Jason’s First Day At School

Jason’s first day of 10th grade. He was so excited last night that he was rude…but then apologized with feeling. “I was just excited about school” he said. In other words, he noticed the problem (verbal and behavioral rudeness) and asked himself “why?” Why, in other words, was he angry?

Anxiety about school, and fear that our discipline would interfere with his social connections to his friends, which is hugely important (tribe). Conclusion: rude because of anger due to anxiety and excitement.

NOTICING our emotional ab-reactions is the first step

UNDERSTANDING our emotional reactions is the second step.

AWARENESS that there is an ab-reaction in progress is the next step, and difficult, because once we are in an emotional tail-spin it is usually too late. You have to wait to cycle back out.

FORMULATING A STRATEGY to interrupt the pattern is next. Implicit in this is RECOGNIZING the early stages of the pattern. What happens BEFORE you get angry? Does your face heat? Tunnel vision? Sour stomach? Shaking hands? Buzz in your ears? SOMETHING will happen before you step off the cliff into an uncontrolled spin. If you can learn to recognize it, you can decide if it is appropriate (sometimes, anger is a perfectly reasonable response), and if not…interrupt the process. “Kill the monster while it’s small” as a coach once told me. How to do that? Change your movement, change your focus, change your internal language. Breathing is a great way to start, because you can do it…