Learning about rage is important. For me, understanding rage makes it a little bit easier to understand why people act the way they act. Understanding why rage affects people and their decisions, cautions us to be aware of the dangers on acting on our own personal feelings of rage.
When you think of the word rage, the first word that comes to mind is probably anger; and you’re not wrong, anger is part of rage. However, it is important to know that anger and rage are not the same thing, but understanding anger leads to a better understanding of rage.
Like rage, anger is a secondary emotion. Under anger there are two primary emotions: hurt and fear. Every single time you feel angry, anger is covering up some fear or some hurt that is inside of you. It isn’t always easy to see why you feel anger because it is sometimes rooted to a deeper feeling of pain that has been there for a long time. However, if you recognize the underlying and primary emotions before acting on your anger, then your awareness of those feelings will help you succeed and push past the anger, solve the problem, and start healing the wound that has triggered this anger.
Rage is a whole other level of danger. It is anger on steroids. Under rage, there are four things: hurt, fear, anger, and shame. Shame is the key difference between anger and rage. Shame is the driving force of rage, and it can cause a lot of damage. For shame is something really powerful, and it is dangerous when it goes unchecked and unnoticed.
Let’s get one thing clear: shame and guilt are NOT the same thing! Guilt is healthy; it notifies the person that what they did was wrong, and it can help them do better next time. Shame is unhealthy; it cripples people and leaves them feeling hopeless and depressed. Guilt is saying, “that decision was not good.” Shame is yelling, “I am bad. I am stupid. I am unworthy of forgiveness or love.”
The awful thing about shame is that it is a cycle. With addiction, shame is what causes one to keep smoking, keep drinking, keep looking at pornography, and keep participating in that addiction that one may struggle with. When people try to quit their unhealthy addiction, they often experience shame. Examples are that they are even addicted in the first place, or that they fell down the rabbit hole again, or that they fed their addiction again. Then because they feel sad and depressed about those things, they feed their addiction once again to momentarily ease their suffering. According to Howard H. Shaffer, a Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of Behavioral Sciences at Harvard Medical School, “An object of addiction can be almost anything — a drug or drug-free activity. For addiction to develop, the drug or activity must shift a person’s subjective experience in a desirable direction — feeling good or feeling better.” So because they feel shame, they feel depressed, leading them to self-medicate using their addiction as a momentary cause of relief.
Harvard Health Blog—What is Addiction
Shame affects rage because it feeds the flames. Shame instills helplessness. Shame makes people feel stuck; they can’t function properly, they feel depressed, and they feel unworthy of love or redemption. Shame is perpetually telling them that they are bad. That they are horrible. That they are awful. That they don’t deserve to be happy. Then because they feel stuck, they act out.
One of the reasons I decided to write this blog post was because of events related to George Floyd and his murder in Minneapolis by a police officer. People are outraged. They are posting to social media, they are verbally attacking one another in the comment section, they are rioting, they are looting, and the list goes on.
Posting to social media is not the issue. It is the social expectation that has come with it. Scrolling through Instagram on Sunday and Monday after the murder was damaging and infuriating me. Instead of coming together to support one another, posting became associated with ignorance. For if one did not post, they were known as being silent, being complicit, being ignorant. Then, because of the social unrest, more people began to post about it. The problem was that people were posting about it 5-6 days after the incident occurred, and for others, that was absolutely unacceptable. How dare they not use their platform to speak up against this injustice!!! Because of social media’s ability to spread word so quickly and efficiently, it became known as the place to speak up. It didn’t matter if you didn’t like to post to social media very much. It didn’t matter if you were taking a break. It didn’t matter if you didn’t want to post anything in fear of saying the wrong thing. It didn’t matter if you didn’t want to post to social media at all because you didn’t want to feed the flames. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with being ignorant, but not posting to social media is not being ignorant. I can support the cause, feel sympathy and hurt for the black community, donate to charities, educate others on this racial phenomenon, and love and support others without posting to social media.
I do want to say that I am happy for those that did post and did say something about it. I’m happy for those that are using their platform for good. However, not posting to social media doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that you don’t believe in the cause. Let’s stand together and not attack those that don’t post!
To be honest with you, I thought my thoughts were crazy. How dare I not want to post to social media! How dare I not agree that posting to social media is the say all be all solution to this perpetual problem of racism. I honestly thought that my thoughts were irrational and crude. I thought my thoughts were me being ignorant.
After talking to my counselor, I realized that my thoughts are not irrational. I have been feeling anger at the situation because of others’ rage. This is why there is social outrage and unrest. Because people are using social media as an outlet for their rage! They feel shame! They feel hurt! They feel angry! They feel fearful! Fearful this will always be a problem. Fearful things will never change. Fearful it will continue to affect people they love. Angry that this happened. Angry that they had no control over any of it. Angry that they couldn’t do something to solve the problem. Hurt that someone has just been killed. Hurt that there is so much hate in the world. Hurt that they can’t comfort and help the black community. Ashamed because they might feel they are part of the problem. Ashamed that they are white and have privileges simply because of their skin color. Ashamed that they are human and are imperfect. The list goes on for each and every one of these primary emotions.
As you can see, rage is dangerous. It has affected social media in an awful way. It has ruined relationships and instilled more shame into others. It has caused people to say hurtful things. But most importantly, it has made things worse.
After I understood why people were acting the way they were, empathy and understanding kicked in. It was easier to have love and grace for those acting out. It was a way for me to know and understand that this hate all over social media is coming from a place of pain. And this is why understanding emotions and rage is so important! It completely changes one’s mindset, and it allows for the healing process to begin.
So thanks for reading. I hope that life makes just a little bit more sense now. I hope that it will prevent you from acting on your feelings of rage, present and future. I hope that it will help you understand others. I hope that it will cause you to think twice about thoughts of shame. Because no matter how many times you tell yourself, “I am bad. I am unworthy of love. I am a bad person…” those lies will never be true. Because you are always worth more than your WORST mistake. And don’t you ever forget it.
