Rage

Anger has been a bit of a theme on this blog for the past week or so. It started with a post on using to change and then I felt I needed to follow it up because of an email from one of the people who read the post.

One of the issues for them, and one that often comes up when dealing with anger, is what I call the difference between anger and rage.

The Difference
When I am angry I may defend my boundaries and values, perhaps by making a statement of values or by attacking someone’s reasoning. In a physical fight the aim would be to stop the other person – at least long enough for me to move to a safe place. Anger can also be the motivation to make changes in myself or my situation. I may want to learn to be more assertive or less, I may want to learn a new skill or leave unsatisfactory situations. I may want the people around me to behave differently or I may just want to make somewhere look nicer and so I buy some flowers. All these things can result from anger.

Rage is different. It is more total. In some sense it wants annihilation. It wants to raze that ugly building, it wants a new life starting afresh and having nothing to do with my past, or it wants that person out of my life and gone forever (and if they die I’ll dance on their grave!). Anger wants modification but rage wants more.

Reasonable?
When someone is angry it is usually possible to reason with them. It may help if you let them know first that you understand how angry they are. But usually angry people will be able to think about what they are angry about.

Rage is trickier. Mob violence is often rage, and on the small scale children’s tantrums can be rage too. In this situation reasoning with people is very difficult. It is usually better to give the rage a relatively harmless outlet. If the mob can vent it’s rage on an effigy or burning a flag then this is better. When children have tantrums and they are past reasoning it is often a case of putting them somewhere they can’t hurt themselves or the furniture and letting them vent.

When Rage is Good
An Australian born American resident art critic had a very bad car accident. He tells the story of seeing death coming for him – personified as a bank clerk – and his rage rising up against death. Rage isn’t terribly intelligent, so can have unfortunate consequences when we act on it. But when it is a matter of sheer unreasoning survival then I think rage has its place.

What we can do about it.
Rage can be even trickier to do well than anger. Rage is so total that we can fear just losing it completely – with unfortunate consequences for ourselves and others. And some of us will have memories of people who have done this. It is no use pretending that this isn’t possible.

So the first issue is control. And then means feeling the rage a little, expressing it a little and then stopping. And doing this over and over again until we know that we control our rage and our rage does not control us.

Usually the rage will be expressed symbolically. One great example of this at community level was after some bushfires in Australia (what are called wild fires in the US) burnt many houses in a town. A community artist that the people of the town to build a fire dragon and then to burn it. This helped the people to channel their trauma and move on. In our own lives it may be writing or sticking pictures on a box and tearing it to shreds, burning an object or smashing something to smithereens.

There is one situation I know where the rage can be expressed as directly as possible. These are a particular kind of self-defense classes for women. In these classes someone dresses in protective clothing and the class members get to hit them with all their might. (These are very fit people and the protective clothing is very thick.)

Then there is being clear about what the rage is about. Consider what it is you want to annihilate and why this might be. If you want someone out of your life it may be as easy as changing your phone number or not returning calls.

It is more difficult when the trauma is in the past – when the person is in some sense ‘in our head’. It is my experience that in this situation we need to be very careful. In my experience we need to consider whether there is something valuable in the part of us we don’t like – we may have developed strengths or learned lessons from the trauma. If a killer is part of you then you may want to have this part of you on tap in a life-threatening situation. This can be very difficult. If you are in this situation I encourage you to get all the support you need to help you work it out – whether from friends or counselors or others you can employ.

The gift of rage is destroying and starting afresh. It may not be what we want in our lives every day but at certain times in our lives it may be what we need.

This is a difficult subject, especially dealing with it in a short post on a blog. Please feel free to leave any and all reactions in the comments.

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Related posts that you may be interested in are:
Anger is Good
Staying Angry
Finishing With The Past

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Tags: anger, rage