In today’s society, we learn not to express our anger. When we’re angry, we are told to count from 10 to 1 backwards and turn the other cheek… But does that really stop us from being angry? Does it really take us only 10 seconds to shake that feeling of wanting to retaliate or find another outlet for that angry energy? We seem to have forgotten that some of the greatest people in human history, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, just to mention a few, were at the same time some of the most angry people in history.
Dance Opens Doors is all about using dance as a means to understand and practice different psychological concepts. Before rising to the level of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we need to understand and practice their method of anger management in our everyday interactions. This is where Regina comes into the picture.
I want to share a conversation/argument that took place after our last Monday class in Heidelberg between Regina and me. Our Monday classes are followed by a couple of hours of social dancing organized by, among others, Regina.
During the party, I was thinking:
What’s this music? I can’t dance to that… hmm, no DJ, and the music is coming from an ipod nano… I guess I can switch to my music [lack of empathy].
So I switched to, what I like to believe, was awesome music!
Regina [stressed]: Hey, how rude, I spent a lot of time preparing this playlist for tonight [asserting herself].
Ali [realizing my lack of empathy]: I am sorry, you are right, and I should not have changed without asking you. Let me switch back to your playlist.
Solution [Win-Win]: How about we share our ideas about music, perhaps we can play a bit for every taste during the parties in the future.
As we are far from experts in anger management, we reached our win-win solution after about 20 minutes of hefty discussions back and forth.
What are our choices in an “anger” situation?
Let’s stick with the example of Regina and me:
Regina could have simply let me play my music and save her playlist for another occasion.
What would have been the effect of this choice? Do you remember Isaac Newtons rule: “Energy Cannot Be Created Nor Destroyed”? Anger is a form of stress triggered by negative emotional energy (hurt). This energy has to go somewhere. If Regina had chosen this passive approach and not acted on her anger, the angry energy would have been stored inside her as a feeling of sadness. This sadness can express itself as some form of resentment towards me, or even worse, towards swing dancing.
Fortunately, she made the decision to act and confronted me. Once this decision was made, she again had the choice between two different approaches. We know very well that reacting with aggression can cause even more anger.
Reacting with aggression, Regina would have tried to hurt me, e.g. by talking badly about me [win-lose], or by deciding not to have empathy for me in the future. At several points in our discussion, we were close to going down that road. Fortunately, we both had good presence of mind, and were still able to direct our thoughts towards the win-win approach. As both of us care deeply about our dance scene and friendship, we managed to channel our anger towards the well-being of the dance scene.
If something is not the way you’d like it to be, express yourself and act on it! Keeping it inside will only result in sadness and depression. When you act on it, show empathy for the other person and spend your energy on finding a win-win solution. Perhaps you print out the anger chart and keep it in your wallet to remind yourself about your options when you get stressed by someone.
The anger chart presented in this article was taught to me by Dr. Paul Drobransky in his amazing program called “Mind OS”. You can follow Dr. Paul on his blog: www.doctorpaul.net/blog/
I will continue with more case scenarios next year.
For now, I hope you have a great holiday and a happy New Year!
Regina, thank you for asserting yourself and showing the willingness to find a win-win solution.
Happy Holidays & New Year to everyone!
Looking forward to blog & dance with you in 2010!
Ali Taghavi
