When asked to free write about anger in a Creative writing workshop today, this came up:
“It’s a tendril following footsteps on a path, guided by my heels as they plunk, plunk, plunk forward on their way to some destination of self-realization. Fresh green shoots from an underground molten river as old as the planet have only recently surfaced on my radar and I’m looking back over my shoulder as they follow me. It is so easy to feel their cousins, huge tropical leaves that slap me in the face as news flashes about atrocities of one sort or another playing out in our visual fields. My mouth can easily articulate horror at the cruelty, greed and abuse rendered by and at others. But only barely audible whispers slip out when noting those branches chasing me from my own deep well of tentative rage.”
The neural pathway called the Anger circuit (a survival response that allows us to defend ourselves against danger) lives in the brain alongside a compensatory response that can modify it: the Care/comfort circuit (which allows us to feel safety). All emotions are produced by neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, GABA, and neuropeptides such as vasopressin and oxytocin. But the feelings of care and comfort can also be induced by sugar, fat and salt. No wonder U.S. sales of donuts increased 3.5% between 2020 and 2025.
I don’t get “angry.” I’m compassionate, understanding and forgiving, ever ready with an intellectual excuse for people’s bad behaviors. I go straight to sad and wishful thinking and then move on. Or so I thought. I had no idea all those Pepperidge Farm Milanos were my childhood Rx for growing up feeling invisible, at least according to one therapist. I bought that rationalization and eventually replaced my sweet cravings with exercise, meditation and “healthy” self care. But something still smoldered. And then, for some reason, decades later, I see a workshop on Rage and Creativity and join up. I write some words and suddenly I remember the day I asked my parent to stop smoking 3 packs a day, to take care of themselves so they wouldn’t die on me. They could not. And they did. Feelings happened but without words to speak out, I shoved cookies in.
“Bursts of fierce ferns unfurling at the ancestral shackles that kept my lineage from acknowledging their own pain, burdening them with their own cracked and broken tools, anger has always been someone else’s language. A rusty toolbox handed down generation after generation without amendment, mine could never quite help repair the damage received nor stop the passing forward. A donut can do no better. It’s the comfort of a warm hand on the cheek; the ‘I see you’ gaze of a true friend; the silent witness to a roar and smashing dish; those can. And the words: ‘Please, accompany me.’ ”
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