The Anger and What to Do With It

People come to me angry — at an institution, a system, a situation that has been unjust or dismissive. The anger is real. It is usually appropriate. The question I am most interested in is not whether you should be angry. The question is what you want to do with it.

This is not the same as asking you to be practical about it. Anger can produce real change. History is full of anger that moved something that would not otherwise have moved. The question of what to do with the anger is strategic: what do you actually want?

Sometimes what you want is to be heard — to have the experience acknowledged as real. This is legitimate. It is also not the same as structural change.

Sometimes what you want is a specific change in a specific situation. This requires identifying leverage, building coalition, understanding what the institution actually responds to.

Sometimes what you want is to get out — to leave the situation that produced the anger.

The anger, undirected, usually exhausts the person feeling it and changes nothing. The anger directed at a clear object — I want this thing to be different, here is what I am going to do about it — is different. It has somewhere to go.