Anger: The Fifth Food Group

when RAGE becomes a way of life

“If you really want to be in law enforcement be prepared to constantly be challenged with balancing your life professionally. If you’re not good at balancing, seriously rethink your career choice. This job becomes a way of life.”

The first time I wrote about anger I was motivated by my work with dispatchers. The Angry Dispatcher: Fact or Fiction remains the most requested article on dr911.com, to date. Since it’s original publication much has changed in the EPS community and as many public safety agencies across the country lurch through sometimes tumultuous, too often painful transitions, the personal and professional lives of those who continue the work are dramatically impacted.

From the physical and health implications of unresolved anger to the unfortunate manifestations of anger we bear witness to on the road, in the workplace, on the schoolyard and at home, anger is fast becoming one of society’s greatest concerns and most significant problems.

This chapter attempts to address these unprecedented changes in emergency public safety and the far ranging impact on its members. We will review the facts about anger and its health implications, touch on the personal impact it has on the home front and with the family, and offer suggestions for understanding as well as tools for coping.

Big News Flash: Times Have Changed

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Regardless of your rank, job title or employment classification the everyday workplace has changed, and with it the way many professionals are asked to do business.

Much of what you may remember as a recruit, trainee or new employee bears little resemblance to what we see now. Not unlike corporate America, public legislation and private litigation have transformed the organizational climate, forcing even the secular world of emergency public safety to change.

As can be expected not all changes have gone smoothly, or with regard for its employees. Were we only discussing those responsible for the management of paperclips the transitions might be more palatable to those who must bear the brunt of the changes, but the grim reality is we’re not. We are talking about people whose everyday work life is rarely mundane. The everyday uncertainty regarding life and death, and how close any one of us comes to that invisible line during the course of our workday has a way of bringing even the most minor event into the most extraordinary focus.

In The Broadest Sense

Every day our senses are flooded with the violence perpetrated by others. The news media, popular television and movies are quick to remind us of the full gamut of human potential, both positive and negative.

For those of us tasked with providing the emergency response to humanities frightening expressions of self, we rarely need the media to serve as a reminder. One day on the job alone is enough to refresh our memories of the horrors people are more than capable of. We see it, hear it and even smell it on any given day we decide to show up for work. We may turn off the television or discontinue the newspaper subscription but the memories are never far from recall.

But is this the only source of our stress? In a random sample of police officers participating in an ongoing research study (Chace, 2001), 4 out of 5 identified work place factors (such as problems with supervisors, and pending complaints) as the primary source of their stress, and consequent anger and frustration.

“I can deal with emergencies. I can’t handle idiot co-workers and radios that don’t work and dispatch procedures conceived by idiots!”

The Every Day Reality

How easy if the only threat we managed every day was the one we encountered on the street or over the air. How freeing to know that once we hung up the gun belt, took off the headset, turned in the keys, or took off the uniform, life was immeasurably better because we knew at the end of the day it was a job well done: To be supported and rewarded by our organization, treated with respect by our supervisors and colleagues, appreciated by the public we served and loved unconditionally by our friends and family around us; what a wonderful world that would be. Few would argue if that were the world most people lived and worked in, but how many of us can say that? What happened?

From The Worried Well to Managing Risk

Even as a psychologist, things have changed. In the beginning of my career the worst situation I generally encountered in my office were tearful and distraught individuals who were unhappy with some aspect of their lives. Occasionally someone expressed suicidal ideation but rarely did someone present with active psychotic symptoms or florid homicidal intent. The vast majority of people I treated were easily categorized as “the worried well;” people who were generally content with their lot in life, functioning fairly well overall but felt some anxiety in specific areas of their lives.

Then a subtle shift occurred and my practice went from treating the worried well to conducting threat assessments on people that rarely looked any different then you or I but were described as “dangerous,” “threatening” and “volatile.”

Conducting threat assessments are now routine for most practitioners, and while the “worried well” still find their way to my office, the potential risk factors I’m forced to consider when I’m sitting with someone are staggering.

Developing systems for evaluating dangerousness has become an extremely lucrative and necessary business but despite elaborate schemes for determining risk factors people are still dying at the hands of others with alarming regularity.

Grimly we are reminded that systems of evaluation are helpful but offer no guarantees. No one has a crystal ball and regardless of what your technique or method we are not always able to see what can’t be seen.

No matter what you may think you’re heard there really isn’t any exact way to predict someone’s behavior, and the range, intensity and frequency of individuals acting out aggressively in the work place and at home continues to hit new highs.

“If you want people to like you, become a fireman. Don’t become a cop. Nobody likes cops.”

Many officers and civilians are angry and frustrated with the changes that have occurred organizationally, in addition to the public's perception of the job they do. Morale is at an all time low, and everybody knows it. But who is doing anything about it?

On more then one occasion I have listened to the anger and frustration vented by officers towards the department. I’ve heard discussions of the inevitability of workplace violence perpetrated by one of their own toward command staff as though it were already a foregone conclusion; not a question of if but rather when, where and who.

This isn’t just one isolated incident in a department nobody knows. Agencies all over the country are creating training protocols for handling the eventuality of such an event, and again, the general consensus is, ‘We’re not training for whether it will happen. We’re training for when it will happen.’

“People keep talking about the department like it’s this living entity, and nothing else matters. It’s as though there really aren’t any people who work there, it’s just “The Department. That’s it. Everyone else is expendable as long as ‘The Department’ keeps going.”

It is with good reason people are angry, and as one paramedic shared, after her exposure to a homeless indigent infested with ticks left her with Lymes Disease:

“I was cursed at, yelled at, humiliated at times in front of others by my partner and a few lieutenants. One lieutenant almost hit me in the face with a metal transaction splint.”

Some current practices in the workplace simply don’t make sense, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier.