In my last two posts I have explored what it looks and feels like to stay ‘above the line’ when the world around us feels like it’s unravelling. Both pieces came from a real place. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to stay resourceful and grounded when the pressures are not just personal, but global.
What has been interesting are some conversations I’ve had that have revolved around this topic. In this post I want to explore one of those discussions in particular.
Recently a colleague said to me, ‘What if I don’t want to come back above the line? What if my anger is real and justified?’
I found myself sitting and reflecting on those questions. They are not unfamiliar for me. There are moments, particularly when I am watching the news and something sharp and clear rises up in me, that, if I’m honest, I don’t want to come back above the line either.
I know what the frameworks say. I know about the inner observer, about taking personal responsibility for our responses, about the difference between a reaction and a choice. I’ve written about it. I practice it and share it. I believe in it. And yet…
There are times when the anger feels not like a failing, but rather like the only appropriate response to what is happening. When softening it or naming it and gently letting it move through feels almost like a betrayal to the ‘cause’ or to what I believe is true.
So, what does it mean to stay above the line when something genuinely wrong is happening? How do I know the difference between righteous feeling and using a cause to avoid looking at myself?
I don’t think these questions have definitive answers. However, I’ve noticed a few things worth sharing.
The first is that anger in itself (as I’ve discussed) isn’t below the line. Emotions are not the problem – it is what we do with them. The blame that hardens into contempt, the justification that closes off curiosity, the reactions that spill onto people who had nothing to do with the original source.
I can feel outraged by something and still choose how I express that outrage and where I direct it. That choice is at the heart of what we mean by behavioural freedom.
The second thing I’ve noticed is subtler and, for me, more uncomfortable to admit. Sometimes the cause becomes convenient. When I’m flooded with feelings about something that is globally large and that I am powerless to solve, those feelings can quietly become a reason to avoid looking at challenges closer to home. The relationship I’ve been avoiding. The conversation I owe someone. The pattern in myself I’d rather not examine right now.
It is much easier to be righteously angry at a world leader than to sit with the discomfort of my own small failures. And the fact that the world leader almost certainly deserves the anger is what makes it so tempting to use that anger as an excuse.
The inner observer – that part of us that can watch our own responses without immediately judging them – is the tool I keep returning to here. Not to talk myself out of the feeling, but to ask: what is this serving right now? Am I feeling this in a way that opens me toward something useful, or am I using it to stay closed? Sometimes the honest answer is both.
As we continually emphasise in our work, being emotionally healthy does not prevent us from falling below the line and not wanting to come back. It means staying curious about what the feeling is doing within us and the impact it is having on others. And being willing to remind ourselves how important it is to ask those questions.
Gayle