It was a perfect Californian day. The children were swimming in the pool and the country club’s adult guests sat perfectly poised, ringside, on loungers. Bright white tennis outfits contoured firm figures and dark sunglasses hid stares, glares and the effects of the continuous stream of drinks flowing from the clubhouse.

I stood on the plush lawn next to the pool as the woman I au paired for circled me; pacing and shouting. Her raised voice punctuated by children torpedoing from the high diving board into the pool.

It was Saturday afternoon and she had casually informed me that I needed to babysit on Sunday morning. It was her habit to give me very little notice when she needed me to babysit. This weekend, being Father’s day, I had assumed that the children would spend it with their parents and had made plans with friends.

This was the first time I’d pushed back and I hadn’t anticipated the behaviour this would trigger. As she continued to berate me her two children joined the circle chanting, “You’re in trouble! You’re in trouble!” 

I was painfully aware that all the sunglasses were pointed at us. She was fully focused on me and was pacing in time to her children’s chorus.

Trapped by the bodies orbiting me, I waited for a pause in her temper torrent. Eventually she paused to take a breath.

I slipped in, addressed the children and told them to get back into the pool, which they did. Her last words had been, “I told you that you have to be able to go with the flow”.Turning to her I said, “it’s easy to tell me to go with the flow when you’re always the one creating the current.”

I went on to explain how I was affected by her behaviour - never being able to make plans because she might decide she needs me.

As it turned out this was a turning point, and a moment of real insight for me, that changed my life.

As a teenager I realised I had an incredible capacity for anger - a real temper. 

I experienced the force of my ignited anger like a monster, or demon, awakened within me. It would rise like a Disney villain up my spine, stretching me until the pressure of the ignition burst out of my mouth blasting everything in its path; with the indiscrimination of dragon’s fire. 

It felt like I had to unhinge my jaw to liberate the force of fury detonating inside me. Releasing that buildup of internal pressure was a relief. But, afterwards, I just felt unhinged.

Growing up with a parent whose wrath I experienced like a napalm hose, I knew what it was like to be on the other side and the pain it caused. Being on the receiving end of someone’s behaviour and then watching myself acting the same way was traumatizing and so I tried to go a different route.

I didn’t have the skills to address it and so I just shut it down. Put a lid on it and just avoided expressing anger.

The Californian incident was the first time I had managed to feel my anger without it overpowering me. Also, I had managed to express myself in the moment without becoming deranged. 

Even though it was a low point in my relationship with my employer, and an embarrassing public spectacle, I always look back at this incident as a real breakthrough for me.

Before that day I had experienced my anger as an ignition. It was like watching the frames in a movie: lit match + accelerant = fiery explosion. No cool striding off with flames in the background - anger levelled me and those around me.

Blowing up was a relief but the aftermath was disastrous. Emotional debris outlining the site of the blast, indicating that something died here today.

Having been wounded in emotional explosions myself, I knew what those around me felt and also how I felt about myself. I didn’t want to inflict that on myself, or others.

Now, I realised, it was possible for me to talk about my anger, whilst feeling angry but not behaving in a demented manner. This was life changing.

It’s most definitely an ongoing process. But I’ve learned alot about myself and what works best for me. I’ve become my own emotional bomb expert.

Timing is key. There’s a beat, a breath - it’s really shorter than a pause - where, with practiced observation, I can arrest the eruption. 

The detonation is not inevitable. There is a window during which I have a choice. At first that window was very short - honestly, a fraction of a second - but as I practiced the window period became longer. 

During that moment I make a choice: how am I going to proceed? 

This small but powerful question reminds me that this is my feeling and I can choose what I am going to do with it. I am in control of it. 

This reins in my instinct, my learned behaviour, my impulse and asks: what am I going to do with this? It changes my knee-jerk reaction into my chosen response.

It changes the focus off the other person’s behaviour and focuses me on my choice.

Some days I misjudge the timing and I have to say “I need a moment” - to walk away, gather myself, breathe, assess. 

When we say “that person really pushes my buttons” we’re talking about the inevitability of our reactions. It implies that the reaction is a foregone conclusion. Button pushed, reaction forthcoming. It’s like we’re in a two-step dance with that person - you push my buttons and I react.

Awareness, observing that moment, choosing our response  disconnects the button. What they do, reaching for the button, pressing it - gleeful evil smile in place - doesn’t matter because we know the button’s been disconnected. And that’s empowering.

That’s why this incident was a life changing moment for me because I learnt to unchain myself from the yoke of my anger - the yoke of my reactions. I don’t have to be a slave to my emotions.

There was a futility to my reactions. Okay, so the bomb went off, now what? Where are we now? Picking up and rebuilding probably but we’ve accomplished nothing. The focus becomes the bang, not the cause of it. 

With responding I can work through the anger to a resolution. Resolutions allow myself and the other person to move on. To change the two-step dance.

Sometimes in liberating myself I inadvertently liberate the other person as well. If I’m not stuck in the two-step dance, neither are they.

Explosions bring immediate relief but resolving what caused the anger brings long-term relief and prevents detonations from continuing.

Emotional eruptions are destructive. They untie the ties that bond us. Resolutions are constructive. They build on.

Realising this about my anger enables me to apply this to my other emotions as well.

Frustratingly we can't control other people - well I can't. 😂 I can only control myself. There’s real power in pushing pause on my instinctive, learned, habitual response and choosing how to proceed. Otherwise I’m just driven by people “setting me off” - like an animal chasing after everything that moves.

When I expressed myself to my employer on that Californian day she fired me. 

I walked off the carpet-like lawn and started walking across the parking lot. My face was hot and I really wanted to cry just to release the intensity of the moment and the conflict. 

Half-way to my car I heard the heartbeat of pounding footsteps and my name being called. I turned around and my employer was running towards me. 

Her demeanor had shifted. Her anger had lifted. 

She apologised for her behaviour and said she hadn’t realised how this affected me, explaining that this is how she had always worked with her au pairs. She asked me to stay and figure out what would work for both of us.

I agreed and on Monday morning we renegotiated a portion of our working relationship.

Anger often arises from conflict. If we can’t make it through the anger we don’t get to resolve the conflict. If we don’t express the anger in a healthy manner we focus on the damage the expression of anger causes - how to hurt each other - instead of working through the conflict.

When we work together to resolve conflict it can take our relationships to a new level, a better understanding and a more workable relationship. 

Previously my anger had been a blockade. I couldn’t see beyond it. Working through it, how to feel it and express it, opened me up to a new world. 

Initially, I had been such an active participant in my own feelings of anger that my feelings consumed me. Then I overcorrected and went in the completely opposite direction. 

That day I discovered it was possible to navigate between the two - it did not have to be one or the other. I was able to feel angry whilst watching and deciding when and how to engage.

I was in the moment, fully present, and aware of my own thoughts, feelings and choice. 

For me, this is why mindfulness is powerful: mindfulness is the key we can use to unhook us from the chains of our habitual behaviour. We can’t change the way we behave, feel or think if we are not present in that moment. The time to change is in the moment it is happening, or better yet, just before it happens.

However, typically, our feelings, thoughts and lives are so cluttered that we are not affording ourselves the opportunity to be present in that moment; when change is possible.

I told you that I was working 16 hour days and the only time I had to talk to my husband was at sunrise when we walked our dogs. Classic example of a cluttered life. My mental focus was directed at my clients and staff - not on what I needed. 

I had so many undealt with episodes that I couldn’t move forward until I dealt with them.

I wasn’t living, I was doing. I wasn’t present, I was thinking about the past or fantasizing about a better future.

I haven’t watched reality TV in years, but when watching programs about hoarders they often claimed that they held onto stuff because it was important or sentimental to them. “I really love that”, they’d say, as the host pulls it out from under a pile of rat faeces, rotting newspaper and old yoghurt containers. 

I was so judgemental about those people but it was happening in my own life - with invisible stuff. Those gnawing feelings of exhaustion and unhappiness were forcing me to turn inward and start considering the state of my internal hoard - a lifetime of accumulation.

It was time to start being different. Time to start living differently.

If I could arrest my explosive anger with observation and mindfulness I was certainly going to need them when facing my inner hoarder too. 

Time to Springclean.

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