F*** power

In a documentary about the band Metallica “Some kind of monster", there is one part where in the movie where the drummer Lars Ulrich is asked to scream the “F” word into a microphone as loud and as long as he could for one of their songs. He screamed it out and it lasts for over 25 seconds.

When the scream started I felt an electric jolt. As it continued there was a stirring inside of me, as the anger deep down started to move. By the time the scream was over, it felt like wraiths were moving toward the surface of my emotions being beckoned by the "F" word.

Anger like mud in a bottle of water can be shaken and turn it muddy. It takes a while for the silt to settle again on the bottom, making the water more palatable. Calling it to the surface is important, but it is dangerous to summon anger with no plan for exorcism. You need tools to remove the anger and move past it.

In working with adolescents, the worst thing you could do with a person who was dealing with rage was to let them physically act it out by punching some other object, like a pillow or a mattress. What happened a lot of times is that the anger increased and was more dangerous.

There is a danger in thinking that we have dealt with our anger by stirring it up, when we haven’t and in fact it is lying in the depths waiting to be summoned again, usually quicker and more damaging each time.