Better Mental Health Part 2: Escape Catharsis (Outrage Addiction)

 As per part 1, I am not a qualified psychologist. I'm a fan of clinical psychology, but everything contained below is opinion, based on my experience. Australia has many resources available to it's citizens in support of mental health and I recommend to anybody whether in crisis or not to utilize these resources as our mental health is the prism through which we experience the world.

I'm choosing to address as priority topic number two 'Catharsis' which I am using to refer to a kind of conventional wisdom of 'letting it all out' these are practices like punching a pillow, screaming into a pillow, venting, "bitch-sessions", even complaining to a qualified counsellor about a boss, spouse, sibling, coworker, arresting officer and particularly expressing your dissatisfaction with the state of the world on social media via fb posts, tweets whatever.

The practice is based on an observable fact - once you've 'expressed' your anger, you will feel better.

Take the contemporary experience of reading something in the news that makes you angry, like a political announcement on a tax increase, a murder trial finding the plaintiff not-guilty, or your favorite contestant on the Voice being eliminated. Your affect changes, if you have been doing some mindfulness practice (the subject of part 1 in this series), you might notice tension in your shoulders, an inability to concentrate, maybe increased heartrate, you may feel energized, you feel bad.

You take to social media, and almost on autopilot tap out a message expressing your rage and dissatisfaction, you hit the all-caps to let people know that if they were there in person you would be shouting, and you throw in a couple of '!!!!!' marks to emphasize your point, you hit the button and release it out there into the world.

You may feel some mixture of relief combined with a nervous anticipation in this instance, as you wait for reassurance that you are not alone, you are not the only person that feels this way. Again with mindfulness practice you may be able to literally feel your cortisol levels subsiding, and a dopamine hit as some aquantainence you vaguely know likes your post and you notice yourself thinking that they are obviously more sensible than they gave you credit for.

This process is hopefully a concrete example of what I'm referring to as 'Catharsis'. It and it's variations persist, because it is rewarding, in the immediate to short term. It persists in the same way as alcoholism persists, stress eating persists etc. It has a distinct advantage though, in that it often doesn't involve a financial transaction.

I literally cannot make a better case against the practice of Catharsis than the case that was presented to me, alerted me to the problem with it, and profoundly changed my life and my mental health for the better - The You Are Not So Smart chapter/post on the subject. (David McRaney puts far more effort into research than I do) and if you can't be bothered reading the whole post, plus continuing with this one, the article sites the research of Brad Bushman, a social psychologist who has given a TED talk (Brad Bushman has my favorite accent in the world - effeminate southern, a bit subtle but it's there) but the Penn & Teller segment embedded in the You Are Not So Smart post, is a good brief summary if you prefer watching/listening to reading:

Again, I'd acknowledge the replication crisis is a thing effecting psychology and further Brad Bushman is a recipient of the Ig Noble award in psychology in 2013 for his work about attractiveness of drunk people. (The Ig Noble award might sound like a bad thing to win, but it is awarded to research findings that first make us laugh, then make us think: "The 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Andre Geim, Radboud University Nijmegen, and Michael Berry, University of Bristol, UK, for the magnetic levitation of a live frog. Geim was awarded an actual Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.")

I find Bushman's research to my satisfaction is robust, and it's worth pointing out that the replication crisis is distinctly applicable to the scientific method or epistemological empiricism, where there is a practical experiment to replicate. It is actually in 2020, highly likely that you accept as true a conclusion arrived at through epistemic constructivism where rather than a practical experiment, the conclusion was determined through a method like literary criticism/movie reviews (yes I'm serious) or in the word's of Big Lebowski 'that's like your opinion man.' only slightly more formal than conspiracy theories. Furthermore, I would personally be interested in research that asks if holding constructivist beliefs correlates with anger, and poor mental health.

All of which is to say, I am convinced by the research and observing in myself, that venting anger to feel better is addictive, meaning that if today something makes me angry, and I express that anger, I am likely to spend tomorrow feeling angry, and expressing that anger.

If you are asking the question - if expressing anger feels good, what's the problem with being angry? Consider by analogy, an opiate addiction. As my friend, a heroin addict told me, 'when every day is dedicated to not feeling sick, it's a bad place to be.' Let's consider that being angry, outraged is the equivalent of withdrawal, and expressing that anger is the equivalent of shooting up. I would invite you to consider Catharsis as a temporary relief from an unpleasant emotional state.

Here I will defer again to Gordon Livingston M.D. who in his clinical practice uses simple questions to extract tremendous value, specifically in this case 'How is that working for you?'

The crucial distinction is the difference between expressing anger (particularly, at a proxy) and addressing the source of your anger.

The value of anger, and how I make sense of the fact we have evolved to feel anger particularly over anti-social behavior is as a signal to engage in reinforcement - positive or negative. 

Having a knee-jerk shouting reaction is probably sufficient to tackle most of anti-social behavior's manifestations throughout history - namely who ate the other chicken drumstick without asking? - but it breaks down when you and a friend disagree as to whether the 2% tax on titanium goes too far, or doesn't go too far enough. If that is a bit too vague or comical, it's more that as societies become larger and more interconnected, and also more productive and efficient, ascertaining whether any given behavior is pro or anti-social becomes increasingly hard.

To transition to options that in my experience promote better mental health, I'll offer two side by side scenarios for comparison.

First, the catharsis scenario: Your boss repeatedly asks you to take dictation, at 4:50pm keeping you back late while he dictates an email to you, that he should in 2020 be capable of typing himself, or using voice recognition software. Given you are a salaried employee, you receive no compensation for this either. You take this home to your partner, a person who has chosen to spend the majority of their leisure time voluntarily with you. You vent your frustration at the selfishness and ineptitude of your boss using phrases like 'He did it again today!' and 'It's just unbelievable that nobody sees a problem with this.' and your partner listens empathetically until your anger and frustration has subsided, and you can then enjoy the latest episode of RuPaul's Drag Race after dinner.

Second, the assertive scenario: Your boss asks you once again to take dictation, at 4:50pm keeping you back late while he dictates an email to you, you say 'I'm here to help, but I would feel remiss if I didn't point out that I find it both stressful and unappreciative of my time to type emails for you this late in the working day. My frustration probably arises from being in the dark as to why this is the best use of my time and skills, and why this task is both a low enough priority to be undertaken at 4:50pm but urgent enough that it can't wait for tomorrow morning. I feel I could better focus on this task and make less errors if I could justify it to myself. Can you help me with that?' and the boss either provides a compelling reason, or presses the issue out of spite while unconsciously noting that this behavior now incurs a cost to him, which is feeling bad/shame/guilt. You obtain a piece of data which is how your boss responds to your complaint, which can inform further action, like voicing your complaint to your bosses superior, (or raising a concern that your boss, does not know how to type and may need training or a software solution like voice recognition, that is cheaper than paying you to take dictation).

You then go home and report to your partner that you addressed your complaint to your boss today, and the resolution. You then move onto discussing other subjects that don't make you feel angry, and enjoy RuPaul's drag race together tomorrow.

In the second, assertive scenario, the source of anger gets addressed, even if it is not an isolated source, but with the passage of time, an assertive person's life will stimulate less frustration and anger, furthermore they will enjoy the benefits of feeling empowered to solve problems for themselves.

The Catharsis scenario can be repeated infinitely. 

For me, a practice of catharsis mainly took the form of 'winning hypothetical arguments' in my head while running. But also while lying in bed unable to sleep, and of course in the shower. In one prominent example for me, I spent a lot of time trying to 'figure out' the ambiguous and frustrating nature of my friendship with a woman I was attracted to. These 'rehearsal' arguments went on in my head for I would guess at least 4 hours a day, for about 3 years. 

I would have the arguments while running, and given I train for a marathon in October most years, I could run for between 1 and 3 hours a day. While cycling, which was roughly 1 to 2 hours a day, and often enough my body would wake me up at 4 in the morning in a state of full alertness while my mind processed circular internal monologues that chased each other round and round.

When I finally broke my situation sustaining habit of catharsis, I made an effort to apologize to all the friends and loved ones I had used as a proxy, to vent my anger and frustration and frankly, impotence at, much like the partner in the above catharsis scenario - who has a cost imposed upon them of my choice to not translate my anger into assertive action that addresses the problem, in favor of catharsis that allows me to continue merely coping with the problem on an ongoing basis.

One response to my apology, that I keep pinned and flagged in my email inbox as one of the peerless emails I have ever received reads thus:

Who are you?

Come on don't need do that, we are always side by side. 

So, love is free to you to give. 

Keep asking me my love to you. 

You can get it as much as you want and whenever. 

Because you did to me to before and you will do so for me, till 100years later too, I know.

I keep it pinned, because it is for me such a potent reminder of the value of hueristics like 'how do they make you feel?' in this case, giving me a sobering reminder of how much energy I invested in somebody causing me mental anguish, vs how much energy I put into somebody who makes me feel incredibly loved and special. And 'how do they treat you when you are in the wrong?' which is probably my number one question I ask for ascertaining the emotional maturity of the people I interact with (somebody who attacks you, when you are apologizing, in my experience has deeper issues of their own at play.)

All of this is to illustrate the costs of catharsis. The longer I engaged in catharsis, the more costly the stimulus of whatever made me feel impotent, frustrated and angry. The longer I engaged in catharsis to cope with my feelings of anxiety and anger, the greater the opportunity cost of the life and relationships I could have been pursuing instead.

Catharsis is an addiction, and I am persuaded by Gabor Mate, M.D. that addiction is most constructively viewed as self-medication. 

(Gabor Mate attributes the pain of trauma as the catalyst for addictive behavior, and his primary clinical question for treating addiction is not 'why the drug?' but 'why the pain?', I am agnostic - open to persuasion - that behavioral genetics may play a bigger role than Mate credits, but I still favor his approach as the most constructive until such a time as CRISPR gives us gene-therapy, better to focus on what we can control) 

It is from him I draw the analogy that addictive behavior is like insulin for diabetics. It relieves the symptoms of the diabetes without curing the diabetes.

Catharsis can relieve the symptoms of a frustration or source of anxiety in our lives, but it does, most charitably, next to nothing to address it. At best, if enough people share and voice the frustration, political pressure might result in some change. I feel obliged however to point out the existence of argumentum ad populum and that reactively venting our frustrations and feeling validated by other people that share that frustration does little to trouble shoot our diagnostic skills. 

An assertive approach, invites mitigating factors, like the boss could relieve our frustration by providing adequate justification for the practice of dictating emails at 4:50pm - for example, how I feel might be greatly altered if my boss were to disclose a diagnosis of dyslexia, or disclose that their intention was to have me learn about the customer and how the boss manages the relationship to groom me to succeed them. etc. 

Another aspect of anger and mental health I would like to touch on, that I derive from Gabor Mate, specifically his book 'When the Body Says No' about the health benefits of Anger. This is to steer back to a question of emotional competence that was a specific issue for me: how do you tell the difference between Anger and Anxiety?

'When the Body Says No' is a long book that I highly recommend, if for nothing other than interest value, it is probably the most interesting non-fiction book I have read. It very briefly touches on the 7 A's of Healing as a finding/recommended framework that includes as it's 3rd 'A' is 'Anger':

Often times disease and disorder manifests due to one’s inability to genuinely experience anger. We either learn to turn it inward on ourselves, or outward in rage. However, there is an alternative. We can learn to experience and feel anger deeply, and to let it appropriately inform us of our environment or situation. We then are empowered with a choice of whether or not and how to express this anger.

 Setting aside the 'Often times disease and disorder manifests due to' as the premise of the book, we can notice if we are inclined to inquire that in the animal kingdom, expressing anger leads to improved health outcomes.

For example, two dogs come across a fresh animal carcass, one dog is bigger, the other smaller. The small dog is not so small that it couldn't rip out the throat of the bigger dog with it's teeth, but the big dog is more likely to kill it. A violent confrontation is incredibly risky and incredibly unhealthy for both dogs. The big dog raises it's hackles, looking even bigger, and growls at the smaller dog, encouraging it to move on.

Instead of a potentially life ending costly fight for both dogs, expending many calories, the big dog gets the calories from eating the carcass and avoids injury just by expressing it's anger. The small dog also doesn't die.

I don't think dogs do a conscious calculation of expected value (EV), but in this case their biology is doing some version of EV = (Number of Calories from Carcass - Calories Expended in Fight) x (Probability I will win the fight and survive the injuries) and generally we will notice, that one dog will submit and the other will dominate, much more often than we stumble across three carcasses, with two of them the result of a fight over the third.

We are, you will be relieved to know, better than dogs, rarely killing each other over lunch these days. I would not want you to take from this analogy, that if you are a small dog, you should let the big dog be. Please notice how often you find small dogs using barking and getting their throat low to the ground, to dominate dogs that are bigger and more docile than them.

It is healthy, to express anger by being assertive in all of my experience. Whereas Catharsis despite all that has been said about it being the 'venting' or 'purging' of anger, I am open to an interpretation that it is an unhealthy expression of anxiety, as opposed to a healthy expression of anger.

On the grounds that.

1. The 'anger' is not directed at the stimulus of the anger, but a proxy. eg. a pillow for physical violence, a spouse for vocal expression, social media contacts for verbal expression.
2. The root cause or stimulus of the anger is avoided, owing to uncertainty of outcome in favor of seeking more predictable, sympathetic proxies.
3. Avoiding a painful resolution in favor of an ongoing more manageable pain that is unresolved.

I want to make clear that I am not suggesting the healthy option is 'well stop whining to me about how bad the mayor is, why don't you go and assassinate him.'

I am more entertaining that somewhere in America is a person who has spent the last 4 years complaining regularly about the current administration, who will burst into tears of despair if the current administration wins a second term in office AND who won't actually bother to vote, nor speak with friends or relatives that might vote for the incumbent in any constructive way etc. 

And by analogy, I feel this phenomena is more general and common. Other analogies might be someone who posts about Wildfires/Bushfires/Glaciers Melting, demanding action on climate change and then in the next post, asks for recommendations on where to eat the best beef brisket on their trans Pacific flight to Austin.

I wish to also introduce a heuristic that probably is not original, but spontaneous to me: 'We are only ever angry at ourselves' which I adapted from an anecdote shared by Mark Horstman co-host of podcast manager-tools called 'the umbrella story' about an occupant of an elevator that is repeatedly jabbed by the tip of an umbrella tucked under the arm of the occupant in front of them, who is oblivious to what is happening. After the umbrella toting occupant leaves the elevator, the occupant who was jabbed by the umbrella turns to their companion and says 'can you believe that? guy was making me so mad.' and the companion who is possibly a Buddhist sage says 'all he did was tuck an umbrella under his arm, which was poking you. You got mad, all by yourself.'

Indeed, instead of getting mad, the occupant could have taken assertive action like 'Excuse me, but your umbrella is sticking into me.' Running a small risk that the umbrella dude will say 'fuck you, it's a free country' and a great risk that they will say 'I'm so sorry, I had no idea' and will reposition the umbrella.

From my experience, I worked in a call center for close to 8 years. I would estimate I did 4 shifts a week for 48 weeks of the year and spoke on average to 100 members of the public each shift. 

If you cold call, you have to observe and learn, for your own mental health that the anger expressed at you is rarely personal. From this I derived that people are only ever angry at themselves. I would bet money, that the people who bark at call center workers correlate with higher levels of dissatisfaction with their careers, relationships and experience greater financial stress.

If I called you on your honeymoon while you were waiting for your soulmate to finish their post sex shower ready to go out to dinner, right after you had received a call to inform you you had been awarded the MacArthur Genius Scholarship and asked if you wanted to take a 4 minute survey, do you think you would have the same reaction as if I called you when you were sitting in a dorm of a homeless shelter anxiously waiting to hear if your estranged daughter will return your call so you can ask her for a $5,000 loan?

Those might be two ridiculous extremes, but the more usual case is that someone picks up the phone hoping it will be someone they like talking to, and realizing their life has come to sitting at home on a Friday night watching Masterchef while eating a Lean Cuisine and answering surveys, is what they are angry at. They are rarely actually infuriated that somebody has the audacity to ring their phone and introduce themselves and the purpose of their call.

So let's talk solutions to move from an addiction to Catharsis to better mental health:

As per part 1, start with a mindfulness practice. The first step you can take, is paying attention to how you feel at the point of coming into contact with the stimuli (eg. notice your physiological reaction when you watch the news, scroll through your social media news feed) and how you feel when you express your anger - whether it is talking at someone, or posting online. You can probably feel the wave of endorphins or dopamine or whatever flood your brain rewarding you for being an angry dude. Notice how long that payoff lasts, notice whether you engage in a behavior of looking for content to make you angry - like seeking out upsetting news stories or stalking a connection whose posts you generally disagree with.

The second way to apply mindfulness, is to use a guided meditation to actually explore your own emotional state of anger without acting on it. So instead of posting or expressing your anger, use a guided meditation, or unguided to explore with an attitude of curiosity how anger/anxiety/stress/frustration manifests in you. The key point being to acknowledge that you can reserve the right to act on anger or any other emotional state, you are just pausing to assess it better.

Entertain a range of responses, and take note on who you are holding responsible in each, how directly you are communicating and who bears the costs and who receives the benefits.

Moving away from mindfulness, which is a great place to start in terms of availing oneself of options, is to train up and practice assertiveness. I like this video as a good and fairly comprehensive practical framework, as dorky and dated as the production values may seem.

This can feed into how you conduct yourself on social media, as well as in person. The Netflix documentary 'The Social Dilemma' appears to be focused on articulating the structural problems with social media and it's exploitation in part of our catharsis-addicted tendencies.

By happenstance, and perhaps for unflattering reasons, I feel I have managed my own social media use well, in terms of limiting it's negative impact on my affect. 

For one, I just never look at my newsfeed. This has some downsides, once I didn't look at my newsfeed for like 2 years and one of my dearest friends managed to have his second child without me being aware of it at all until we ran into eachother at a social event. I land on my own profile, my own wall on facebook and generally stay there or the 'today's birthday/recent birthday's page' I might check my newsfeed once a fortnight for any important births/death/wedding announcements, but generally I just go straight to the friends I'm interested in and appear to have trained the algorithms to send me notifications when the 4 or 5 friends who reliably make me feel good with their posts share stuff.

I use much of the assertiveness, active listening, socratic method and other communication frameworks when I engage in any political discussions, in part because I feel a personal obligation to employ my privilege to stand up to bullies. I am well situated to not give a shit about pile-ons and cancellation, social ostracism. They still effect me and I don't endorse any of these or other bullying tactics, but relative to someone sensitive to the esteem of their peers, and particularly who has not yet attained secure attachment to a core group of adults, I feel an ethical duty to combat group-think and pluralistic ignorance by challenging popularly held assertions.

So if you must engage someone, what I find helpful is to always come primarily from an angle of curiosity, not anger or aggression. I seek to clarify, am quick to apologise, and also set boundaries on what behavior I will tolerate. I will also call out someone if they allow a third party to pile on and attack me with below the line behaviors like ad-hominem attacks, mind reading etc. It's a cliche, but the step prior to setting and maintaining healthy boundaries is to understand what healthy boundaries are.

Social media in particular remains the wild west, it is still a frontier and rule of law has not been established. Nor have manners. Much like the real world in the absence of rule of law, people's social intuitions often equivocate an accusation with a conviction, disregard burdens of proof, operate double standards and are okay with cruel and unusual punishments - like public shaming, doxing, pile-ons, revenge porn etc. 

If I could convey anything from my personal experience, it's that being angry does not oblige one to act rashly and impulsively, with a narrow focus and a sense of urgency. I may be predisposed to it, but anyone can achieve it, to respond to their anger calmly and rationally after careful consideration and deliberate assertive action.

Tomorrow I will move further from mindfulness and talk more about how I feel I get the most out of clinical therapy, and how to constructively apply cognitive empathy.