Anger Management: How Bart Simpson Helped My Anger
The summer of my sophomore year of college I worked as a summer camp counselor at a Lutheran summer camp in Texas along with some friends. Staff training lasted the two weeks before the campers got there, during which we learned all the procedures and policies and rhythms of camp life. Most of those two weeks have been forgotten (or perhaps blocked?) from my memory - but a brief, probably 5 minute lesson the camp director gave about anger has stuck with me and continues to shape my own life and my clients lives to this day:
Bart Simpson and Anger
Here’s a really rough version of the top of Bart Simpsons head that I’ve drawn for your enjoyment:
Even with my very crude drawing skills the outline is recognizable, right?
It turns out the outline of Bart Simpson’s head is a really good graph of what happens with anger over time
On the left side there is a time of building and increasing tension, as the line goes up the up…then, a key moment where it passes the threshold of our ability to keep the rising tension contained within us, and, we just kind of lose it! That’s the jagged up and down top of Bart Simpson’s head. Once we’ve released that anger through yelling or screaming or whatever it is, then we go through a downward cooling off period. For a lot of my clients, at the end of that cycle when the tension within us has been released and we are back to our baseline, there’s are strong emotions of guilt, shame, and regret for the way we just acted.
Here’s that all graphed out again with descriptions:
Four Part Anger Cycle
Another way to talk about it might be as a 4 part cycle:
Rising tension
Rage phase: explosive release of tension
Cooling down period
Return to baseline accompanied with feelings of guilt, shame, and regret
A lot of my clients with anger issues come to counseling because they’re stuck living this cycle out despite their best wishes. They’ve been in this cycle for years, and, every time they return to baseline they tell themselves they’re not going to lose it over “something so small and stupid” again.
It can be super confusing when seemingly insignificant things like your daughter running late for school, or, a grubhub order forgetting the large side of fries, can somehow set you into a blind rage.
Here’s the thing though, once you’re really close to that Bart Simpson peak of rage, anything small could push you over the top and set you off into that rage phase.
BUT - there IS a way to BREAK THE CYCLE!
Releasing Rising Tension/Anger
One way to help deal with anger is to learn to track the rise of tension within you, and find ways to release that tension early and return to baseline before you reach the explosive peak.
It sounds incredibly simple, and, I mean, theoretically it is…
When you start to feel tension/anger building within yourself, you need to find a way to release that tension/anger and return to baseline and stop the cycle so it doesn't continue building and building until you explode.
Here’s an example of how what happens in most people who struggle with anger:
Bill wakes up early Saturday morning to get his son ready for his swim practice. Bill is agitated because it’s Saturday and he’s having to wake up instead of sleep in. After swim practice his son wants to stay and play with his friends after practice. Bill wants to go home, but, lets his son swim, and the tension in him rises a little higher. While his son is swimming with his friends, Bill pulls out his phone and checks his work email. His boss emailed and is going to need something by Monday morning, forcing Bill to find time to work on a Saturday. Bill feels even more tension within him. It’s time to go but his son wants to play longer at the pool, and Bill feels even more tense at the fact that he tried to do something nice for his son and his son doesn’t appreciate it. Bill and his son arrive home from the pool and his wife, who has been alone with their infant all morning asks critically “where have you been?”...at which point Bill explodes.
But what would help Bill?
What skills does Bill need to develop in order to explode less often and be less angry?
3 Parts of Anger Reduction
There are 3 key points to stopping the anger cycle:
Awareness of your own internal experience moment to moment
Knowledge of what helps you to effectively release tension and return towards baseline
Actually implementing what you know
1. Internal Awareness
This is actually more difficult than many of us initially realize. Many of us, and most men in particular in my experience, have simply not developed a deep understanding of what they are feeling from moment to moment.
The motto that many of us seem to live by is this:
Ignore your body, keep pushing, until eventually it reacts in extreme ways that make you pay attention to it and that seem to come out of nowhere.
But, the truth is, our bodies are trying to get our attention all the time…we just haven’t developed the ability to listen to them.
Many of us go through our day with our body sending us signals that it’s stressed out, anxious, frustrated, irritated, scared…but we continue to ignore that message until it’s too late.
That’s the first step in all of this: developing an internal awareness of what your body is actually trying to tell you.
2. Coping Skills For You
Coping skills are a dime a dozen…you can google them and find hundreds probably, and, I’m sure I’ll do posts in the future where I list some off too. But over time each of us need to develop a bag of tricks that work for us reduce the tension inside of us and bring us back to baseline. Or, if bringing us all the way back to baseline isn’t possible, reduce the tension level a little.
You also need coping skills for different times and situations.
Sometimes you literally have only 30 seconds available to try to reduce the tension inside of you, and so you need a trick that works for you - quick deep breathing, naming and focusing on objects around the room, focusing in on your feet on the floor, looking at the picture of your partner on your desk at work…anything that can just take your tension level 10, 20, 30% so you don’t lose it at the moment.
Other times you have more time to devote to a more involved way to reset your body. Yoga, exercise, spending time in nature, religious or spiritual practices…there are times when you’ll have an hour to devote to resetting your system, and, developing an awareness of the best way to do that for you is essential.
3. Implementing what you know
Sometimes we are aware that our bodies are telling us something needs to change, we know the coping skills we “should” be doing, and yet we still struggle to implement the changes that would benefit us.
This is a great time to bring in a counselor, and together hopefully you can gain more clarity around why you’re struggling to implement the changes you feel like you need.
Putting it All Together - Bill in Action
Let’s look now at a Bill who is able to recognize his own tension levels, and take small steps to release tension before it explodes:
Bill wakes up early Saturday morning to get his son ready for his swim practice. Bill is agitated because it’s Saturday and he’s having to wake up instead of sleep in like his body wants. Bill is able to recognize he’s feeling frustrated, and spends 5 minutes doing a simple breath practice in his bedroom before the day starts that his counselor taught him. He feels a little better.
After swim practice his son wants to stay and play with his friends after practice. Bill wants to go home, but, lets his son swim, and the tension is in him, but less than in the original example.. Bill is able to recognize that he’s feeling a little tense, and, uses the time to call an old friend from college on the phone while his son swims with his friends. The friend picks up, and it feels great catching up, bringing Bill all the way back to his baseline level of tension.
At the end of the conversation, Bill pulls out his phone and checks his work email. His boss emailed and is going to need something by Monday morning, forcing Bill to find time to work over the weekend. Bill is a little upset, but, because he was back at his baseline, he was able to take on this new tension within him without being at risk of exploding. Bill decides that if he has to work some this weekend, he is going to make it a point to spend an hour walking his dog at a nearby trail on Sunday afternoon - both as a way of resetting his nervous system later, and as a way to honor himself. Additionally, he decides that he’s going to bring up how he can work on his boundaries at work in a future counseling session. He feels a little better just knowing he is going to do these two things for himself later.
Bill feels even more tension within him. It’s time to go but his son wants to play longer at the pool, and Bill feels even more tense at the fact that he tried to do something nice for his son and his son doesn’t appreciate it. Bill intentionally decides to listen to music from his favorite college band on the way home from the swimming pool to make him feel better, and makes it a point to focus on the trees that he sees on his way home. He feels better.
Bill and his son arrive home from the pool and his wife asks critically “where have you been?”...and at this point things go very differently. Bill does not explode because he is not as tense as in the previous example because he has taken steps at every moment to release the tension that was building up in him. He instead is able to recognize his wife has a high amount of rising tension in her at the moment, and, calmly asks if there’s anything she needs to do this afternoon that would help her reset her own stress level. His wife thanks him, and says she’d love to go and grab coffee by herself for an hour later in the afternoon. Bill agrees, and his wife is happy to watch the kids while he goes walking with the dog tomorrow afternoon.
Bill’s Need for Counseling
It seems simple, but this stuff really does work and can help your anger levels significantly.
But, I will also end with a final, perhaps somber note just saying that while I do think this is very helpful, I don’t think this is the silver bullet that fixes everything.
While this model shows you how to reduce tension and anger after you feel it…it doesn’t address the underlying issues of why you are feeling angry in the first place. Think about Bill for example?:
Why is Bill angry that he has to wake up on Saturday and take his son to swim practice?
Why is Bill angry that his son wants to spend time with his friends in the pool after practice?
Why is Bill angry that he has to work on the weekend?
Why is Bill angry that his son is unable to recognize the thoughtful act he did for him in letting him play longer at the pool?
This is where mental health counseling really comes into play.
In my own understanding, anger is an important part of us, and is trying to help us in some way…it may not be helpful now, but it is trying to be helpful.
To learn a little more about my own approach to therapy and hear more about working with parts of ourselves, feel free to check out the About section of my website:
Once clients are able to recognize and have compassion and curiosity for the role that anger is trying to play in their lives, they are able to understand it, be in conversation with it, and reduce it. They’re able to understand the more tender parts anger is trying to protect, and to heal those parts as well.
The goal is not to get rid of the angry part of you completely…the angry part will still exist in your life - it should - it’s not bad - but it will not dominate your life as before, and you will be able to lead your life, instead of the angry part that is taking over.
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