Outrage Detox
Last month in this space I talked about how our fears are exploited for profit, power, and votes. This month another exploited visceral emotion is holding my attention - outrage.
In our culture, we label the obsession with outrage in multiple ways. We call headlines meant to stoke your anger “outrage porn” and we liken our obsession to finding the next news story that stokes our anger to addiction.
In his Psychology Today piece, Jeremy Sherman calls this “Maddiction” and defines it as an “addiction to getting mad for the self-purifying sensation.” He goes on to explain that those of us who are most swept up in outrage can actually be quite idealistic at our core. When the complexity of reality falls short of our idealized hopes, we look for someone or something to blame instead of addressing our own complex feelings around this disappointment.
In terms of marketing and power, outrage is quite lucrative. Create a headline or make a claim that feels wildly appalling or outrageous, and people will click every time. Find a small fear and blow it up to be an affront to all you know, and you will quickly learn the righteous script to condemn it.
I’m in the business of wholeness. This means unearthing and calling out what it is that fractures us and suggesting ways we might move forward in healing.
My friend, outrage is fracturing you and it’s fracturing us.
As I mentioned last month, living in a state of fear keeps you stuck in a stress response of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. An enraged state does the same thing and leaves your higher reasoning, compassion, and core values inaccessible. (Isn’t it interesting how something that, at first, challenges your values can eventually lock them away from you?) After a while, living in this state wears out your body and retrains your mind to seek the natural chemical rush that comes with outrage.
Staying stuck in this mental state pushes us further into unrealistic idealism and trains us to believe that change is nearly impossible. We absorb this belief about the world outside of our bodies into our very selves and suddenly there are dark corners of our own being that our polarized way of thinking can’t rectify. We condemn ourselves and desperately look for someone else to blame, but there isn’t anyone. The mixed up reality of our very own strengths and weaknesses challenge our outrage high and so we shove those parts of ourselves into a corner and unlock our phones in search of the next headline that will numb the pain.
The game of seeking power and money involves manipulating the masses, and do you know who is easier to manipulate? Idealistic people who are stuck in a state of stress.
You know what makes idealistic people who are stuck in a state of stress even easier to manipulate? Introducing them to the other idealistic people who are stuck in a state of stress and believe the same line of dualistic thinking.
You’ve felt validation on the internet before, we all have. Suddenly, some stranger comes along and says your comment is the truest thing since the Holy Bible and you feel yourself sit up a little taller. The high of validation pings something we crave at our core - love - but doesn’t quite satisfy completely. So what do we do next? Double down.
We humans are wired to seek positive affirmation. We’re more likely to follow the road of praise than change course due to punishment. So we feed one another’s fractured frenzy by validating in others what we hope to see validated in ourselves. We fall deeper into our echo chambers, outrage pushing us deeper into the abyss.
We live individually fractured and societally fractured. If whole people make healthy communities then the opposite is quite true as well, fractured people make unhealthy communities.
Have I sufficiently popped your idealism bubble? If not, here’s the final blow:
If you’ve been reading this article so far and thinking “Ugh I wish that (put the political party you disagree with here) would read this and understand it.” You are missing the point. Both sides of the aisle and even third parties are exploiting your outrage for their own power, and it’s up to you to stop it.
So where do you begin?
With the most accessible but most difficult part - yourself.
My friend, you are a mix of all that is lovely and difficult in the world. The human condition is a story of mud and glory and your life is no different. The most compelling part of the story of the Bible to me is the fact that God through Jesus did not promise us a perfect life free of flaws and shadow sides, but instead that God walks with us in all this mess - unconditionally and full of love. God with us in the mess of our greater world, but also the mess of your personal soul. Truly believing this intimate with-ness is the challenge.
By New Happy Co via Instagram
Let’s Practice:
Grab a loose sheet of paper and then come right back, we’re going to do some work together.
On that paper, write either a bullet list or a paragraph describing your ideal self. Be brutally honest. Look your inner perfectionist in the eye and unleash her to her soapbox.
Once you’re done, read that list or paragraph. Highlight or underline the portions that bring a lump to your throat or a pit in your stomach. Where are you not living up to your own ideal?
(Moment of transparency, I had to take a break from writing after thinking about my own unachieved ideals. This is hard work.)
From here you can choose your own adventure.
On the other side of that same sheet of paper, you can write a letter to yourself as if you were writing to your best friend. What would you tell them if you read this list of ideals and heard them berating themselves for falling short? How would you encourage them? What would you believe about their high expectations? What would you hope for them to start believing instead?
Think of all you have achieved and become. What beauty can you point to in your own life? Write these on the opposite side of your paper. Now think back to the unmet ideals you have for yourself. Ask yourself if they are realistic in capacity, timing, talent, or as a human in general. In your final list, write the ideals you are releasing and the reality you are embracing instead.
As you move forward from this moment, when you feel the draw toward outrage, hit the brakes hard. As you stop, ask yourself: what am I afraid of, what am I mourning, what am I judging both in this situation and within myself?
As you identify your fears, broaden your horizons. Ground yourself in your physical reality. Find online voices committed to sharing facts instead of stoking fears (PS - some of these voices may have ideologies that differ from yours, this is ok).
As you identify what you are mourning, make space for sadness and grief. Grief is not a trap, it is a pathway to freedom. The pathway might resemble a maze a times, but if we faithfully walk it, we will find freedom on the other side. Your grief may be personal, or it could be quite cultural. Both of these are relevant and worth your attention. After all, we are all connected and a grief to one of us most often affects all of us - this is not weakness or being soft, it is the brave space of peacemaking. We cannot make whole what we do not thoughtfully identify as broken.
As you identify areas of judgment practice compassion. Forgive yourself for your short-comings and for falling into the trap of idealism again. Dig deeper to identify if this judgment is really mostly about yourself or if it’s truly directed at another. If you find yourself judging the other, notice where you might be dehumanizing. Dehumanization always leads to fracture - both in your own soul and in this global community we share. Confess and change course. Put yourself in the shoes of the dehumanized. Work to try to take their perspective, work to understand their hardship, work to understand what might be commonly misunderstood. Maybe you would do something differently, but when we work to put ourselves in the shoes of the other, what we should notice most of all is that though these shoes may not fit our feet, we share the commonality of having feet. The Divine has called each of you good and the work of wholeness is drawing near and embracing the complexity of another as you embrace the complexity of your very self.
Outrage is easy. Peacemaking is hard.
You will not get this right every single day. But with small steps and regular practice, you will continue to unearth all that makes you who you are - strengths and weaknesses - a whole, beloved masterpiece smudged with the fingerprints of the Divine.
And friend, as you become whole you create what you want to see in the world. Because whole people make healthy communities, and those healthy communities can change the world.
Stay grounded. Stay messy. Stay defiantly compassionate. And for Pete’s sake, put down your damn phone every once in a while.
With you on this wild journey we call life,
Bonni
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