An Adult Guide to Anger Management
Taking on our inner rage
You’re driving in the parking lot at the mall, and someone snakes you for that cherry spot by the entrance. Everywhere you go, there’s an endless line, made worse by spending more time in traffic than you planned for. You have a deadline to make at work, and someone pulls you away for a different, unrelated task. A customer yells at you at work.
What do we do when we’re confronted with frustration, incompetence, or just plain innocent mistakes? Do we punish others for their mistakes? Do we ruminate about how we would punish others if we only had the power to do so? Do we curse the other drivers as we drive alone in our cars? Where did we learn this?
We live in what looks like an agitated culture. Our civic culture is about law and order, but in the last decade, that has taken a decidedly less tolerant turn. A noticeable fraction of our society is starting to look for authoritarian solutions to social and economic problems. Our pop culture in TV and movie drama and action films is tit for tat, aggression, reprisal, melees, and in the end, the bad guy is summarily dispatched.
If a hammer is our only tool, then every problem begins to look like a nail.
