The Ticking Time Bomb: A Word About Anger Management

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I’ve always had an issue with anger management.

I’m not proud of it. But as part of my continued effort to be as transparent as possible in this space, I felt like I had to admit it.

I’m not sure how exactly how, when, or why it started. Maybe it was because my brother was a two-sport star in high school and my sister was a straight-A student. They gave me a high bar to live up to, and I knew that I was never going to be them. All I could manage was 16th place in a class of 80 and making it to the farm level of little league baseball with my father as my coach. He was very hard on me, which, looking back on now, I’ve grown to appreciate very much. But my 10-year-old eyes didn’t see the good in it. As a child, I quickly became frustrated with myself when I struck out or got a bad grade on a test. I then developed a very low opinion of myself which still resonates today.

I love my family dearly and I’m certainly not blaming any of them for my problems. Even as an adult in the Czech Republic with my folks 5,000 miles away, I still have problems controlling my temper. That’s never been more true than recently.

As I’ve said before, I don’t have a lot of patience. Even though I’ve been working on that, I still have a long way to go. I’m the most competitive person you will ever meet and I have an extremely high standard for myself. Of course, I tend to blame myself for everything that goes wrong, not accounting for external factors and other things I can’t control.

My fuse has been growing shorter and shorter. I’ve been letting trivial things, such as my opponent’s player scoring a touchdown in fantasy football, get me riled up. Even the everyday inconveniences like just missing the metro have been setting me off. At school, some of my colleagues have seen me get frustrated over things that aren’t worth getting worked up about.

Nothing is the end of the world except for the end of the world itself. My failure to grasp that has been raising my blood pressure tenfold.

Why is this happening?

Honestly, I’ve never been more stressed than I am right now. I know we all get stressed, and I’d be lying if I said this is the first time in my life I’ve been stressed. I’m living in a foreign country, far, far away from the support system that has carried me through the first three decades of my life. The prospect of being alone for Thanksgiving and Christmas scares me. Even if everything were all sunshine and rainbows at the moment, being alone in a foreign country would not be easy.

To add to the feeling, I’m working at a new job, constantly dealing with students, parents, colleagues, and administration all at once. I never had to do that when I taught adults. The end of my probationary period is looming and I’m nervous. Have I done a good enough job? Will that one bad math lesson or one angry parent email be enough for them to let me go? I wanted this job so badly, worked really hard for it, and impressed a lot of people along the way. It needs to work out. And then there’s COVID. What is we go back in lockdown or we have to move to distance learning? What if, God forbid, we get an outbreak at our school? What if the definition of ”fully vaccinated” changes so you have to have the third dose (which I’m not eligible for until at least January)?

Of course, all of this has been exacerbated by my search for a new flat, which has been about as successful as the Montreal Canadiens’ season so far (it feels good to not have to use the Sabres in that comparison for once, though I think we’ll be back to that before long).

Amid all the stress, I haven’t been sleeping or eating well. The stress has also added to my anxiety and weakened some friendships. I think all these things have been major contributors to my trigger pulls of late.

How can I get out of this funk? And yes, I have absolutely no choice but to get out of it. I was doing some research and found that anger management can lead to heart attacks and strokes. Scary stuff. No job, flat, or fantasy football game is worth that.

As I was preparing for my fake pigskin matchups this week, a scribe put it in perspective. If I may paraphrase, he stated that losing loved ones is a hardship and that starting a receiver with a bad hamstring is an inconvenience.

Lightbulb on.

I think we all get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives that we see everything as a hardship. But the reality is that someone out there has it worse than you. No one is going to die because I screwed up 8th grade’s math test (and I did screw it up, royally). If Cooper Kupp, who I’m playing against in two leagues this week, drops 30 points on me, the sun is still going to come up on Monday morning.

There are people who are unemployed. There are people who have had to bury loved ones. There are people on ventilators with COVID.

Those are things worth getting upset about.

So I’m going to go on the record and make a promise to myself. I’m going to be kinder, gentler, and better in the weeks ahead. Not only will I be kinder and gentler to others, I’ll be kinder and gentler to myself as well. Yes, I’ll continue to have that high standard for myself, but I’ll work a lot harder to not beat myself up over it when I don’t exceed that standard because of something that’s not completely in my control. This change won’t happen overnight. But it needs to happen quickly. I have too much riding on this teach abroad experience, an opportunity that so many people around the world would kill to have.

I need to develop more patience. This past week during my observation, my observer told me that he was proud of me because I didn’t lose my cool. However, if he had seen some of my other lessons this week, he would have seen me lose my cool. What would he have said then? When I lose my cool in the classroom, the students might think that’s OK. It’s not. I need to be the role model. Getting visibly frustrated, no matter the reason, sends the wrong message to my students, their parents, and my colleagues, all of whom I need to have on my side.

The only reason I get angry is because I want the students to have the best experience. Their parents are paying their hard-earned money for them to be at our school. I want to be not only the best teacher, but the best and most empathetic person. When they fall short of my expectation for them and when I fall short of their expectation for me, I get angry and go right to beating myself up.

So how do I get that patience that I (and they) so desperately need?

I honestly don’t know if there’s a magic switch. There’s no pill I can take. Again, it’s not going to happen without a lot of work and dedication on my part. Maybe I can do one little thing each day. Going back to meditation might help. Perhaps read some books or post some quotes. How about a little laughter every once in a while? (side note: I actually can’t remember the last time I laughed.)

On the school front, I’ve come to the realization that I need to be more consistent with discipline, communicate better with parents, and overprepare for lessons. A lot of the problems I’ve been stressed about lately could have easily been alleviated had I done these things. I’m spending this weekend making a plan of action to improve my situation at school and to help ensure that the kids have a better experience. I just hope it’s not too little, too late.

It’s possible those things could work. But the fact I’m giving myself this wake-up call is a major step. After all, the first sign of solving a problem is admitting that you have a problem, right? My realization that most of the things I’m stressed about really aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things is another critical step.

As mentioned before, being alone on Thanksgiving and Christmas is going to suck. But it can’t possibly suck as bad as being alone in a hospital room or being alone on the unemployment line.

That, friends, is what I could be facing if I don’t start handling stress better. Maybe that’s hyperbole, but it’s certainly not too far-fetched if I don’t figure this out…and figure it out soon.

It’s time to turn off the ticking time bomb and make my life more dynamite.

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