Awakening From Your Anger

Tag: daily living

  • Ghosts

    Everyone struggles with ghosts, usually the residue of our childhood or other significant emotional traumas.

    These are resolvable — if we will do the work.

    In my case, the ghost has been the disappointments wherein I have attempted to promote myself, either through my workshops or my books. I sincerely believe that the skills and resources I offer are vital in the seeking to be the best human being I can be. They work. They work for me; they work for others.

    But I am a strong introvert and an amateur in promoting myself. I have not been successful and slowly have become discouraged. In the past, I have been strongly self-motivated, and what surprises me now is how strongly dependent I have become on external motivation. It is not a bad thing yet in now engaging with an individual who is both very creative and motivated to promote my work, my enthusiasm seems restored.

    The skills and resources I teach can be learned from a book, but they are best learned by regularly engaging in the work with a good facilitator, in this case —me.

    Up until about 2012, I was a physician-psychotherapist and had my own anger management program. I called it ‘anger management’ for two reasons. First, it was an easy issue that people could identify in their lives. Second, and more important, is my belief that anger is the canary in the coalmine of our culture — it reveals our deep lack of understanding of emotional issues in our culture. My work is not that of anger management — it is that of emotional management, especially how to integrate the emotional and the rational to the transrational.

    My workshop was a 17-hour weekend program, experiential, every two-to-three weeks, in which I engaged with 15-20 individuals who struggled with anger issues in their lives. Because I was a physician in Ontario, my workshop was covered by the provincial health insurance program, and thus individuals (men and women from all walks of life) could attend without charge. They could be doctors and lawyers or individuals who had spent most of their lives in jail. I also used these programs to supply my ongoing groups of people who wanted deeper engagement, meeting weekly as needed.

    For the most part, my workshop came out of my own growth. By age 40, I was a very competent professional anaesthetist yet deeply unhappy with my own ghosts of a very painful childhood. I started to engage with good experiential therapy and soon realized the field to be the most creative experience I have encountered — I switched to training as a therapist and spent years resolving my own ghosts. Amongst other learnings, I came to recognize that the skill I bring as a therapist is my own humanness.

    Although the deeper work of my clients was done in the groups, people changed their lives with the single weekend. There were many occasions wherein an individual could come for the single weekend but did not have the resources for ongoing attendance. It was not uncommon for that someone to show up in my driveway thanking me because their lives changed with that single weekend. Examples are listed in Appendix 4 of my book Blowing Out the Darkness.

    After about 20 years of this practice, I noted how a portion of my group client load did not engage with the work; they watched other people doing the work yet did not do so themselves. Without being pejorative, I characterized them as lazy (they avoided the work) or fearful (they were afraid of the consequences of doing the work). There was no therapy I could offer them other than challenging them to engage.

    As a consequence, I decided to do my PhD studying laziness and fearfulness. When I added self-righteousness to this mix, I recognized an ancient process acedia as having a modern form of any combination of laziness, fearfulness, and self-righteousness that blocked the individual from engaging in authentic living. I also posited that modern acedia is the underlying emotional basis of climate change. Climate change is a technological issue, yet we do not resolve it because of our cultural acedia. (All this is described in my second book Acedia, the Darkness Within).

    I ‘retired’ (semi-retired) fifteen years ago, moved to British Columbia, and since then I do individual work, calling myself a coach. I have spend a lot of time and money attempting to promote my two books, unsuccessfully (again being an amateur).

    With the current encouragement, I have decided to focus on promoting myself. I am available both for individual and corporate consulting, for the management of any emotional issues, including life satisfaction, leadership, burnout, and group functioning. If people find my work useful, the spin-off will be my books are promoted.

    If what I have written tweaks your interest, connect with me at [email protected]. I will also be modifying my website davemacquarrie.com to have less focus on my books and more focus on what I can offer.

    Thanks. Hope to meet you.

  • The Search 05 (Gestalt Principles)

    In my last post, I talked about awareness as the essential principle of Gestalt Therapy. Here I want to pick up on two other equally important principles of Gestalt: Contact and Personal Responsibility. I do this because my principal orientation is that of Gestalt — I have many other trainings, but Gestalt remains my basic orientation and emphasizes being fully alive.

    This is not to say that other therapeutic orientations are not equally valid (Family Systems, Cognitive Behavioural, Transactional Analysis, and others); it is simply that Gestalt has been most conducive to who I am. Years ago, a mentor of mine said that there are three basic aspects that a therapist needs: a theoretical orientation, extensive work with clients, and the resolving on one’s own personal struggles. The theoretical orientation is useful when talking with colleagues after the therapy session yet is the least important of the three skill of therapy. During the actual session, one is often flying by the seat of one’s pants — there is limited time to think about theory. The second basic aspect is practical work with clients, especially supervised by a more senior therapist (the colleague after the session); it is essential to learning to be present in session. Third and most important is the personal growth of the therapist — if one’s own issues are not resolved, they almost certainly will become points at which the therapy becomes stuck. This is because the primary tool/skill that the therapist brings is his or her own humanity.

    Translating this into the process of being fully alive means first to understand what you are doing for yourself in the process. Second engage in the skills of living so as to develop an effective toolbox. Finally challenge yourself so as to resolve the issues that hold you back.

    My orientation as therapist is Gestalt; my skill is my own humanity.

    I noted last post that awareness is “attention to one’s spontaneously emerging perceptions.” Contact is my ability to be present to the immediacy of now. At that time, I introduced the Action Model (reproduced here) with its First Order perception (F1), Evaluation, Meaning, Intention, Energy, and Response. Contact is my ability to hold these various aspects in my awareness without grasping one or more in immediate reactivity. For example, while in heated conversation with another, can I hold the immediacy of tension in my face while I recall a previous conflict with a sibling, while noting my anger and desire be in conflict, perhaps with awareness of my immediate surroundings and the words being spoken by the other. No one of course does all of this perfectly yet the more I can attend to this complexity, the more I am in contact with my environment, the more I am able to choose my responses.

    The skill associated with Contact is that of patience and awareness. For you the reader, as you are able, pause and look at a chair, a bus, a street sign, a person and note that these are all complex images. What are you attending to with your awareness? What body response are you having? What meaning are you giving to your awareness? What (subtle or not) energetic response is there? What immediate action is associated with your experience (even if not overt movement). In training yourself this way over time, you gradually develop the skill of being in contact with now, and you develop associations between these many areas of awareness. All this becomes the basis of how you respond to the immediacy of the present moment.

    Personal Responsibility is also a manifestation of this complex interaction. The best way I can explain this is with another metaphor: a pot of  stew (with a spoon in it) sitting on a stove being heated. It is one of the best metaphors I have of the human mind.

    It is a pot of Energy; the contents of the pot are aspects of who I am — my values, beliefs, memories, and expectations (my VBMEs, the same as noted as Evaluation in the Action Model). All this arises from my past, most of it learned as part of growing up in my Family of Origin (FOO). The heat is my recent past, adding further energy to  the pot: the current stressors influencing my present (finances, relationships, home and work situations, and miscellaneous aspects such as what I saw in my email last night or heard on the internet this morning). There is also a spoon in the pot, my current environment, which adds to, stirs, and adjusts the contents, adding more energy.

    All this leads to movement of the contents within the pot. When stuff comes to the surface, we call it a Thought or Feeling. When it bubbles out of the pot, we can it an Action.

    As noted, I consider it as one of my best metaphor of the nature of the Mind. What does it demonstrate?

    First, actions empty the pot! Actions are the only way in which the pot is emptied. If you want to reduce emotional energy, it has to be turned into action! More about this later.

    Second, imagine if you put a spoon into the pot and brought out a carrot. Would you ever say ‘the spoon made the carrot’?

    No! It makes no sense. The carrot was already in the pot — the spoon merely brought it to the surface.

    Why, then, do you say, “You made me angry” or “You made me do it”? This is saying that ‘the spoon made the carrot’!

    If you take this metaphor seriously (and I do, very seriously), I am fully responsible for all that I think, feel, and do! Certainly there are spoons, yet I create my world! I have no one to blame and I am fully responsible for all my thoughts, feelings, and actions, for all that happens to me. In fact, the word blame does not exist in my vocabulary.

    Note also that this metaphor is a relational model. The output of one pot becomes the spoon of the next pot as we together create what we call reality. Together, these three skills (of awareness, contact and personal responsibility) allow me to dance with my world, both as an individual and as part of a relational system.

  • The Search 04 (Awareness)

    I will be taking a break for a couple of weeks from posting to this blog; I will be in the mountains of Washington State for a week (without internet connection) and then going to Ontario for a couple of weeks — once in Ontario I will be able to post.

    For this post, I wanted to start with the skill that is essential to human development, that of awareness. It is the primary skill of Gestalt Therapy. It is not what most people think it is — it is not thinking; it is sensing.

    Simplistically human beings can attend to three areas of experience: Outside the body (the so-called five senses, although there are more), Inside the body (muscle and joint experiences such as temperature and proprioception, also known as location in space), and Middle (the meaning/story we give to these sensory experiences — we generally call this thinking). Nobody gets away without story and somewhere in my past I recall a statement that most people spend more than 95% of their time experiencing Story and less than 5% in Data (the combination of Inside and Outside. Even if this is increased to 10% attention to Data, the change is very significant. This is what Fritz Perls, the originator of Gestalt Therapy, called Awareness — attention to one’s spontaneously emerging perceptions; he also noted that “Awareness in and of itself is therapeutic.”

    I’ll return to this in a moment; first I want to introduce what I call the Action Model. Something happens in life, a Stimulus (often I call it a Spoon that stirs the Pot — see a later Post). As I am sure all readers know, biological creatures move from Stimulus to Response. In between, we human beings have this marvellous processor called the Mind[1]. Through a variety of iterative processes, sensory awareness of the Stimulus is perceived (usually called the F1 state, the earliest sensory date of which I can be aware); evaluated by my values, beliefs, memories and expectations (my VBMEs); and given meaning as my Story. My response to this meaning is developed as a plan of Intention, feed into life energy (principally called Emotion) and turned into my Response, my action back into the environment. Thus, I shift from the inner world of Meaning to the outer world of Energy.

    Essential to under-stand [sic] is that I never respond to the Stimulus; I respond to the meaning I give to the Stimulus. To emphasize this, I call the meaning my Ghost (of the stimulus)! Because of the many intervening filters, it is also essential to under-stand that my Ghost is not the same as your Ghost, even for the ‘same’ Stimulus. If you the reader can grasp this, much of the conflict in your life will disappear.

    Returning to the Action Model diagram, there are three places I as therapist can intervene (or, with enough awareness, you can intervene). I can work to change the meaning you give to your experience; I can work to change how you evaluate your experience (for example, your beliefs or values); or I can work to change the primary sensory awareness you bring to your experiences. The closer I can get to your primary sensory awareness, the more profound the change — this is one aspect of ‘Awareness in and of itself is therapeutic.’ It is also a component of how awareness becomes the basis of knowing my own wisdom; on a later post, we will explore how this becomes the ability to test our own truths.

    An example may help. As a therapist, I have two primary intentions when working with a client. First is to establish trust so that the client will be willing to explore with me. The major skill here is my ability to have empathy and compassion for the struggles of the client. Fundamentally I have no judgment about the client; I truly believe that all clients are always[2] doing the best they can. That said, my second job is to challenge the client to explore the issues with which they struggle (all of us are pain avoiders, and thus at some level we resist going to therapists). I challenge but I never push.

    Suppose a client and I are working together, and the client says: “Dave, don’t push me.” They are stating their truth! They perceive they are being pushed. My question though is how can I know if I am pushing or not. Through years of training in awareness, I monitor my body as to what I am experiencing in my sessions. I know from past experiences of when I am invested in the client’s change (when I am pushing), I develop tension in the small muscles between my eyebrows; when I am not pushing, when I am simply exploring and/or offering suggestions, I have no tension there.

    So, if the client says, “Don’t push me,’ I review my awareness of this sensation. If there is tension, I  apologize to the client, agreeing that this is not a good intervention, and back off. If however there is no such tension, I will say something such as “Apologies, I didn’t realize I was” (validating the client’s experience) yet knowing full well that I was not pushing. Meanwhile, this is an opportunity to assess what might be happening to the client such that they feel pushed even though I am not pushing. Over the years, this has proved to be a very powerful use of awareness.

    So, how to develop awareness. When I started my Gestalt training years ago, the instruction was to practice the stem sentence “Now I am aware of …” and complete it with a specific experience — the tip of my Rt Index finger, the sound of scraping, the dryness of my upper lip, the tension in my left ankle, the sound of a car passing in the street, et cetera. Sensory experience, inside or outside my body, as specifically and simply as possible[3]. I did that 20 minutes a day, twice a day, for six months. I would do it at bus stops, sitting in a restaurant, anywhere I had the opportunity to develop the skill. Then I started going to Buddhist retreats[4], called Vipassana retreats, where we practiced awareness 14 hours a day, either sitting or walking, furthering the development of awareness in profound ways.

    [1] A footnote: Modern neurobiology considers the processor to be the Brain. In part I agree with this concept, yet I am convinced that the Mind is much more than the Brain. However I am not certain how and where to draw the boundaries between Mind and Brain. Thus I will often talk about the Mind-Brain when I lack clarity.

    [2] I seldom use words such as always or never. There are exceptions. some intended, some unintentional.

    [3] Such sensory experience is never free of story, yet the intention is to be as clean as possible.

    [4] Buddhism per se is not a religion; it is a study of awareness developed over 2500 years of practice. It can be dogmatic yet for the most part it is a study of consciousness. Vipassana retreats are often at minimal cost or entirely free, the attendee leaving donation at the end.

  • The Search 3 — The Skills

    In this post, I am going to outline briefly the skills necessary so as to live fully; subsequent post (chapters of the future book) will develop the nature of these skills and the means of acquiring them. Initially, the discussions will be somewhat abstract because I am seeking to develop a common language between myself and the reader.

    As a therapist, I am very aware of the need for clarity; I often define the skill of good communication as the ability to recover from bad communication. Unfortunately, written communication makes that skill difficult to achieve; hence my need to ensure clarity.

    A primary question here is who and what are we as human beings? I will be presenting a variety of answers to this question and invite you the reader to delve deep into both my answers and your own. Let me state first that I am not claiming to be an authority in these answers, only that I have spent much of my life attempting to answer these questions — they define who I am and how I interact with people.

    My first answer is that, like all biological creatures, we are energy transformers (by energy, I mean the ability to do work, which for biological purposes means the ability to create some kind of change). I interact with what life offers, especially the presence of other human beings, process what they offer (their energy) and convert this to my response (my energy, offering my attempt to create change). Between us, we dance with each other’s energy (hopefully under-standing each other in the process).

    This word understanding is one that is vital to our conversation. With my clients, I draw two simple diagrams. The first stick figure is using a magnifying glass to analyse an object, saying “Yes, I understand.” The second stick figure is standing under the same object, in awe of the mystery that the object represents. Despite the profound scientific advances of the past few hundred years, we really grasp little of the profound mystery that underlies what we call reality. Thus I call the first analysis over-standing and the second true under-standing, usually spelling the words with a hyphen to underlie the mystery. Over-standing, for me, is the bobby prize!

    My second answer to the question of who and what we are as human beings is that we are meaning makers; the sophistication with which we do this is perhaps unique amongst biological creatures — it is both our profound skill and our trap. Consider the following simple story:

                                                                   The Story
    A business man had just turned off the lights in the store when a man appeared and demanded money. The owner opened the cash register. The contents of the cash register were scooped up and the man sped away. A member of the police force was notified promptly.
         Choose your response to each of these statements about the story: True, False, or Not Sure

    1. A man appeared after the owner had turned off the lights.
    2. The robber was a man.
    3. The man who opened the cash register was the owner.
    4. After the man had scooped up the contents of the cash register, he ran away.
    5. While the cash register contained money, the story does not state how much.
    6. The story concerns a series of events in which only three persons are    referred to: the owner of the store, a man who demanded money and a member of the police force.

    Looks simple — anything but! I contend the answers to the first five are Not Sure. For example, #1, the story says a business man turned off the lights — where does it say the business man and the owner are the same person. #2. Where does it say a robbery took place — perhaps the man was drunk and driving dangerously when he/she sped away in a car. I contend #6 is False — the word only limits the choices to either true or false!

    The point of this story is that we respond to meaning — we make assumptions about the actual data that is available (The Story). We fill in the blanks of our assumptions. You might note that the word assume can be spelled ‘ass-u-me’! Yet we cannot not assume — we never have all the data! The best that we can do is to be aware of our assumptions and be open to other interpretations. Such failure to do so unfortunately underlies much of the crises of our modern so-called ‘civilization.’

    One aspect of being fully alive is such awareness and more. My original training as a therapist was in the field of Gestalt Therapy. For me, it is the basis of being fully alive. There, awareness is the primary skill (in Gestalt, awareness is defined as ‘attention to one’s spontaneously emerging experience — it is much much more than attention to what one is thinking or what one is assuming).

    The second core principle/skill of Gestalt is contact — attention to the actual data that is present, both the data provided by the outside world (this post, for example) and the ongoing moment-by-moment shifts in my body-mind experience as I create my reality. The third core principle/skill is personal responsibility — I alone create my experience. The word blame does not exist in Gestalt Therapy.

    Beyond these skills are others that we will come to. How do I create and manage my own life energy, my emotions? How do I manage my internal complexity, especially my internal conflicts and my judgments of self or others. How do I manage my external relationships, especially my conflicts.

    My third answer to the question of who and what we are is that we are relational. We are never individuals — we are only individuals in relation to others. In the complexity of the modern world, with the risks of nuclear war and climate change, a fundamental question is that of ‘What is mine to contribute?’

    Part of this is my relationship to the grand scheme of the universe. Is there a supreme being or energy/force?’ The loss of religiosity over the past four centuries has had many consequences, some good, some not so good. Many of us recognize a sense of futility and/or sense something missing — sorting this question is a significant part of the search to be fully alive, of what is mine to contribute.

    In future posts, I will offer simple models (concepts and/or metaphors) that allow all of this to be processed — the journey to being fully alive.

  • The Search 2 – Introduction 2

    For simplicity, I have decided to entitle any future posts related to this book The Search To Be Fully Alive as The Search # – Chapter n #. These may change over time but for now provide consistency. Ideally, there will be about two posts per week.

    I ended the previous post by indicating I will discuss what I mean by ‘being fully alive.’ I regard the term as nuanced and in attempting to grasp this term myself, I draw largely on my client experience, especially of that third group of clients who cleared up the pony tracks of their lives[1] (some of this experience is described in more detail in ‘Appendix D – Recidivism’ of my book Blowing Out the Darkness):

    SC, a long history of drug abuse and violent crimes: ‘For almost two years now, I have been working with Dave … I no longer think about not living, or harming others … I am peaceful with myself most of the time.

    DD, 51yo, well-educated, chronically raging: I had been in counselling on and off since my last year of high school. … I really did not know how or when the change occurred that weekend; I just know that it did. … I have been working with Dave for six months now … The results I want are coming. I am getting the results because of the work I do, not because of anything Dave does. He merely offers me the tools, steering me towards the right tool of the job.

    MK, a 53yo lawyer in burnout: I gained clarity about my long-standing and personally debilitating misunderstanding. … I was just holding it together as best I could, and now I don’t have to. I can actually be more effective.

    JS, a Probation Officer of 25 years experience, commenting on the impart on clients of a single 17-hr weekend (most were only able to come to the single weekend because of transport issues): What strikes me most, however, is the way post-MacQuarrie probation clients communicate that ‘something is different’: they often say they “feel more relaxed”, can “let things go”, feel more capable of making choices about whether or not their emotions escalate, especially over trivial matters. And I find that this is often borne out in their behavior.

    Fundamentally, the people who are more fully alive are peaceful and productive; they have resolved any residual trauma from their past and they cope well with the ongoing stresses of life. When they are angry (or otherwise emotional), they are aware of what they want in their emotionality, yet they do not impose on others; they are able to negotiate what they need. They are rational; they understand and accept that life is a series of difficulties; that wisdom comes from working through such difficulties. They are relational, satisfied with their family systems and their communities. Whatever their belief systems, they usually have a deepening spirituality and trust of life. In spite of the turmoil of our civilization, they strive to contribute.

    So what am I doing as therapist and what am I potentially suggesting to clients in their search to be fully alive? One aspect is that I function from what I call High Intention – Low attachment. My intention is to be the absolutely best therapist and human being that I can be – I do not pretend to be other than who I am. My job is to elicit a relationship of compassion and trust, supportive of effective behaviours, and to challenge ineffective patterns. I do my best and I have no attachment to the outcome (it is not in my control). As part of that, I do not ‘should’ my clients, yet I often challenge the ineffective.

    The vast majority of clients first come because of pain in their lives. Imagine you have fallen into a large hole, and you find yourself with a shovel in your hand. What is the first thing you should do? … My suggestion is put the shovel down! At this point, you do not know if you are digging yourself deeper or digging yourself out (likely deeper). Practically speaking, this means calming your energy so that you can think more clearly, not about how you got in but how you can get out! (Thinking about how you got in is usually not useful at this stage; it is much more useful after you get out. The tools for getting out usually are quite different for the tools needed to stop yourself from getting in again.) Getting out may  be complicated, falling back repeatedly. There are many tools for getting out, and even if unsuccessful for this event, they are potential resources for future events. Then, having gotten out, likely you feel much better, more resourceful — and more able to grasp how you got into the hole in the first place.

    Likely, at this point, you can recognize that you actually had not fallen into the hole; you had been digging yourself into the hole without being conscious of it. Now, instead of beating yourself up for your … (stupidity, arrogance, whatever your favourite criticism is) …, you can potentially recognize that there might be tools for you to manage your personal characteristics. So you start learning these tools also. Eventually you end up with a very well-crafted toolbox of life, and you start to gain the benefits of being more fully alive.

    Sooner or later, you also recognize that all human beings struggle with falling into holes; that no one is perfect and that we are all simply on journeys of life. At this point, you start to build better relationships, recognizing that we are relational beings. Perhaps you also start to develop a spirituality of what it is all about — you don’t have to, yet it generally makes more sense when you do. You don’t have to call it God, just that something bigger is going on.

    Personally, since it may come up later in these posts, I do call it God, sometimes Star Maker. I don’t do it to impose on others; rather, it makes the conversations easier and offers more tools to explore.

    [1] I am very clear that this growth on the part of the clients occurred because they did the necessary work. I was fortunate to be the therapist who was able to facilitate that work with them. I regard myself as a very competent therapist and it is entirely possible that the clients could have done their growth work with some other therapist(s). In writing this book, I talk about myself and my own skills, not to laud myself, rather because I know myself. There are other very good therapists, and unfortunately it is often a fishing trip to find them.

  • The Search To Be Fully Alive

    On my last post, I noted my intention to write a third book (beside my first two, see previous) entitled The Search To Be Fully Alive: The What and The How. This choice came about for two main reasons: I was seeking to engage further both with my blog and with my life. In particular, I was dissatisfied with how inactive I have been with this blog (I have been sporatic since 2020). I decided to combine the two issues by using the blog as a stepping stone to the book, hopefully cutting and pasting future posts to form the body of the book. I hope the book will end up at about 80-100 pages: long enough to be comprehensive and short enough to be readable. As part of this, I have asked for feedback from subscribers as to the clarity and interest of such future posts. Appreciations for same.

    Here I want to address three questions (two here; the third, the next post): 1) why a third book; 2) what does the ‘search’ mean, and 3) what do I mean by ‘fully alive’?

    Much of the answer to all three is summed up in the header to this blog: ‘Between Climate Change, the risk of Nuclear War, and the political instability of our times, we are an angry culture. Unresolved anger is dangerous while resolved anger is powerful. This site is about making the shift to resolved anger. It is also about making the shift to being a mature adult, being at peace and being of service to a world badly in need of leadership.’

    More specifically as to why a third book, it is one of my major ways for me to contribute. I am a retired physician (specialist anaesthetist) and psychotherapist. My first book Blowing Out the Darkness: The Management of Emotional Life Issues, Especially Anger and Rage came from my awareness of how angry we are as a culture. My second book Acedia, The Darkness Within, and the darkness of Climate Change came from the recognition of how powerless and overwhelmed we feel as individuals and as a culture, with consequent anger. This book addresses how we contribute.

    I have deliberately called this book The Search … because, for me and a significant number of my therapy clients, it has been a search. Up until 1983 at age 40 (I am currently 82), I was a very competent physician-anaesthetist when my life fell apart; I knew I was heading in the same direction as my father in that he committed suicide when he was 49. Reputedly at one point, he had said ‘Never go to a psychiatrist who is less intelligent than you are’ — in similar fashion, my limited experience of therapy up to that point was not helpful. Fortunately, I found good experiential therapy and my life changed; it cost me a lot of time and money, which I fortunately had as a consequence of my profession. It entailed major searching, not available to most with more limited life circumstances.

    The outcome was I became a very competent therapist, mainly focused on my own anger management program. As I studied my clients, I came to characterize them as falling into what I came to call ‘pony tracks.’ I imagine you the reader has been to the circus and seen the ponys, the ones the kids ride. The kids are having fun but what about the ponys walking around their well-worn tracks, dressed in their pretty bangles — they look bored or in some other kind of emotional pain. Most clients are like this: in pain undoubtedly, frequently hiding their angst, and lost in the same dysfunction day after day.

    I could work with about 90% of people — about 10% wanted to work with a woman therapist or found me too intellectual or something. They might come for a session or two, and then not return. The rest fell into three roughly equal groups of individuals.

    It would normally take me anywhere between one and six sessions to identify the pattern of pain, the ‘pony track’. We would then discuss the nature of the difficulty and decide what next. At this point, about 30% would say to me something like “You know, now that I recognize the nature of the issue, I can live with it, and besides, it would cost me too much to change it (they might have to give up their marriage or a lucrative job or some other cost).” At this point, we would do some clean-up and they would leave. Remotely they might come back in the future.

    The remaining 60% would want to work further. This would usually entail another three to six months of work whereupon they would get out of pain. Half of them would leave at this point as having accomplished what they wanted, in particular out of pain. Perhaps they would also come back at a future time.

    The final third, again out of pain, would be appreciative yet would say something like “You know, now that I am out of that pony track, I recognize another pony track (often one that they could not see because of the first one)”. Over the years, as I worked with this third group, I found that most people have anywhere between three and six pony tracks, which when resolved (perhaps over two or three years of work), resulted in deep satisfaction in the life of that client. It truly was a search for these individuals to come to this point in their lives.

    That search was made easier in that as a physician in the Canadian province of Ontario, my therapy services were paid by the provincial health plan. A blessing for clients, I eventually switched exclusively to group psychotherapy so as to minimize my client list; clients came to my weekend workshops on anger management as well as word-of-mouth (including other therapists), then they joined one of my groups (no waiting list). This became the basis of my first book.

    Thus the financial burden of the cost was significantly reduced; most people cannot afford extensive therapy. The search is further compromised by finding a therapist who is a good fit yet has the skill and maturity to challenge the client to do the work. The deeper work is not understanding; it is emotional at the other-than-conscious level. I tell clients that the work is frequently that of exploring a swamp looking for buried treasure; as therapist, I know how to explore swamps but I don’t know the client’s individual swamp.

    Next post: Being fully alive.

  • A Request re My Blog

    Would you be willing to subscribe to my blog Awakening From Your Anger and give me detailed feedback on my posts. Some of you are already subscribers; the request still applies to you.

    I am currently about to attend an experiential workshop entitled Elders Rites of Passage. An essential theme within the workshop is “What is mine do do?”; a friend of mine reframed this for me as “What is mine to contribute?” I like this better as it is relational (I’ll expand upon this in another post).

    In exploring this question, I have been considering what I do with my blog, for which I have been relatively inactive for the past year. My major theme has always been how to respond to the existential-cultural-political turmoil that is leading us to collapse of our civilization as well as possible extinction as a species.

    To motivate me so as to engage with the blog, I have decided to write a third book (see below), tentative title The Search To Be Fully Alive: The What and The How; I’ll write the posts in a way that (I hope) I will be able to stitch them together later into a relatively well-formed book (with some additional editing). At least, that is my goal.

    My request to you is to give me feedback of any or all future posts as to whether each post demonstrates clarity of ideas as well as emotional appeal in being interesting. Any other comments will of course be welcome. I would certainly appreciate commentary on each post but I do not want the task to become onerous on your part, so please be free to comment or not.

    If you are willing, go to my blog (as above), scroll down to Subscribe and enter your email address. That way you will receive an email each time I publish a blog post. Comments can then be sent back to me either as a comment within the post or by email to [email protected] (please put Post Comment yyyy/mm/dd within the subject line).

    Appreciations, Dave

    FN: For those of you who do not know my writings, I have two self-published books: Blowing Out the Darkness: The Management of Emotional Life Issues, Especially Anger and Rage and Acedia, The Darkness Within: and the darkness of Climate Change. Both are published by The Ewings Publishing (Metairie, LA) as well as by myself under a different publisher (long story there). Feedback from independent reviewers and well as clients suggest that the books are well written and deserve to be more widely available, yet despite investing considerable money, I have been unable to accomplish this.

    For your information as well, I am aware of how difficult it is currently to access former posts. To correct this, I am designing a page which will list all my previous posts as well as a brief comment on each post; please be patient with me as I develop this.

  • Current Status 20250719

    My apology to those who are interested in my blog. I have been very remiss in keeping it up to date; I intend to resolve this.

    In September 2025, I am going to a 5-day workshop entitled Elder’s Rites of Passage, a process further to the Men’s Rites of Passage which I attended in 2017. Both workshops come out of the work of Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk who for many years has directed the Centre for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque NM. More than ten years ago, Richard turned this work over directly for the men of Illuman to continue; i have been apart of Illuman since 2016. The work has added greatly to my life.

    At age 82, I have long considered myself an Elder, especially in my role as psychotherapist, but I have not pursued the process in a group setting. It is time for me to do so, especially in the sense that a major focus of the Elder’s Rites is the question of “What is mine to do?” (A friend pointed out a very useful reframe here when he suggested a better focus of “What is mine to contribute? — thereby emphasizing the relational aspect of the question!)

    It is an important question for me, one that has repeatedly challenged me in my life. I am frequently caught between my strong hermit/poustinik nature and my desire to contribute. So at this time, I am intending a deep dive into the question.

    One aspect is that I intend to revise this blog, this time successfully. Anyone who has followed the history of this blog is aware that it was, for a number of years, called The Human Side of Global Warming. Then it was the opportunity for me to expand upon my many reflections on anger/emotional management, essential studies on how we fail to resolve climate change. We are still at that point of failing to resolve, although there has been major improvement in renewable energy resources and how we manage energy. Yet we need so much more in the complexity of climate change.

    Six months ago, I started to revise the blog but failed to mobilize myself enough. Past of the difficulty has been I had too many irons in the fire. First I was busy with studies in Theology — I now have a Diploma in Theological Studies. Those of you who have followed me likely know that I am deeply spiritual, a mystic with a background in many religions, principally Christianity; I strongly believe that a sense of spiritual journey is essential to human maturity yet much of religiosity has sabotaged such journey (fortunately there are major exceptions).

    I have also spent an inordinate amount of time (and money) attempting to promote (also without success) my two books Blowing Out the Darkness: The Management of Emotional Life Issues, Especially Anger and Rage and Acedia, The Darkness Within: and the darkness of Climate Change. I have ended this process (elsewhere — see About>Testimonials — I provide some of the highly positive feedback I received on these two books). In additional, the death of a dear friend who managed my website stalled my process such that I have given up my website. All of this added to a sense of discouragement.

    I am now ready to resume. Initially there will be a considerable modification of the appearance of the blog (that may require a . I don’t yet know how the new blog will develop. I likely will still emphasize emotional management and there will be a greater focus on spiritual journey in action.

    We are still in deep trouble as a culture. I intend to be part of the contribution to healing.

  • Apologies

    Indeed. I have gotten far too busy with a Theology course (massive reading) likely until April.

    I will return. Anger Management is far too important in our culture.

    Dave

  • Transforming Anger into Emotional Resilience

      There have been a number of posts show up in my email this past week that remind me of the need for this blog. In a recent post, Jack Kornfield, a noted American Buddhist, writes “When self-righteous anger arises, we can let it go. Retaining our own fierce clarity, we too can seek justice, yet do so with a loving heart.” There is a lot of self-righteous anger in our societies, Canadian and American. I agree with the sentiment expressed by Jack yet letting go of anger was never my forte. I could have spend years exploring Buddhist meditation, but it likely would not have touched the Family of Origen issues that underlay my anger — it took nearly ten years of good experiential therapy for me to resolve my issues (such work then became the basic of the anger management program that I developed and taught for twenty years).

      Having developed these skills, I can probably lead others to resolution within a few years (if they will do the work). For a beginning approach, check out the thirty or so postings listed under “Postings / Anger Management”. There were originally a series of 30 emails that I sent out over a period of 90 days, twice a week, with the suggestion to read and practice some simple skills. They generally gave people the necessary skills for better management of emotional issues, and if they wanted more, they could choose to work with me via Zoom or in-person.

      Incidentally, I call it ‘anger management’ because that is what attracts interest — it is really emotional life management; the skills are applicable to any emotional issue. I’ll add to this in a moment.

      Another email post from a few weeks ago described how a dozen hooded and masked individuals in Hamilton, Ontario gathered to rally behind the racist and xenophobic slogan popularized by Trump: “mass deportations now”. Such a process is highly unusual for Canada yet seems to be part of the growing rage throughout North America. From my perspective, it is likely that such intolerance arises from a sense of powerlessness related to the major dysfunctionality of our civilization. It is unlikely that such individuals would want to undertake my anger management program. But they do illustrate the needs of our society — such will likely increase given the current atmosphere in the States.

      Another post added to this: “Lonely, Addicted, and Living Without a Higher Purpose? An open letter to younger men struggling.” A second noted: “Road rage has soared in an increasingly angry nation: People are just overwhelmed.” Both of these were protected by paywalls so I did not read the details — I can imagine though.

      All of these have become common stories; all of these require good anger management.

      I was a physician-psychotherapist practicing in Ontario for more than twenty-five years. As a physician in Ontario, my therapy practice was paid though the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP); all any Ontario client had to do was say they wanted to work with me — OHIP paid for it. If I moved to a new location, I could have a waiting list within three weeks — lucky for me, lucky for clients.

      Part of my training included a Master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Sciences, functionally a degree in how people function in groups. After a few years, as I developed my weekend anger management program, I got tired to telling people that if they wanted to do individual therapy with me, it was a two-year waiting list. Eventually I switched to exclusive group therapy, and fed my groups from people who attended by anger management weekends. My wife and I had a day-retreat center where we each practiced our careers (my wife is a brilliant trainer in NeuroLinguistic Programming). Eventually also, I wrote my first book Blowing Out the Darkness: The Management of Emotional Life Issues, Especially Anger and Rage.[1]

      I am not interested in blowing my own horn, but my anger management program was effective for a wide range of people. Every three to six months, someone would stop by our center and tell me that their lives changed after a single weekend workshop. A Probation Officer sent me approximately 60 individuals over the years — only one re-offended after that single weekend. A senior Police Officer believed my program to be the best program he had ever encountered. A Justice of the Supreme Court would on occasion specifically recommend my weekend as part of his dispositions.

      I know that all troublesome issues of anger-rage are resolvable — the limitation is the willingness of the client to do the work (which I will describe in ensuing posts). The other major limitation is for the client to find good anger management. From my perspective, most programs are not very good — they mainly tell people what they should be doing. They work for many people because many people are highly motivated. Yet my groups were filled with people for whom such instructions did not work — they were motivated but they needed more. Specifically I did not tell people what they should be doing!

      As a taster of what is to come: What is the matter with being angry? Or being enraged? … Is it the anger, or something else? I suggest it is something else. The basic issue is not the anger or rage. It is that someone did not feel safe in the presence of anger/rage!

      Stay tuned. The next post will look at safety!

    [1] Although written in 2009, I rebranded the book in 2023. The current book is available on Amazon and other sourses from the publisher: MacQuarrie, Dave. Blowing Out The Darkness: The Management of Emotional Life Issues, Especially Anger and Rage. Metairie, LA: The Ewings Publishing LLC (2023), https://www.theewingspublishing.com/product/blowing-out-the-darkness-the-management-of-emotional-life-issues-especially-anger-and-rage/. Or from davidmacquarriebooks.com.