Boiling Point Workshop Offers ‘Alternative To Violence’ By Exploring The Makeup Of Anger

Look around you.

See the anger out there?

Some examples are easy to spot. Random shootings by deranged surfers. Planned bombings by societal fringe-dwellers. Brutal beatings by abusive spouses.

Those are only the obvious illustrations.

Some are far less recognizable.

When you watch Dennis Miller excoriate a politician with his trademark smirk, that’s anger. The same is true with tabloid stories that mock the expanding waistlines of famous movie stars. Ditto the silent treatment many teenagers hurl at their parents.

The question is: Where does it come from?

And the associated problem that many mental health professionals face is: What do we do about it?

John Lee believes he has an answer.

The Texas author/teacher/therapist has made anger his life’s work. In seminars such as the one he will hold at Gonzaga University on Saturday, Lee offers what he calls “an alternative to violence.”

It’s an option that Ken Cochran and Lori Hansel have taken to heart.

Cochran and Hansel, counselors at Shaw Middle School, arranged for Lee’s third visit to Spokane. During his first stay in 1994, Lee led an anger workshop. A year later, he was part of a three-day men’s conference overseen by Robert Bly.

This time, Cochran and Hansel expect many Spokane-area school counselors will take advantage of the same Lee-led training that they began last June. The two Shaw counselors have traveled three times to Lee’s workshops in North Carolina. Now, as certified P.E.E.R. counselors (the acronym stands for Primary Emotional Energy Response), they use Lee’s techniques to defuse anger in Shaw’s hallways.

“Almost any day we’ll have some kid come in who is so angry at something, and he just needs me to say, ‘OK, I really hear that you’re angry, anger is OK, tell me about it,”’ Cochran says. “Once they are able to do that, most of them calm down.”

So where does the anger come from? Volumes have been written on the subject. Genetics plays a part. The bonding of an infant with its parents is key. Early-childhood instruction is definitely a factor.

But this is what every parent knows for sure: By the time adolescence arrives, anger is not just a concept; it is a living entity that can consume the very air a family breathes.

“One of the things that adolescence is is a time of charge-building,” says Lee, whose most recent book is titled the same as his workshop, “Facing the Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately.” “The body is like a dynamo, and the charge begins at birth. Maybe even before birth. But it really starts to hit a high level of charge around adolescence.”

What happens, says Lee, is that this so-called charge collides with societal expectations involving discipline and the need for self-control. And when the unstoppable force of anger smashes into the unmovable wall of parental authority, the result can be an unhealthy situation.

“Children start stuffing it (anger) around the age of 3 or 4 or 5,” Lee says, “and by the time adolescence kicks in, by the time their body kicks in, they’re drowning in a sea of unexpressed emotion. And they don’t know what to do with it.”

Healthy anger, according to Lee, transforms into one (or all) of the following nine dysfunctional actions: shaming, blaming, criticizing, demeaning, demoralizing, preaching, teaching, judging or analyzing. Four more-advanced examples entail interrogating, intimidating, withdrawing or acting like a martyr.

“We DO need to teach discipline,” Lee insists. “We DO need to teach self-control. But we also need to teach how to release our emotions in safe, effective, appropriate ways. And we’re not doing that.”

Lee is a fan of physical expressions of anger. But only - and he stresses this - when they are worked out in safe, non-threatening ways. Traditional contact sports such as football do not qualify, he says, because they tend to generate as much anger as they release.

For Lee, non-contact sports such as running work much better. Or, when he counsels teenage boys, he has them push hands with him.

“They need to play,” he says. “They need to push against. They need somebody who is strong enough and who is not afraid of their body and their emotions, somebody that they can push against literally and figuratively. That pushing is a release.”

It works for Cochran. He and Hansel, who uses the same kinds of physical anger-release methods with girls as Cochran does with the boys, meet with groups of 8 to 10 students for six- to eight-week anger-management sessions. Cochran says he’s been doing anger work for four years now, “but I feel so much more confident now that I’ve had John’s training.”

What’s the difference?

“I think the best thing is that I’m more comfortable when anger comes up for me,” he says. “It makes me not afraid of kids when they get in that position.”

When the student’s anger has been expressed (maybe by grabbing two of his fingers and squeezing), Cochran says, then he is better able to accept the consequences of the inappropriate actions that may have precipitated it.

According to Cochran, the student is able to say, “I’m going to have to pay the consequences, but I’m not a bad kid.” Any sense of shaming, he says, “goes out the door.”

The work Cochran and Hansel are doing at Shaw fits into the overall District 81 policy that stresses conflict resolution, says Mary Brown, supervisor of student services. But it does have its unique qualities.

Says Brown, “They’re dealing, obviously, with a smaller percentage of the population that are really, really angry kids for whom anger is an impediment to their learning.”

And has it been effective? Shaw principal Pete Lewis has seen a difference. Among other benefits, he says, “It’s helped open up the lines of communications.”

Any parent can tell you how difficult that is.

For his part, Lee will tell you how difficult it is to convince certain segments of society how necessary it is to treat the overall picture and not merely the parts.

“They keep addressing the symptoms, not the disease,” Lee says. “In this country, the disease is, ‘I have no place to take my grief and anger and let it out in healthy ways. So, by God, I’m gonna do it in destructive ways. You can take away the video games, but I’ll just find something else.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Molly Quinn

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LEE WORKSHOP John Lee will teach a daylong workshop titled “Facing the Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in Gonzaga University’s Jepson Auditorium. Fees are $75 ($55 for students). Lee also will speak at 7 tonight at the Unity Church, 2900 S. Bernard (donations only). For further information, call 624-0304 or 353-4561.