I’m obsessed with scales… no, it’s not a weight thing. It’s hard to care about weight when your main dietary source is carbs and the second is cookies. I’m obsessed with scales for understanding things: Is it too much, too little, or just right? Who knew the author of Goldilocks and the Three Bears was onto something pretty huge when they came up with the story of a kid who did a break and enter into a home of animals who would be happy to eat her. One of my first scales was about patience. I once thought there was just impatient and patient, but then I realized that you can be too patient, which is being a pushover and another name for me (I’m self aware). For quite awhile now I’ve been teaching this basic scale:
Impatient (-10)————-Patient to a Point (0)————-Overly Patient (+10)
What I recently realized is it helps to add another scale to this because you can be patient, but that doesn`t mean you’ll come across that way. What do I mean? YOU DONT KNOW!!!!! Was that a good demonstration? Let’s take a look at this next scale:
Under React (-10)————-Healthy Reaction (0) ————-Overreaction (+10)
Like all of our emotions, anger is a gift. We should be slow to anger, but our patience should only take us so far. The challenge is knowing what a healthy reaction looks like and then doing it. NOW DO YOU GET IT!!!!! Sorry, I was having an old-school Adam Sandler moment: “GO TO YOUR HOME, BALL!”
The other week my wife asked me to try to find something in the fridge for her. I don’t know why she asked me to look for it. There is nothing in our history together that suggests I would be able to find it, especially when my normal looking in the fridge for something experience involves asking, “Do you know where (thing) is?” (wife) “You mean (thing) right here?” Finding things in a fridge (or cupboard or closet or car or house etc.) is not my strength, but I’m not alone in this. I’m pretty sure marriage means the man loses the ability to find things (or women really enjoy hiding things).
While I was looking in the fridge, something in me snapped and I aggressively exclaimed, “I guess I’m just too stupid to find it!” This explosion was not part of a conversation. There was no pre-empting question like “Any luck?” I just snapped. Using the above scales, I had an Overreaction at an eight (I’ll own it),but my patience level was pretty solid at a zero. I had been looking for awhile and my brain should’ve been like “This is a pointless endeavor. We’re terrible at fridge hide and seek.” This means my patience was great, but my reaction was terrible. See how the two scales work well together? That being said, my patience in the day had been waaaaayyy too high, which now led to the overreaction/explosion: (my brain) “There’s no more room for emotional junk!”
I should point out I have a long history of calling myself stupid, but I’ve been really working on it for the last five years. I now accept I’m not stupid (it took me 38 years to realize that), and this explosion wasn’t a relapse. It was just a full-on expression of my frustration. I could’ve said, “Hunga Bunga!” and it would’ve been the same. I was done and that explosion was the proof. Of course, continued use of calling myself stupid would be very damaging to the improvements I’ve made, so I need to be careful not to use it again. I probably won’t replace it with “Hunga Bunga!” but I’ll find something.
To my wife’s credit, she handled the situation perfectly. She simply replied, “I guess someone’s had a bad day,” and I retorted “YES!” Then I got up and sulked as I walked away. The best thing is she didn’t take it personally or get angry at me for being angry. She made a fair observation and gave me space.
So what gets someone like me, someone who should be a role model of good behavior to this breaking point? A few months ago I mentioned we had a $4500 window get smashed by the person installing it and we had to pay for it – that hurt. The replacement window had come in and a new person started installing it only to find it was made wrong. The installer still wanted to use it, but fortunately my wife noticed and stopped him whereas I would’ve been a pushover: “I guess it’s okay because I’m a sucker.” She made sure we got what we paid for and this time the new window should be made in three weeks instead of three months, which is fine because I’m patient (or arguably weak). Besides being a mix of grateful for my wife and ashamed of how weak I can be, that situation was fine. The next day, however, I got an email from the company with which we were booked to have an energy assessment done. We spoke to this company two months before and then after the person at the company attacked me for something he thought we did wrong (we didn’t), he was booked to come to our house February first. When he came, he told us before he did the initial audit, we should have the siding up – that was weird, but whatever I could do the siding. Then his office emailed to tell me I had until the end of the month to do it, which was bad, but not the end of the world. Two days after confirming our appointment at the end of the month, I received a new email saying the energy rebate program was being canceled early by the government February fifth and those who didn’t have an initial audit done were no longer eligible – that was us. We were promised a $6500 government rebate if we upgraded the $6000 heat pump to an $8300 one… and now we were getting zero back. That was a huge hit. I hadn’t told my wife about this yet, so was I having a bad day? I’d say finding out we lost out on $8300 on top of being reminded of our $4500 window issue was a pretty rough two days. Throw in the fact I had just fired our sixth person during this addition project and I was spent. I couldn’t contain it any longer – EXPLODE!!!!! That’s the thing about explosions; they typically are the result of someone being bottled up over something else, and then suddenly BOOM at something pretty benign, so even aggressive people are left asking, “What was that?” because it’s bigger than they would be.
So what is the cure for exploding? The good news it’s pretty simple – vent. We need to flush the emotional baggage out of our body. It’s like if you never flush a toilet, eventually it’s going to overflow. Most people know the value of talking and journaling to process things, but what I needed was to physically get out my emotion. What’s that mean? Screaming, throwing, hitting, and smashing; it’s all the things we’re taught not to do, but physically venting is all about exhausting ourselves (i.e. walking is a bad choice because it’s not exhausting; it lets us stew). Here’s the problem. I constantly preach the value of venting and I’m excellent at doing it when I’m already angry – anger inspires us to move. Without it on the surface, I hadn’t made venting a priority, which made me bottled up and led to the unplanned explosion. What I should have done was find an activity like punching a punching bag, biking, breaking sticks, throwing a medicine ball on the ground (or stuffed animals to keep it light), drumming, slashing a canvas with a messy paintbrush, smashing things with a sledgehammer etc. and then think of hurts to try to make me angry. The hope is the anger will push me to going really hard for a couple minutes, which will exhaust me and hopefully also include a sense of relief and feeling stronger. Fortunately, I didn’t lash out at anyone else, but getting in to the habit of lashing out at ourselves like I did, is a dangerous path that can lead to self anger and hatred. Thus, I need to make venting to flush out what’s under the surface a priority to prevent things from getting worse.
This week may you consider how you can have healthier reactions.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)