I'm willing to bet you or someone you know has anger issues. Learn about my journey from anger to peace and the strategies I used to deal with anger effectively. Please note: This episode contains personal stories about racism in the classroom and bullying that some people may find troubling. To skip this content, please refer to the exact time stamps in the episode notes listed in bold font.
Dealing With Anger Episode 2
Marshea Pratt: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello everyone. You are listening to the Black and Brave Podcast, a podcast for those who truly want to be set free from the things that hold them back. My name is Marshea Pratt and I'm your host. Today's episode will be about dealing with anger. We've all had to face it at one time or another. It is my hope that this episode will empower you and encourage you. Enjoy.
[00:00:23] Anger can be such a powerful force in our lives. And, in thinking about my childhood and my adulthood, and how anger has impacted my life, I just really feel compelled to share my story with all of you.
[00:00:35] I went from a very angry child to a very peaceful adult. And, that took time and work. My struggles certainly aren't better or worse than anyone else. They're just my own unique experiences. But, I think they will resonate with you. So let's start where it all began.
[00:00:52] I feel like anger kind of creeped up on me, little by little, during my childhood. I grew up in a town that definitely didn't have very many Black people. [00:01:00]At my school, it was just me and one other Black boy. That was it. It was probably kindergarten. when I had my very first experience with racism.
[00:01:08] At first, it was just hurtful things that kids said verbally to me because, you know, kids can be mean and they don't care. They just say whatever is on their mind. But, I remember very specifically, there was this one day. A White boy said some super racist things to me and then he grabbed this big handful of dirt and threw it in my face and some of it got in my hair.
[00:01:30] And you need to know, when you are dealing with a Black woman, a Black girl.... don't you ever, ever, ever, EVER touch her hair; throw things in her hair because she will go off! And, I certainly did that with this boy. I got into a huge fight. This kid was on the ground. My anger was at a 10. And it continued like that, from that day forward.
[00:01:50] Fast forward to third grade. And, I can't remember the name of this particular teacher, but I do remember that on a regular basis, she would do very humiliating things to [00:02:00] me. One example of that is, on a particular day, she called my name and told me to go up to the front of the class. I walked up to the front of the class and I turned around and faced everyone. A sea full of White faces. And my teacher points to me, looks at all the other students and says, "Do you see this girl? This is an example of stupidity. I don't know why they let these people in this school. And I'm so sorry that you have to be in class with this girl. The best I can do is move her to the back of the room so at least you don't have to look at her while you're trying to learn." And, she proceeded to take my desk and move it from the front of the classroom all the way to the back. This didn't happen like back in the 50's or something. This is modern history of what happened to me.
[00:02:44]And she would do all kinds of HUMILIATING stuff like that to me, on a regular basis. Trust and believe, I was the smartest kid in this class and she had the nerve to argue with the principal that I belong in a REMEDIAL class, simply because I was Black. Even [00:03:00] though I got A's on every single test, she didn't care. She was insistent that no Black person could possibly be smart. It was terrible.
[00:03:08] It just piled on layers and layers of anger inside my heart. Although my mother had to step in and handle that teacher, I was determined to handle those kids. I thought to myself, if I make these kids scared of me, then nobody will ever bother me again. And so whether they had something bad to say to me or not, didn't matter. Even if they looked at me wrong, we were going to fight that day. I got into a lot of fights throughout all my years in school.
[00:03:34] I was just angry all the time. My anger was also deeply personal in my private life. My Mom and Dad divorced when I was really young. He did not treat my mother well . I felt rejected by him. I felt unloved by him and that just piled on yet another layer on top of the anger that I was already feeling inside of me because of all the racist things that were going on at school. Now, granted, I did have a few friends here and there in school who were nice to [00:04:00] me and did try to help me. But, by that time, I wasn't trying to hear what anyone had to say. It just was easier to stay angry. As I got older, I continued to take out my anger on other people .
[00:04:11] Anger was really more like a crutch because I knew if I stopped being angry and really address what was going on with me, I would have to be vulnerable.
[00:04:19] I would have to open up to someone and talk through what I was feeling. Doing that was not an option because I had already tried to be vulnerable with a few people before and they had embarrassed me, shared my personal business with other people and told me to just suck it up and deal with it, which wasn't helpful.
[00:04:34] I wasn't going to put myself through that again. I just decided to keep it all inside. If you looked at me on the outside on the day to day, you could see that something was kind of off or was wrong with me. But you probably couldn't really put your finger on it because I was good at masking it.
[00:04:49]But when someone pushed me to the edge and that light switch flipped in my brain and that anger was triggered or you knew it was about to go down. Emotionally, I was all over the place [00:05:00] and if I wasn't angry, I was incredibly sad. I would spend hours and hours in my room at home with the door shut and the music on.
[00:05:08] I was just trying to escape what was going on with me mentally. I just completely shut down every emotion I had. I just shut off everything and everyone.
[00:05:16] It was super hard to process all that stuff as a kid. I went through a lot of difficult experiences and I literally just didn't have the right coping skills to deal with it. I was going through a lot of changes. My body was changing. I had acne on my face. I was dealing with a lot of racial hatred. I was dealing with the anger towards my father. I had a lot of layers of hurt and pain and resentment just all balled up inside of me. It just kept getting bigger and bigger. It was not a good situation.
[00:05:46] Eventually, I did seek help as an adult and things got better. I want to share some of the things that I learned through that experience.
[00:05:53] First of all, I stopped letting other people define me and label me. I stopped taking the things that [00:06:00] people said about me to heart. Back in the day, I would take everything super personally. . Why would people hate me simply because of the color of my skin. It didn't make sense to me. I just couldn't understand why.
[00:06:11] I just had to work through the feelings that I had and realized that I was prioritizing what other people thought and said about me. Rather than focusing on the truth about who I really was. I was allowing those people who had absolutely no value in my life, toxic people, to define me. It took me down a really dark road mentally. I just wanted it all to stop. I knew that deep down inside, I was not this angry person who was always fighting and being mean to people. Deep down inside, I was just hurt and broken.
[00:06:42] In reality, some people just say stuff to get you upset. They say stuff to be messy, to aggravate you. People will hate on you simply because they have the ability to, and guess what? You have the ability to reject that hate and to embrace the love that the people in your life who really care about you are giving you. I had to [00:07:00] decide I wasn't going to allow those toxic people to manipulate my emotions and my mindset anymore. They didn't deserve that kind of power over me anyway! I was at a point in my life where I took my power back.
[00:07:11] The other thing that made a real big difference for me, was learning some very specific breathing exercises. And I know some of you are sitting back saying, what's the big deal. I breathe every day, in and out. It doesn't do anything for me. You need to know that there is a connection between your mind, body and spirit, through your breathing. Making the time and getting in a space where you can pause to breathe deeply for a few minutes can make all the difference in the world. Just learning to calm down. Bring your heart rate down. Bring your anger down from being on 10 all the way down to one. For some people, that will take awhile, I know firsthand because once I was mad I was mad for the entire day. So, I would spend way more than a few minutes standing in a corner, doing these breathing exercises when I first started. But, over time I saw a [00:08:00] difference in my emotional health.
[00:08:01]Now when I get angry about something- which is rare by the way, because I've been doing these techniques for years- I can go from a 10 to a 1 in a pretty short period of time. I learned that mastering that breath and bringing that peace and synergy between my mind, my body and my spirit to all be on one accord, I'm telling you, that was the secret sauce. I can now make sure that I don't let things rattle me. I don't let things bring me out of my character. I've just made it a practice to really focus and center on my breathing. Some people take it to another level and do full on meditation. If that's something you want to pursue, I would highly encourage it.
[00:08:37] One of the revelations I had during this process is that, a lot of times when I was a kid, I was getting angry, not necessarily with the person in front of me, but what that person represented. For example, I was especially angry when I saw kids at school with their fathers in what I would perceive as a loving relationship. I was resentful that those kids had Dads who really loved them, and I didn't. When [00:09:00] my anger would bubble up, I didn't know how to handle it. Especially when I saw daughters with their fathers, it would really anger me. At that time, I couldn't really figure out why. But I know now, that it was really just a lot of pain and hurt that was manifesting itself as anger. Really recognizing what you're getting angry for in the first place is absolutely crucial as you learn how to diffuse that anger.
[00:09:23] This pandemic, for example, that we are all experiencing together is full of all kinds of traumatic experiences. That pandemic related trauma, just gets piled on top of all the other trauma we've endured during our lives, especially during the childhood portion of our lives. If you are going to get anger under control, being able to recognize and connect that your anger may be tied to some of those things that you have yet to deal with that happened to you or that you witnessed, or both is so important.
[00:09:51] For me, it meant taking a deep dive into my childhood and really examining the different moments in my life where my anger was really at its worst.
[00:09:59] [00:10:00]The common thread of all of it for me was feelings of nonacceptance, feelings of injustice and the feeling of humiliation. Fighting people physically. ,was my way of dealing with the anger. It was a terrible way because it didn't solve anything. It didn't make the anger go away. It was just a temporary band-aid on a giant wound. What was helpful, was recognizing what the triggers were that got me to that point.
[00:10:23] I was finally able to start addressing those feelings and working through our process to attend to those feelings before the anger consumed me. I learned to ask myself four important questions. Sometimes all of these questions apply. Sometimes only a couple of them apply. But, I do run through these questions each time I feel a sense of anger.
[00:10:42] 1. Do I need to ask some clarifying questions in this situation?
[00:10:46]2. Should I just choose to let it go?
[00:10:50] 3. Is it in my best interest to diffuse my anger or act upon it?
[00:10:55] 4. Will I do any harm to myself or others if I become or stay [00:11:00] angry in this moment?
[00:11:01] Let's use a very common example, text messaging. When you're texting people and when they're texting you, you're not able to hear the tone of voice in that message. You aren't able to see the body language or the eye contact. All you have in front of you is words and you're left to interpret those words.
[00:11:18]I could send a text to someone that says, "Do you want to go to lunch today?" And let's just say, I get a text back saying, "No." Well, the challenge with that is when I see that one word, "No", I might perceive it as rude or disrespectful. But, the person who sent it to me is thinking that I just asked a simple "yes" or "no" question that needed a one word answer. And, that's what they gave me. In the meantime, I could be getting all upset and perhaps offended because there are no other clues to help me figure out the real intention behind the message. So, before I decide to take my anger into the stratosphere, I ask a clarifying question.
[00:11:52] In this particular example, I would send another text message in response to "No." and say, "Oh, okay. Is [00:12:00] everything all right?" It's important if you're not sure about something, before you get mad, ask some clarifying questions.
[00:12:06] Similarly, if you know somebody doesn't respond to email very often, but they do respond to text messages. Then, if you have a question that needs an answer, you're not going to send an email. You're going to send a text message, because you know that is the most effective way to communicate with that person. Think about that as you deal with people. Ask those questions. "What is your preferred communication style?" and then utilize that communication method that works best for them. That could really minimize the chances of having any unnecessary arguments or misunderstandings with that individual.
[00:12:38] Another technique that I learned over this process of managing my anger is ... I developed my ability to discern whether people were giving me constructive criticism or if people were just being mean and hateful. In other words, ask yourself, "Are you getting angry because people are just saying mean things? Or, are these people [00:13:00] sharing real truth about you and you just aren't ready to accept that truth? Are you focused more on what the person is saying or how they are saying it to you?"
[00:13:10] In either case, you can practice active listening to deal with the feedback that you're getting from those people. For me, active listening was kind of counterintuitive. It seemed strange to think that way and to speak to people that way. It took some practice. A professional counselor could be great in helping you practice these things and talk through these scenarios. You can utilize active listening and be clear that what you are hearing and the intention behind those words that you are hearing are in alignment.
[00:13:37] But, let's be clear about two really important things on this whole topic of anger.
[00:13:41] 1. Some people in this world are just mean. Point blank, period. If people hate, they're just going to hate and it's up to them to choose to change.
[00:13:49] 2. All anger isn't necessarily bad. It's the behavior that goes along with it and how we respond to situations is where we can get into some trouble.
[00:13:58] A lot of people were [00:14:00] angry about the state of our country. I'm talking about the United States here. Throughout the entire year of 2020, people were really upset about what was going on here. Some people turned anger into positive energy. It motivated them to get active in the fight for social justice. They registered to vote. I mean, we had more people voting in this election than any other previous election. So that anger, in a way, propelled some people forward in their purpose in life. However, on the flip side, some people used their anger about what was going on in our country to do hateful things and to hurt people. That wasn't productive and that wasn't helpful.
[00:14:34] Again, it's not that anger is bad. It's how are we leveraging that anger. What are the consequences of the choices that we are making as we manifest that anger, not only for us, but for those around us?
[00:14:46] If anger is something that you are struggling with, I want to really encourage you to find a way to deal with it. Don't make people just adjust to your attitude. Nobody wants to be around an angry person. No one wants to shelter in place with an angry person. It is [00:15:00] just not a good experience for anybody.
[00:15:02] Maybe not all the techniques that I've given you in this episode are a perfect fit for you. But, it's a place to start. Find the strategies that work well for you so that you can control your anger, rather than it controlling you.
[00:15:15] That's it for today, everyone. This is the Black and Brave podcast. Take care.
Dealing With Anger Episode 2
Marshea Pratt: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello everyone. You are listening to the Black and Brave Podcast, a podcast for those who truly want to be set free from the things that hold them back. My name is Marshea Pratt and I'm your host. Today's episode will be about dealing with anger. We've all had to face it at one time or another. It is my hope that this episode will empower you and encourage you. Enjoy.
[00:00:23] Anger can be such a powerful force in our lives. And, in thinking about my childhood and my adulthood, and how anger has impacted my life, I just really feel compelled to share my story with all of you.
[00:00:35] I went from a very angry child to a very peaceful adult. And, that took time and work. My struggles certainly aren't better or worse than anyone else. They're just my own unique experiences. But, I think they will resonate with you. So let's start where it all began.
[00:00:52] I feel like anger kind of creeped up on me, little by little, during my childhood. I grew up in a town that definitely didn't have very many Black people. [00:01:00]At my school, it was just me and one other Black boy. That was it. It was probably kindergarten. when I had my very first experience with racism.
[00:01:08] At first, it was just hurtful things that kids said verbally to me because, you know, kids can be mean and they don't care. They just say whatever is on their mind. But, I remember very specifically, there was this one day. A White boy said some super racist things to me and then he grabbed this big handful of dirt and threw it in my face and some of it got in my hair.
[00:01:30] And you need to know, when you are dealing with a Black woman, a Black girl.... don't you ever, ever, ever, EVER touch her hair; throw things in her hair because she will go off! And, I certainly did that with this boy. I got into a huge fight. This kid was on the ground. My anger was at a 10. And it continued like that, from that day forward.
[00:01:50] Fast forward to third grade. And, I can't remember the name of this particular teacher, but I do remember that on a regular basis, she would do very humiliating things to [00:02:00] me. One example of that is, on a particular day, she called my name and told me to go up to the front of the class. I walked up to the front of the class and I turned around and faced everyone. A sea full of White faces. And my teacher points to me, looks at all the other students and says, "Do you see this girl? This is an example of stupidity. I don't know why they let these people in this school. And I'm so sorry that you have to be in class with this girl. The best I can do is move her to the back of the room so at least you don't have to look at her while you're trying to learn." And, she proceeded to take my desk and move it from the front of the classroom all the way to the back. This didn't happen like back in the 50's or something. This is modern history of what happened to me.
[00:02:44]And she would do all kinds of HUMILIATING stuff like that to me, on a regular basis. Trust and believe, I was the smartest kid in this class and she had the nerve to argue with the principal that I belong in a REMEDIAL class, simply because I was Black. Even [00:03:00] though I got A's on every single test, she didn't care. She was insistent that no Black person could possibly be smart. It was terrible.
[00:03:08] It just piled on layers and layers of anger inside my heart. Although my mother had to step in and handle that teacher, I was determined to handle those kids. I thought to myself, if I make these kids scared of me, then nobody will ever bother me again. And so whether they had something bad to say to me or not, didn't matter. Even if they looked at me wrong, we were going to fight that day. I got into a lot of fights throughout all my years in school.
[00:03:34] I was just angry all the time. My anger was also deeply personal in my private life. My Mom and Dad divorced when I was really young. He did not treat my mother well . I felt rejected by him. I felt unloved by him and that just piled on yet another layer on top of the anger that I was already feeling inside of me because of all the racist things that were going on at school. Now, granted, I did have a few friends here and there in school who were nice to [00:04:00] me and did try to help me. But, by that time, I wasn't trying to hear what anyone had to say. It just was easier to stay angry. As I got older, I continued to take out my anger on other people .
[00:04:11] Anger was really more like a crutch because I knew if I stopped being angry and really address what was going on with me, I would have to be vulnerable.
[00:04:19] I would have to open up to someone and talk through what I was feeling. Doing that was not an option because I had already tried to be vulnerable with a few people before and they had embarrassed me, shared my personal business with other people and told me to just suck it up and deal with it, which wasn't helpful.
[00:04:34] I wasn't going to put myself through that again. I just decided to keep it all inside. If you looked at me on the outside on the day to day, you could see that something was kind of off or was wrong with me. But you probably couldn't really put your finger on it because I was good at masking it.
[00:04:49]But when someone pushed me to the edge and that light switch flipped in my brain and that anger was triggered or you knew it was about to go down. Emotionally, I was all over the place [00:05:00] and if I wasn't angry, I was incredibly sad. I would spend hours and hours in my room at home with the door shut and the music on.
[00:05:08] I was just trying to escape what was going on with me mentally. I just completely shut down every emotion I had. I just shut off everything and everyone.
[00:05:16] It was super hard to process all that stuff as a kid. I went through a lot of difficult experiences and I literally just didn't have the right coping skills to deal with it. I was going through a lot of changes. My body was changing. I had acne on my face. I was dealing with a lot of racial hatred. I was dealing with the anger towards my father. I had a lot of layers of hurt and pain and resentment just all balled up inside of me. It just kept getting bigger and bigger. It was not a good situation.
[00:05:46] Eventually, I did seek help as an adult and things got better. I want to share some of the things that I learned through that experience.
[00:05:53] First of all, I stopped letting other people define me and label me. I stopped taking the things that [00:06:00] people said about me to heart. Back in the day, I would take everything super personally. . Why would people hate me simply because of the color of my skin. It didn't make sense to me. I just couldn't understand why.
[00:06:11] I just had to work through the feelings that I had and realized that I was prioritizing what other people thought and said about me. Rather than focusing on the truth about who I really was. I was allowing those people who had absolutely no value in my life, toxic people, to define me. It took me down a really dark road mentally. I just wanted it all to stop. I knew that deep down inside, I was not this angry person who was always fighting and being mean to people. Deep down inside, I was just hurt and broken.
[00:06:42] In reality, some people just say stuff to get you upset. They say stuff to be messy, to aggravate you. People will hate on you simply because they have the ability to, and guess what? You have the ability to reject that hate and to embrace the love that the people in your life who really care about you are giving you. I had to [00:07:00] decide I wasn't going to allow those toxic people to manipulate my emotions and my mindset anymore. They didn't deserve that kind of power over me anyway! I was at a point in my life where I took my power back.
[00:07:11] The other thing that made a real big difference for me, was learning some very specific breathing exercises. And I know some of you are sitting back saying, what's the big deal. I breathe every day, in and out. It doesn't do anything for me. You need to know that there is a connection between your mind, body and spirit, through your breathing. Making the time and getting in a space where you can pause to breathe deeply for a few minutes can make all the difference in the world. Just learning to calm down. Bring your heart rate down. Bring your anger down from being on 10 all the way down to one. For some people, that will take awhile, I know firsthand because once I was mad I was mad for the entire day. So, I would spend way more than a few minutes standing in a corner, doing these breathing exercises when I first started. But, over time I saw a [00:08:00] difference in my emotional health.
[00:08:01]Now when I get angry about something- which is rare by the way, because I've been doing these techniques for years- I can go from a 10 to a 1 in a pretty short period of time. I learned that mastering that breath and bringing that peace and synergy between my mind, my body and my spirit to all be on one accord, I'm telling you, that was the secret sauce. I can now make sure that I don't let things rattle me. I don't let things bring me out of my character. I've just made it a practice to really focus and center on my breathing. Some people take it to another level and do full on meditation. If that's something you want to pursue, I would highly encourage it.
[00:08:37] One of the revelations I had during this process is that, a lot of times when I was a kid, I was getting angry, not necessarily with the person in front of me, but what that person represented. For example, I was especially angry when I saw kids at school with their fathers in what I would perceive as a loving relationship. I was resentful that those kids had Dads who really loved them, and I didn't. When [00:09:00] my anger would bubble up, I didn't know how to handle it. Especially when I saw daughters with their fathers, it would really anger me. At that time, I couldn't really figure out why. But I know now, that it was really just a lot of pain and hurt that was manifesting itself as anger. Really recognizing what you're getting angry for in the first place is absolutely crucial as you learn how to diffuse that anger.
[00:09:23] This pandemic, for example, that we are all experiencing together is full of all kinds of traumatic experiences. That pandemic related trauma, just gets piled on top of all the other trauma we've endured during our lives, especially during the childhood portion of our lives. If you are going to get anger under control, being able to recognize and connect that your anger may be tied to some of those things that you have yet to deal with that happened to you or that you witnessed, or both is so important.
[00:09:51] For me, it meant taking a deep dive into my childhood and really examining the different moments in my life where my anger was really at its worst.
[00:09:59] [00:10:00]The common thread of all of it for me was feelings of nonacceptance, feelings of injustice and the feeling of humiliation. Fighting people physically. ,was my way of dealing with the anger. It was a terrible way because it didn't solve anything. It didn't make the anger go away. It was just a temporary band-aid on a giant wound. What was helpful, was recognizing what the triggers were that got me to that point.
[00:10:23] I was finally able to start addressing those feelings and working through our process to attend to those feelings before the anger consumed me. I learned to ask myself four important questions. Sometimes all of these questions apply. Sometimes only a couple of them apply. But, I do run through these questions each time I feel a sense of anger.
[00:10:42] 1. Do I need to ask some clarifying questions in this situation?
[00:10:46]2. Should I just choose to let it go?
[00:10:50] 3. Is it in my best interest to diffuse my anger or act upon it?
[00:10:55] 4. Will I do any harm to myself or others if I become or stay [00:11:00] angry in this moment?
[00:11:01] Let's use a very common example, text messaging. When you're texting people and when they're texting you, you're not able to hear the tone of voice in that message. You aren't able to see the body language or the eye contact. All you have in front of you is words and you're left to interpret those words.
[00:11:18]I could send a text to someone that says, "Do you want to go to lunch today?" And let's just say, I get a text back saying, "No." Well, the challenge with that is when I see that one word, "No", I might perceive it as rude or disrespectful. But, the person who sent it to me is thinking that I just asked a simple "yes" or "no" question that needed a one word answer. And, that's what they gave me. In the meantime, I could be getting all upset and perhaps offended because there are no other clues to help me figure out the real intention behind the message. So, before I decide to take my anger into the stratosphere, I ask a clarifying question.
[00:11:52] In this particular example, I would send another text message in response to "No." and say, "Oh, okay. Is [00:12:00] everything all right?" It's important if you're not sure about something, before you get mad, ask some clarifying questions.
[00:12:06] Similarly, if you know somebody doesn't respond to email very often, but they do respond to text messages. Then, if you have a question that needs an answer, you're not going to send an email. You're going to send a text message, because you know that is the most effective way to communicate with that person. Think about that as you deal with people. Ask those questions. "What is your preferred communication style?" and then utilize that communication method that works best for them. That could really minimize the chances of having any unnecessary arguments or misunderstandings with that individual.
[00:12:38] Another technique that I learned over this process of managing my anger is ... I developed my ability to discern whether people were giving me constructive criticism or if people were just being mean and hateful. In other words, ask yourself, "Are you getting angry because people are just saying mean things? Or, are these people [00:13:00] sharing real truth about you and you just aren't ready to accept that truth? Are you focused more on what the person is saying or how they are saying it to you?"
[00:13:10] In either case, you can practice active listening to deal with the feedback that you're getting from those people. For me, active listening was kind of counterintuitive. It seemed strange to think that way and to speak to people that way. It took some practice. A professional counselor could be great in helping you practice these things and talk through these scenarios. You can utilize active listening and be clear that what you are hearing and the intention behind those words that you are hearing are in alignment.
[00:13:37] But, let's be clear about two really important things on this whole topic of anger.
[00:13:41] 1. Some people in this world are just mean. Point blank, period. If people hate, they're just going to hate and it's up to them to choose to change.
[00:13:49] 2. All anger isn't necessarily bad. It's the behavior that goes along with it and how we respond to situations is where we can get into some trouble.
[00:13:58] A lot of people were [00:14:00] angry about the state of our country. I'm talking about the United States here. Throughout the entire year of 2020, people were really upset about what was going on here. Some people turned anger into positive energy. It motivated them to get active in the fight for social justice. They registered to vote. I mean, we had more people voting in this election than any other previous election. So that anger, in a way, propelled some people forward in their purpose in life. However, on the flip side, some people used their anger about what was going on in our country to do hateful things and to hurt people. That wasn't productive and that wasn't helpful.
[00:14:34] Again, it's not that anger is bad. It's how are we leveraging that anger. What are the consequences of the choices that we are making as we manifest that anger, not only for us, but for those around us?
[00:14:46] If anger is something that you are struggling with, I want to really encourage you to find a way to deal with it. Don't make people just adjust to your attitude. Nobody wants to be around an angry person. No one wants to shelter in place with an angry person. It is [00:15:00] just not a good experience for anybody.
[00:15:02] Maybe not all the techniques that I've given you in this episode are a perfect fit for you. But, it's a place to start. Find the strategies that work well for you so that you can control your anger, rather than it controlling you.
[00:15:15] That's it for today, everyone. This is the Black and Brave podcast. Take care.
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February 9, 2021 at 2:15 PM
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