Finding untreated anger at root of tragedy
Four days on and the shock and horror of the Orlando massacre lingers, as it should, as our friends to the south find ways to set new records for carnage from within the troubled soul of their society.
As has been widely reported, Sunday’s bloodbath at the Pulse nightclub by Omar Mateen was the deadliest mass killing by a single shooter in U.S. history. But as one colleague of mine said, for emotional impact it’s hard to top the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which 20 innocent sixand seven-year-old kids and six adults were slaughtered.
All these events are beyond dreadful, but if the butchery of gradeschoolers isn’t going to prompt Americans to address their unique problem with mass shootings, nothing will.
After these tragedies, we are always compelled to ask why. How could this happen? What could drive someone, nearly always a man, to murder innocent strangers? We clutch for understanding, hoping to prevent future bloodshed.
The media always tries to provide answers, as they have again with the Orlando massacre but, as in this case, we are normally presented with so many theories that we don’t necessarily get closer to the truth — the why shootings occur and, more critically, how to stop them from happening again.
Over the days, Mateen’s motives for the attack have been ascribed to lax gun laws, mental illness, a difficult childhood, Islamic extremism and jihad, and that he was a selfloathing closeted homosexual.
While some or even all those issues may play a part, I believe there is a somewhat overlooked reason for these tragedies.
That reason, quite simply, is anger. Untreated, unaddressed anger. (There I go, just another guy in the media trying to come up with an answer to the tragedy.)
If you talk to psychologists, you will find that there is a strong consensus about what causes anger. Essentially, anger in adults flows from emotional triggers we acquire from hurts in childhood. Almost everybody has them.
Trigger thoughts, according to clinical psychologists Matthew McKay and Peter Rogers in their book, The Anger Control Workbook, include feelings such as people: ignore my needs, don’t understand me, demand too much, take advantage of me, control me, shame or criticize me, or are selfish, impolite, threatening, cruel, disrespectful, unfair, unjust or lazy, to name just a few.
People struggling with anger issues are usually triggered by several of the thoughts in that list, but not all. Everyone is different.
What is common is that the triggers are related to times in childhood when people were harmed through abuse, bullying, neglect, family disintegration from divorce, poverty, being ignored, racism ... the list of potential hurts is long.
An NBC/Esquire magazine poll published in January found that anger is on the rise in the U.S., with half of 3,000 respondents saying they were angrier than a year earlier.
“Seventy-three per cent of whites say they get angry at least once a day, as compared with 56 per cent of blacks and 66 per cent of Hispanics,” an article on the poll reported.
“Seventy-seven per cent of Republicans get angry at least once a day, as compared with 67 per cent of Democrats.”
Fifty-three per cent of women (compared with 44 per cent of men) said they were angrier than a year earlier, in particular white women, at 58 per cent.
I couldn’t find statistics for Canada, but I believe anger is a common problem in our country, too.
Anger is a natural, even healthy emotion. Let’s face it, lots of things in life can tick you off and expressing anger isn’t always wrong. But for some people, anger can get out of control, where your anger does real harm to those around you.
Taken to its extreme, anger can lead to tragedies like Orlando.
Consider what we know about Mateen. He was an Afghani kid, growing up bullied in a post-9/11 America. He had a violent father, who, it’s been reported, slapped him across the face outside his school after he got into trouble.
He didn’t fit in, struggled in school and moved into adult life as an underemployed young man with few prospects, struggling with apparently untreated mental-health issues.
He was likely gay, growing up in a culture where that was considered shameful. He had two unsuccessful marriages, where he was bullying and controlling of his wives, trying to impose an antiquated, fundamentalist view of Islamic family life.
Given what he did, of course, it’s hard to feel compassion for Mateen. But it’s worth considering the difficulties he faced growing up and how it turned him into an angry man, leading him to take such violent, hate-filled action. We ignore society’s significant problem with anger at out peril.
gclark@postmedia.com