I want to talk about anger.
Over the last few weeks, I have seen some terrible behaviour from people in Halifax and Dartmouth - yelling at poll workers to the point the police had to be called because your preferred candidate had to drop out of the election over sexual assault allegations; a man who clipped a construction worker with his side mirror who then stopped his vehicle, got out and tackled the construction worker he had just hit to the ground; threatening and harassing people in person, online, on the phone; staging protests outside of the hospital, outside of Dr. Strang’s house; trying to light a nurse’s car on fire, in her driveway, after her shift…
Folks - take a deep breath for a second.
What are you all so angry about?
And don’t say the vaccines. This isn’t about the vaccines. That’s just a focal point for whatever is happening, but not at all the actual issue. So, for just a second, let’s just set that aside and talk about what’s going on, yeah?
Stay with me. I’m gonna drop a bit of science…
Many of you have heard me talk about the stress response and how our thinking impacts it. Things like worrying or catastrophizing can lead to a chronic state of low-grade stress response. This can be problematic because our bodies don’t heal in our stress response, so it can lead to things like chronic injuries and pain.
That doesn’t mean you have to ‘just be happy’. It means learning how to manage our worries and fears so that we create adequate space in our day for activating our para-sympathetic response when we’re dealing with stressful situations. Things like journaling, gratitude practices, meditation, etc., are all useful for creating that calming space for yourself so that your body has time for healing.
Which is all fine and good, but what we’re seeing a lot more often right now is people who are in their Survival Mode response lashing out at others. That’s not something that adding in a gratitude practice or meditation hour is going to solve.
So, as is my custom, I’m going to do a little series here on the difference between our Stress Response and our Survival Mode Response, and what to do to help each of these physiological activation states.
If you think about it, you already know the difference between being stressed out versus switching into Survival Mode. Your stress response is best helped with diet and exercise changes, taking walks in nature, spending some time venting with friends, etc. Your survival mode is a different beast altogether. That’s best helped with retreat, comfort food, and being able to do something mindless like watching a silly sitcom on TV that you are familiar with, already know all of the jokes to, and what’s going to happen. It needs being able to just turn off and veg. It needs calm, quiet, predictable safety.
Problems come in when people who are in Survival Mode mistake it for just being stressed out and don’t give themselves the things they need to deactivate it.
Think about a wounded, cornered animal - know how vicious they can be? That’s Survival Mode Response in a nutshell. All of those people flipping out at poll workers and baristas lately? That’s Survival Mode Response.
Anger outbursts are the hallmark of someone in Survival Mode who feels threatened.
I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating here - our nervous systems are hardwired to skip over our stress response and go straight to Survival Mode for 3 main categories of things - predators, famine, and disease/injury.
You know how I say that thinking about a bear attack and being attacked by a bear are the same stress response, it’s just a matter of how strongly our system is responding? This is what I mean. Being attacked by a bear is our stress response on steroids. It’s the top of the stress response spectrum. That’s Survival Mode. But it can also be activated by things like, oh, let’s say, a giant global pandemic.
Unfortunately, being in a giant, global pandemic means that there are lots of folks automatically in their survival mode. It’s not a choice. It’s biology.
Reasoning isn’t the best when we’re in our survival mode - as evidenced by the number of people falling for conspiracy theories right now. When everything is being labelled by our brains as a threat, it’s difficult to judge what is actually a true threat. And Lord help us should someone disagree with us right now… Cornered animal, meet thing we can vent all of our terror out onto.
So, in the spirit of ‘knowledge is our friend’, let’s talk a bit about what to do if you find yourself raging out at everyone and everything around you over the smallest thing - like being told you have to wear a mask, or that vaccines save lives, or that your local conservative candidate dropped out of the race…
First - get real honest with yourself about where you are mentally and emotionally. You may not feel particularly ‘stressed out’, but if you’re flying off the handle over nothing, you’re in your Survival Mode Response and you need to get a handle on that before you get fired and lose all of your friends.
Second - creating a ‘safe space’ for yourself is going to be key to deactivating Survival Mode. You need a room with a door you can lock, a few hours to yourself, some comfort food, and a light hearted movie or show you have watched a bunch of times.
Seriously. This works.
Know how when you’re sick you just lay on the couch, eat soup, watch tv, and nap a whole bunch? Same idea here. That’s your body in physical Survival Mode doing what it needs to do to recover. We need the same thing to recover from mental/emotional Survival Mode. People just tend not to give it to themselves when they’re in emotional distress because they’re afraid of it being unhealthy. It’s only unhealthy if it goes on too long, same idea with when we do it for physical illness. A few days of emotional recovery and downtime is never a bad thing. So get yourself all comfy cozy and stay there until you either fall asleep or cry your face off. Either one works.
Repeat until you don’t feel like raging out at everyone anymore.
Then, you’re going to do the stuff for the usual stress response - get outside and exercise, see friends, clean your house, journal, whatever gets you some wiggle room back into your nervous system.
You deserve to not be this angry. You deserve some help figuring out how to not get fired or become the next dude in a flip-out video trending online. You deserve to help yourself here and get this under control.
If you are at the edge and you don’t know what to do or what might help - take a moment, do yourself a favour, and drop me a line. I will give you some step-by-step instructions. You are not in this alone and I promise you, whatever you have decided is the problem isn’t and raging out at some innocent victim is NOT going to solve your problems. It’s going to get you into a lot of trouble instead. Trouble you can’t take back.
So, what can you do right now, this minute, to create a safe space for yourself to calm the f-train down? Use those boundaries and make yourself a priority. Don’t let yourself get to the place where flipping out is your only option. You deserve to be treated better than that - by you. Friends don’t let friends make an ass of themselves. Be that friend to yourself right now.
So go do that right now. Take care of you first, and then let me know how that works out. We’ll talk about next steps later. For right now, get yourself feeling real safe. You’ll be amazed how many things you’re sure are the REAL problem aren’t as soon as you get Survival Mode deactivated.
Til next time, folks - stay safe and make good choices.