Go FFISHing for What’s Beneath Your Anger

Anger has a bad reputation, and I understand why.

In my work as a counselor,

I've seen a lot of anger.

I've watched it cut off conversations that needed to happen.

I've watched it push people who love each other into opposite corners of a room.

And in my own life, I've let it shut me down when I should have stayed engaged.

So it's tempting to treat anger as the problem, something to get rid of, something to manage, control, suppress, or schedule.

But I want to suggest something different today.

Anger isn't the problem.

Anger is a signal that there's a problem.

And if you spend all your energy on the signal, you'll never get to the thing it's pointing at.

Let me give you a picture.

Imagine you're sitting on a dock along the shore of a still lake, fishing pole in hand, watching a red and white fishing bobber float on the surface.

It's not doing anything, but then it twitches.

It dips, and then it goes under.

Now, you don't get excited because you love watching bobbers bounce on the water.

You get excited because it's telling you something is down there.

The bobber's not the point.

The bobber is the announcement.

Anger works exactly the same way.

When your anger spikes, something got hooked.

Something underneath the surface pulled on the line.

And if you only pay attention to the bobber, how loud somebody gets, how quickly somebody shuts down, who started it, who overreacted, you will spend your whole life arguing about the bobber and never deal with what's on the hook.

So today, I want to teach you how to go fishing.

There's an acronym for what you'll find down there, and I'll get to that.