I think you are mistaking anger for rage. There is a big difference! Anger helps us hold healthy boundaries. The lady with your bin incident has likely had her boundaries crossed many times and you were down line of what her original anger couldn't facilitate i.e. a boundary. What I'm seeing in many places is rage not anger - you correctly named road rage. If we don't learn to differentiate then we demonise anger and lose our ability to hold boundaries - people are already lacking in the skills for this - which is why rage is created. Anger is in the here and now, in the immediate situation, to help us hold a boundary. I think demonising anger is really dangerous because it creates more rage! Rage is from the past and comes at us with more force than is required for the situation because our attempt at anger in the past has failed - it builds up through many weeks/months/years and when a situation arises that reminds us we haven't been able to hold our boundary the (usually unwitting) person crossing that boundary gets all of the build up of rage, not just the immediate anger. We could think about everything that's going in little and big wars everywhere as mis placed, old rage. Anger is healthy and essential! I would really recommend reading the book 'Anger, rage and relationship by Sue Parker Hall. I also have a substack and as yet haven't written anything - this feels like something I could really write about so thank you for the inspiration!
Great one Sam!
I think you are mistaking anger for rage. There is a big difference! Anger helps us hold healthy boundaries. The lady with your bin incident has likely had her boundaries crossed many times and you were down line of what her original anger couldn't facilitate i.e. a boundary. What I'm seeing in many places is rage not anger - you correctly named road rage. If we don't learn to differentiate then we demonise anger and lose our ability to hold boundaries - people are already lacking in the skills for this - which is why rage is created. Anger is in the here and now, in the immediate situation, to help us hold a boundary. I think demonising anger is really dangerous because it creates more rage! Rage is from the past and comes at us with more force than is required for the situation because our attempt at anger in the past has failed - it builds up through many weeks/months/years and when a situation arises that reminds us we haven't been able to hold our boundary the (usually unwitting) person crossing that boundary gets all of the build up of rage, not just the immediate anger. We could think about everything that's going in little and big wars everywhere as mis placed, old rage. Anger is healthy and essential! I would really recommend reading the book 'Anger, rage and relationship by Sue Parker Hall. I also have a substack and as yet haven't written anything - this feels like something I could really write about so thank you for the inspiration!