone that you in fact, can’t/shouldn’t control?  Understanding your role can really be a powerful tool in resolving stressful interactions.  

Once you’ve gotten a better understanding of the situation, it’s time to Regroup.  You get to decide how to work with your emotions.  You can journal, use humor, talk compassionately to yourself, use mindfulness, or ask for support from others.  Praise yourself for not letting yourself get hooked by a baited situation.  Once you have thought through what you want to say or do while in a reasonable state of mind and with compassion, you can Return.  Approach the person involved but avoid blaming, attacking, or reengaging in a power struggle.  Use “I” statements to share your experience and what you both regret and desire as a way to initiate a connection to repair a broken trust.

It seems so simple and, yet, it’s so hard!  But like everything else, we can learn to slow ourselves down and develop new habits.  Research shows that learning to control our reactions offers a lot of benefits, including reducing stress, improving relationships, and enhancing our overall well being.  We impact our health by lowering blood pressure, reducing headaches and decreasing our risk of heart conditions.  For our mental health, anger management skills teach us how to communicate and ask for what we need in healthy ways.  We reduce the incidents of depression, anxiety and other emotional problems.  Overall, we improve our sense of ourselves, feeling proud and confident in how we handle our lives and our relationships.  This does in fact spread to both work and personal relationships.  Other people learn to trust us, and we can have trust in ourselves.

We all know the shameful feeling when you have to go back and apologize to someone for doing or saying something you regret.  It’s such a relief when we can prevent an action or statement, rather than having to clean up our reactive mess.  And maybe that’s a tool in itself!  Before you react to someone, imagine having to explain yourself later.  Will you feel proud of yourself or will you feel embarrassed?  The 5 R’s are a great reminder of our ability to regulate our responses and be the person we want to be. As the great psychologist and human rights advocate, Victor Frankl wrote:  Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.  Ok, so maybe SPACE is an S word, not an R word. But managing our anger well can certainly lead to REJOICING.

This post is a little personal, so be warned.   It’s also a little embarrassing.  I found myself a bit cranky this week and I wasn’t sure why. Then I was reading something that had to do with patience, which got me thinking, leading to an “aha” moment.  I suddenly had a good sense of what was getting under my skin.  My own ego!  I share my story with you in the hope that some of you can relate!

You see, there’s an online journal I like that features personal essays (they were kind enough to publish something I’d written years ago).  It had shut down for a while, but recently announced that it was back and was featuring an essay contest.  I was happy to hear of its revival, so I thought maybe I’d submit something, my entry fee and essay being a good show of support.  I’d been mulling around ideas for a topic, but nothing was coming.  Then one night, of course at 2 am, I had a few thoughts.  They were swirling around my brain keeping me from going back to sleep, so I got up to write them down, thinking I would slip back into bed a free woman.  Well, I started to write, and before I knew it, it was 5 am and I’d written an entire piece.  The words just came out of me and I was truly in that awesome state they call “flow.”  It was a total surprise!

A few days later I got up the courage to read what I’d written to see if it made any sense.  I actually was pleased that it did, and, in fact, it expressed something really important and powerful for me. It was about an experience related to my work that I felt strongly about, but hadn’t really put words to until then.  I knew the essay needed a lot of editing, but it was something I felt good about having written.  The topic was not really a great match for the contest, being so much about my work, but it was complete and would serve the purpose of showing support well enough.  Thanks to my brother, a great editor, I finished it, formatted it as requested, and along with my paypal payment, hit “Send.”

Then the month went by and I’d pretty much forgotten about it, except for telling a few people about my midnight writing surprise and feeling good about entering.  When my husband and friends offered the compliment that I might be a finalist, I really downplayed it.  That was not why I entered, I told them, which was true.  The topic and tone of the essay was not the right fit for the journal, I explained, which was also very true. It did mean a lot to me, though, that they thought I could be a finalist. And that was enough for me.

Or so I thought.

Enter the cranky mood.  The proposed deadline for announcing the finalists was approaching, “by May1st,” it said. My husband was sweet enough to ask a few times if I’d heard anything.  I checked the website, nothing yet.  They still had a few days and I kept telling myself it was ridiculous to even think about it.  But then I was irritable and annoyed at little things.  I was generally in a bit of a funk.  What was up with me, I wondered?  Then the “aha” moment about patience struck.  I was annoyed that they had kept us waiting in announcing the finalists, yes.  But even more so, I was annoyed and impatient with myself, as deep down I had a glimmer of hope that maybe I could be one of them.  The little voice inside my heart would have been thrilled to have had my essay be chosen, but I was also too embarrassed to admit it. This inner conflict around my pride and my vulnerability was causing me tension and shame.

Okay, I thought, this is an opportunity for growth (maybe I didn’t say exactly that to myself).  I need to be okay with being vulnerable by putting myself out there.  How many other people do I know who take risks and get hurt?  I admire them. How many people do I encourage and support to accept a challenge to be vulnerable?  It’s ok to want to be a winner!  It’s ok to want to have something that means a lot to me be validated!  It does not take away from the process of doing it or the joy I had in completing it. In fact it added to it.

So now, I’m living my lesson on patience.  Patience doesn’t mean liking the fact that you have to wait, it means tolerating it.  Even maybe learning from it. For me, that means opening up to allow myself to feel excited about the possibility I COULD be a finalist, even if it’s improbable.  I haven’t checked the website again.  Maybe I’ll be ready soon enough.  But for now,  I’m patting myself on the back for being the “writer in the arena.”  Reminding myself of Roosevelt’s words that “it’s not the critic who counts.”  Even the inner critic.