Lenten Journey: Emotional Exploration – Anger

So, I’m just going to dive into the proverbial “deep end” of the emotional pool – Anger. I have chosen this one to start because it is a complex emotion for everyone and because I had a particularly challenging experience with it that I’m still processing.

A few years ago, I was going through a credentialling process with the Association of Clinical Pastoral Educators. I’ll cut to the chase and share that I was not successful in my endeavor which was a great disappointment because I love teaching and I’m called to pastoral care. For the most part, I have made peace with this outcome because time has intervened and I’m appreciative of the choices I have made in the last few years that were somewhat facilitated by that outcome.

I also made peace with it because I can truly say that their decision not to credential me didn’t have anything to do with me. In fact, as far as I could tell, I wasn’t even there. That is to say, the committee that I met seemed to have created their own version of me that bore very little resemblance to me. I’ll never know quite what the members of the committee had going on in their own lives that they couldn’t see ME but they were so off that the chair of the committee even used someone else’s name in his report out to the whole committee that was the intended basis for my conversation with them. In hindsight, I believe he may have been using a boilerplate report and forgot to change the name that he used in his report. And when I read the report, I wondered what else he forgot to change because I have never seen a reflection of myself that seemed so inaccurate. Even my immediate supervisor, to whom I emailed the report the night day before my meeting with the committee, couldn’t make sense of it.

What was even stranger about the meeting with the committee was that they had little to discuss about the content of the report itself. Instead, they seemed focused on my response to anger. They wanted to know what I DID with my anger. And yet, my response to them was unsatisfactory.

When they asked what I did when I experienced anger, I told them that I looked for opportunities for change with regard to whatever the source of that anger was. I was particularly focused on anger as a response to frustration which can come from several experiences, especially being misunderstood, mistreated, or dismissed. There are other sources that provoke anger in me but I would definitely say that then and now, those are the big three that provoke anger in me.

So, to that end, I continued to talk about the ways that I connect my feelings of anger to a justice response. What can I do to restore justice to a situation, either immediately or in the near future? Can I clarify a misunderstanding? Can I change the circumstance itself? I offered some examples from my life about times when I experienced an injustice to myself or others and found a way to direct my anger toward effecting change. In high school, I was angry when my school board tried to cut the arts funding so I helped organize the protests at the school board meetings. I felt angry when I learned more about the injustice in South Africa while I was in college so I was involved in the divestment and anti-apartheid movement in college. After college, my car was stolen and set on fire and the insurance company (let’s just say they weren’t being a good neighbor) refused to pay and claimed that I stole my own car. The car wasn’t worth that much but I took them to court because I didn’t want them to think they could get away with this anytime they didn’t want to pay a claim. (Before rendering judgment, the judge looked at the insurance company's lawyers and said, "I'm pretty sure you could have settled this claim for a lot less than it has cost this team of lawyers to prepare and be present for this trial." Then he rendered judgment against them for more than what I had asked for in my initial claim.) As I look back at my life, I can see the origins of my response to anger as a product of injustice as far back as my early childhood and continuing to this day.

My response did not satisfy the committee. To this day, I don’t know what they thought I should say that my response to anger should be. I’m not saying I NEVER yell or lose my cool but the response I gave them was an honest response because that is my usual response to anger.

In hindsight, I think they were trying to provoke my anger, looking for a response that was more to their expectations. I’d like to think that the chair’s report that called me by a different name and described a bunch of things that were nowhere to be found in my presenting materials or my supervisor’s evaluations was intentional rather than incompetent. But I had a choice to make in that moment. I could confront them on their incompetence in a hostile way or I could correct the obvious mistakes like my name and try to understand how they misread my materials so significantly and see if we could have a conversation about the kind of educator I actually am.

It didn’t work. One of the committee members even questioned how my response to anger worked in my marriage. Aside from the factual errors about my practice, it was clear that they had a different view of how to educate. In fact, that part about provoking me made more sense later in the meeting when they asked me why I didn’t provoke my students more. (The short answer is that while that is an educational theory that some people use, it is not part of my educational theory and my educational theory was part of a thesis that had been read and passed by a previous committee.)

So, how do I respond to anger? After the committee did not credential me, I looked back on the content of the meeting, the mistaken name, the attempt to hold me to a theory of education that was not my own, the inconsistency in their written report. I decided, much like the insurance company situation, that the best course of action was to appeal the decision and make visible the problems with this committee. At the very least, I hoped that the conduct of the committee would not be repeated on another candidate. My appeal to overturn their decision was a longshot and did not succeed but I do feel like I was able to demonstrate the problems with the committee’s conduct.

I can say that this is consistent for me. I have yelled and gotten red in the face. But generally, I seek to correct the misunderstanding whether it was mine or someone else’s. If I feel a physical frustration that must have a release, I do physical things – go for a long bike ride or run, go for a swim, or go to a batting cage and hit baseballs.

As an educator, I can see the value of allowing discomfort to exist rather than rescuing my students from their discomfort but I disagree with the philosophy of provoking the discomfort. The committee was coming from a philosophy of provocation, regardless of their competency. (One of the responses to anger I found on the wheel is criticism and I’ll own that also.) So, I think they were trying to provoke a response in me. And they did. It just didn’t fit their expectations and there is nothing I can do about that. I think they wanted me to confront them in that room. I had made a decision, in consultation with my supervisor, to engage them differently and more constructively. I will continue to express my anger by seeking to address the underlying source, the frustrations and the misunderstandings. I have come to recognize that my response to anger is (usually) to find a constructive approach to its source.  

I’ve thought about that committee meeting many times in the last five years. What if I had expressed my anger with them the way they wanted me to? Would the outcome have been different? Would I have received the credential I sought? I’m not saying they expected me to yell at them but what if I had been more confrontational with them? Maybe they would have acknowledged that they were trying to provoke a response in me and we could have had a conversation about their concerns for my educational style that didn’t fit with theirs. But it was a game they were playing and I wasn’t interested in playing a game. I offered them the best I could with my frustration, an attempt to speak directly to the concerns that I could discern. I don’t think they knew what to do with my response. It confirmed some predisposition that they brought into the room with them. I tried to have a relationship with them but, as in the report, they were not interested in a relationship with me. They were having a conversation with an incorrect name in an erroneous report.

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You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com