Yesterday, I got mad at my partner Rebecca. A small thing triggered my anger. Really small. She accused me of throwing away a ginger root she had tucked away in our Decorah freezer. I am a thrower but I don’t throw out her stuff, anymore, so I was momentarily hurt and angry. To put it in Mr. Rogers’ terms, what did I do with the mad I felt? I accepted its familiar feel, felt it, and expressed it as in “I am angry because I haven’t thrown any of your stuff away for at least four years.” Two minutes later my anger exited and I went off to the grocery store to buy a ginger root.

Accept, feel, and express my anger seems so simple and automatic to me now. But it wasn’t always so.

An emotional illiterate

I grew up an emotional illiterate. My parents and schools taught me how to read and write and think but not what to do with emotions, especially negative emotions, particularly anger. My own anger scared me. I remember once when I was around eight slugging my six year old brother Peter over and over and being scared of what seemed my bottomless fury. The anger of others scared me even more. When my mother threw the silent treatment at me for something I had done wrong, I would always think, “would it ever end?”

I never SAW my father angry. But on at least three occasions I did HEAR his anger and my moms’. Each time was an early Saturday morning when I was awakened in the second floor bedroom I shared with Peter by voices coming from the first floor kitchen. The voices were impassioned, resentful, and inflamed and they were coming from my parents. I thought, “maybe like mine their anger was bottomless or endless.”

Of course, it was neither of those things. But I didn’t know that at the time. No one ever told me it was OK to be angry. Or that like any other emotion anger would pass through and not set up camp, if only I would let it. Neither my father nor my mother ever talked about anger probably because their parents never talked about it with them. I don’t recall teachers or friends ever saying anything about feelings. And Mr. Rogers’ “What do you do with the mad that you feel would not be available until my son’s generation.

So I was on my own regarding feelings until I was about 30 and read a newspaper article that included this quote by a college president:

I would picture on the clay targets during a skeet shoot session the faces of students and faculty who gave me the most the trouble.

A serendipitous encounter

The article chronicled how this guy guided his emotions while leading an American college in the sixties and seventies, during a time of social unrest on campuses and in America. I met this man’s story when I was struggling with my own emotions, especially anxiety. I would eventually learn my anxiety was caused by my refusal to accept negative feelings. The quote above set me on a decades-long journey toward emotional literacy. I was like the horse, ready to drink the water.

I copied the college president’s words on a card and carried it around for weeks. “It’s OK to be angry,” I thought. WOW. Anger doesn’t make me a bad person. OK. But what do I do with “the mad that I feel?” Maybe I can find an outlet where my anger can be worked through so that I don’t act it out or keep it tucked inside. Shooting at clay pigeons was not my thing. But golf was. So one day I went to the local golf range and let my frustrations flow through my body and club onto that innocent white ball. Just a guy on the golf range, hitting ball after ball after ball.

Accept, feel and express

Over the years I have become more comfortable with negative feelings, my own and those of others. My unknowing college president tutor taught me to accept, feel, and express them in acceptable ways. Sometimes this means working through these feelings in private, without burdening others. This is the skeet-shooting and golf-range approach. At other times, it requires simply stating how I feel, without drama or rancor, the ginger-root approach.

I have learned that no feeling is to be feared or ignored. If treated with respect, it will behave and depart.

And I am always looking for examples of how others handle their anger. Who do you think THIS former president was picturing on those clay pigeons?