Rage is all the rage
Have your practices of observation this month left you feeling a bit raw and exposed because you’re starting to see patterns and dynamics more clearly?
In those observations, you’ve likely felt massive frustration–yours, others', everybody's. Rage is everywhere these days, for many good reasons. And also some dangerous, unchecked ones.
Rage is complex. Have you let yourself feel its wisdom? In a recent client conversation, she came in, judging herself for the rage she was feeling after interactions with a colleague. She assumed it meant she was unprofessional, “too much,” or failing to keep her emotions in check. But as we worked together, she began to see that the rage wasn’t random. It was her body’s wisdom pointing to violated values, crossed boundaries, and continued microaggressions.
Rage and reactivity?
There’s Capital R Rage: the righteous, embodied response to injustice, oppression, and systemic harm. This is the energy that propels collective action and sparks transformation.
Then there’s lowercase r rage: the day-to-day response when someone violates your boundaries, values, or personal space repeatedly. Both Capital R and lowercase r rage are signals from your body and invitations to notice, pause, and act.
There’s also reactive rage. You know this one. It’s explosive, performative. It’s an acting out, not an acting from. Most folks I work with worry that they are expressing this one, so they attempt to hold rage in and back.
My experience is that most of us reading here are feeling Capital R and lowercase r rage, more so than reactive. But we are feeling and seeing the reactive kind all around us. The vibe of it is palpable. Reactive rage is dangerous, to self and others. It hijacks attention and is fused with entitlement and, typically, white supremacy.
Rage is a lot to unpack in an email (way better for coaching through). Let me do a summation so that you don’t also dismiss the role of rage in our interactions like my client almost did.
Our bodies carry the traumas of white supremacy, oppression, and generational and current harms*. And yet, our dominant systems, especially academia and modern workplaces, train us to disassociate from our bodies. Why? Because the body does not lie. It reveals what our minds and the minds of others try so hard to rationalize away: the toxicity, the injustices, the -isms we’re told to accept as “normal.” And this shit is only ramping up.
First: Check in with Your Nervous System
When rage or frustration rises, pause. Ask: Am I in immediate danger? If yes, respond and leave immediately. Your body is doing its job.
If not, notice how your nervous system may still react as if you are. A regulated pause helps you see more clearly:
Is this a boundary or value violation?
Is it pointing to larger systemic harm or injustice?
What could I do right now to soothe my body?
Rage, like grief, is a teacher. It points to what matters, like justice, safety, your core values, boundaries, and limits. Ignore it, then it can turn inward as self-policing and people-pleasing, or outward as resentment.
Second: Name it with curiosity
Notice where rage lands in your body. Maybe throat, jaw, chest, stomach, heat, tightness.
Pause and name it: lowercase r rage or Capital R Rage.
Ask what it’s pointing to. I like the question, “What’s underneath this?”.
Rage is a compass, guiding you toward clarity, boundaries, and embodied action in our relationships.
Resources: *On Being podcast episode Notice the Rage, Notice the Silence, where Krista Tippett interviews Resmaa Menaken. And of course, his amazing work, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.