Anger has been causing riots, murders, and damage to public property. How can we cancel anger?
Anger is a complex problem. People feel this emotion when they have unmet needs and expectations. No feeling is ever wrong, but how we respond to feelings can be. While we cannot change another’s person’s feelings or actions, we can take steps to cancel anger in our society.
When I taught special education, I worked with high school students with behavior disorders. Their physical and emotional problems caused them to act out at times in violent ways in the classroom.
What can a teacher do when a student is violent during class? Her first responsibility is to protect herself, other staff members, and other students from harm.
Here are the steps special education teachers employ that our society could use to make our country safer.
Encourage Hope Instead of Anger
A person who is upset often feels like there is no hope, that life will always be the way it is at this moment. But, when someone else uses active listening to work toward a solution with the angry individual, the anger becomes less and less and often turns into hope that life will get better.
Wouldn’t it be great if the Democrats and Republicans could hold town meetings and actively listen to each other?
Don’t know how to practice active listening? Here’s how!
Meaningful Activity and Options
It isn’t possible for a human being to feel angry or depressed when his or her mind is engaged in a meaningful activity. In the classroom, I engaged students in interesting, engaging pursuits to prevent strong, negative emotions from erupting.
Perhaps if we could open more of our businesses and recreation areas sooner, we would take a huge step toward cancelling anger.
If we all wore masks like people in Japan do, we could curb the coronavirus spread and have much more meaningful activity in our lives.
Giving the angry person options also helps abate anger by giving them back control over their life and hope for the future.
Discourage Negative Thoughts
When a person focuses on positive things, the seeds of anger cannot grow. So, as each student entered my classroom, I greeted him or her with a cheerful greeting. I also wrote on the board a question to discourage negative thoughts and required students to sit down and write their answers in journals immediately after entering the room.
Additionally, I never hesitated to call security when I observed even an iota of violence budding.
Our society could apply this strategy in two steps.
First, we could restrict the media and require reporters to report only verified facts without opinions. If violating this federal law was a felony that carried prison time, the media would stop feeding society’s anger.
Second, we could create equally strong federal penalties that require police to treat everyone with the same respect, regardless of his or her race. Then society would trust police for protection, and police presence would deter violent behaviors.
***
Individual Americans cannot cancel anger. However, we all can encourage our representatives to make these things happen and create peace again.
Our society as a whole can cancel anger!
Let the encouraging words in these bobbiejrae posts help you
soar like an eagle above life’s storms.
It is up to each one of us to reduce the virus spread,
Avoid the spread of something even worse,
Learn from the past and not repeat it,
And create peace once again!
