TRAUMA DAYS: FOXTROT
Trauma Anger and Life Anger
Anger can mean so many different things. It can mean different things by the way it is expressed and it can mean different things by the way it originates. Anger can come out in different ways and it can come from different places -and yet sometimes we don't make that distinction. Being a man who's angry can be very different from being a woman who's angry. Being angry in sport can be very different from being angry in the workplace. Being angry in some social backgrounds is a badge of honour and yet, in other social backgrounds, it is something to be ashamed of- or even humiliated because of. Being angry when we are young is interpreted differently to being angry when we are old.
Emergency response is an environment where there is a lot of exposure to other people’s suffering and relentless stress (albeit necessary stress sometimes). Policing (and perhaps the military) is an environment where other people's anger can manifest itself as a target on your head. Sometimes we can feel that we are the recipients of other people's anger when things in the world go wrong.
So, what do we do with all this anger? Where does it go? Or perhaps more realistically the question is, how does trying to ignore it work out for us?
Anger has always been a bad word in my mind but I'm starting to become a little less resistant to it and more inquisitive, since I learned that ignoring it in ourselves and in other people does not make it go away. I have to admit, I probably do have a fear of anger - of my own, but mainly of others’. Working in Emergency Response, we often deal with the outcome of others’ aggression. In Policing, we deal with other people's anger pretty much on a daily basis, whether this be the violent expression of offenders’ discontent, the sense of injustice experienced by victims of crime, or indeed by society’s contempt for being held to account for their own wrongdoings by people who they refuse to accept are also human (police). Having worked in hostile environments ranging from negotiating between police local authorities and the Gypsy Traveller community to developing programmes to prevent violent extremism, I have seen folks work under extreme stress to manage social and cultural anger right in front of their faces in critical situations – often with a long rolling boil. Response officers, call takers and firearms officers are to name but a few police roles where being confronted with others’ anger has to become a part of their daily decision making.
We can see the dealing with others’ anger is part of the terrain.
But, what happens when we feel this anger arising from within us?
‘Dealing with angry members of the public’ is a very familiar measure for workplace stress. It was interesting to see -even in the very early days of trauma research (undertaken by The University of Cambridge thanks to the funding of the then Police Dependants’ Trust, now Police Care UK)- that this did not feature in the most common working conditions that were associated with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in policing. A plausible explanation for this is simply that police officers adjust to the fact that they will have to deal with angry members of the public all the time. We know from other research -ranging from neuroscientific investigations to social studies- that policing inevitably means that brains and behaviour adapt to what the job throws at us. But no one ever really talks about our anger.
‘Irritability’ is a key feature of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is also a commonly accepted characteristic of a burned-out cop as portrayed in contemporary media ranging from The Sweeney to Inspector Morse, Luther and beyond; probably ad infinitum).
Recently, I have been working quite closely with a small number of forces to explore two less well understood experiences within policing: being under investigation and retiring. There seems to be some parallels in how these experiences change how we feel about ourselves and our identity, and how they determine where we think we stand in relation to the institution we thought once held us so close. It seems that with both experiences, there is a form of anger that morphs over time with its peaks and troughs, its quiet rumbles and its surges and its softening. Anger may be experienced as high-volume outrage or more subtle resentment, its disguise being betrayed by unabating irritability, ready to blow at any time. Whether it’s obvious or illusive, it does seem to persist some. I’d like to find out more to support those who know this anger is there and who perhaps want to work with it a little more smartly.
So, what's wrong with a bit of anger? If it's justified, then why do we condemn it or try to suppress it? Well, if we have been in Emergency Response and Policing, other people's expression of anger has usually meant more (or harder) work for us. If we have come from backgrounds where anger was expressed as violence or drove psychologically damaging behaviour on behalf of our caregivers, then we will also be loathed to express it willingly or call it out for what it is. Sometimes, it may even make us recoil when we experience it in others. There may be good reason to recoil (as I have learned the hard way before) but there may also be value in giving it some distance and looking at it objectively for a bit. Its all too easy to take responsibility for others’ anger, when it might be little to do with us at all.
It is very rare that there is a feeling of anger without a sense of injustice. Usually, when we are angry, there is some moral value within us that we feel is violated by someone else’s action. We may not express that moral code when the anger comes out - but that does not mean that this is not the inherent driver within us. This is important to recognise, because while society does tend to condemn anger, to ridicule it, and to see it as another person’s weakness or failing, and also while some of us instantly retreat from it – some of it may well be originating from a place of virtue. The problem is that expressions of anger can be unnecessarily hurtful for those around us. Anger can instigate fear in others and thereby inflict suffering on people who simply do not deserve it and who just happened to be in the way- in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Often, this is often people closest to us all those whom we care most about.
So, it may be that we have every right to feel angry but with that, we have every responsibility to do it well. Especially if we are with people who care about us.
But, this isn't just a call for people to be nice. Sometimes, there are moments where just being nice is not going to cut it. There are times where anger can teach us something about ourselves or about other people. There are times when righteous anger is the only thing to motivate us into action to do good. In these cases, we're going to need to tune into that anger and give it some respect. But when we do that, we should not be at its mercy. Nor should we let others be at ours.
So what to do?
We own it. Look at it. Let it come out of the body first and then come out as words and actions.
I would say the first thing to do is it knowledge the feeling of anger in your body. Anger activates in the body in a similar way to fear, insofar as it works on the basis of threat perception. So, we have our heart rate increase, our blood pressure raise, our blood sugar get eaten up, our muscles tense with a surge of agitation willingness to move and act. When our brain is in this mode (with our amygdala activated), our ability to make decisions and think compassionately (in our prefrontal cortex), to verbalise (using our language centres) and contextualise our experience and emotions (with our hippocampus and limbic system) is compromised. We need to physically reset the stress response as soon as possible before making decisions and attempting communication with others. This can be a simple as activating the parasympathetic nervous system with a series of long exhalations (breathing out to the count of 6, four times) or expending the energy through physical exertion and then grounding ourselves.
Once all physical activation has settled, we are then in a better position to ascertain if this anger is justified in such a way as to require restorative action. If our anger is perhaps justifiable merely because something is understandably irritating, disappointing or causing resentment then we have a choice to express and let it go. If we can see that our anger is disproportionate to its trigger, we can (without judgement of ourselves) gently turn it down a notch and see how we feel. This could be down to tiredness, stress, pain, our diet or just a bad day…
However, it may be that we realise that the anger we are expressing may be disproportionate because there is something that is quieter and deeper inside of us that has disappointed or upset us -and that we are not quite ready to accept.
It may be that there is a longer-term resentment or frustration that we don't want to face quite yet and that we have been managing to ignore, hoping that it might go away or resolve itself in time. These more quiet frustrations are perhaps the more dangerous. The loud ones get our attention, attract the support of others indignation and can cultivate an impression of strength. The quiet ones make us doubt ourselves, feel different from other people and threaten our sense of self-reliance. It might be these crackling flames of anger burn us with deeper scars, the longer we leave them. And, like with our fears and traumas, sometimes it is only when we look at them directly, that they are smaller and more manageable than we thought -and can even come from a place of wisdom and self-compassion, if we look at them close enough.
Regardless of how close we choose to look at anger, or whether we choose to act on it or let it go some, it is important that we remember that we do none of this in isolation. We might think that we are keeping everything to ourselves in protecting other people from the anger we feel inside. But the chances are, other humans know what it is like to feel it too- or just know us. It might not be easy for others to sense anger in someone they love and to address it with these, for fear of making the situation worse. The best that we can do is to be as honest as we can about what makes it difficult to be human sometimes. If we let anger force us into isolation (either through shame of it or fear of it) then we only become more vulnerable to whatever upset us in the first place. If we understand that anger is a feeling, a universal feeling that anyone can feel at any given time, if we take it less personally, then we have a chance for it to help us build resilience.
If we see it as something ‘only ourselves will ever understand’, try to bury it, deny it or justify as we push others away or blame them for it, we will simply find ourselves alone.
And that would be a crying shame. Because what makes us angry also makes us human. And what makes us human brings us together.