Anger is speaking. Do you hear it?
I'm kicking my newsletter off from the same place you could say this whole journey began: anger.
A note of context: I played ultimate competitively for a long time, and this newsletter began as an effort to examine life through the lens of the sport.
I don’t think too many people I played with or against would call me angry. Not that I didn’t have my moments— I did. At Sectionals during my second year with Truck Stop, I kicked a teammate’s styrofoam cooler into a bunch of tiny pieces after I had gotten beat deep; I got ejected from an MLU game once; I remember times when I shoved guys who were guarding me and yelled insults at the other team. I could go on, but at the end of the day I still doubt that many people remember me as “the angry guy.” I definitely didn’t see myself that way, either.
After I stopped playing, though, I realized something: I was very angry. Without notice, both big and small things could spark a furious heat in my body that I couldn’t shake. More than that, I sometimes let that anger fuel harmful action like yelling or using rude or cruel words or refusing to communicate altogether.
It eventually became very clear that if I didn’t curb this behavior, it would destroy a loving relationship that I wanted in my life. Beyond that, it hurt to walk around with an uncontrollably short fuse. If I didn’t find the source and somehow transform it, my anger would crush me.
My struggle with anger took root long before I ever saw a disc fly, and by the time I was examining it, I no longer had a playing career to account for. Anger has taken me to all kinds of places, though. Right now, it’s bringing me back to ultimate.
Where my anger took me
So I took a journey with it. I started to dig into its roots. I began to notice, in a new way, that anger-fueled aggression is everywhere—not just in sports or on TV or Twitter, but at the grocery store, on the way to work, and in the conversations I overheard at restaurants. It also dawned on me, in an I’ve always known this but I never really stopped to recognize it kind of way, that anger was the norm in the house I grew up in. My dad, through his actions, taught me that lashing out in anger is the way to deal with whatever is making you uncomfortable.
Beyond seeing where I learned to act this way, I came to understand that beneath the anger, there was something deeper.
For me, the big one was grief. As I dug into my anger I arrived at a realization that I was carrying but had never fully felt the devastation of a trauma-filled childhood. Later on, I came upon shame and guilt and fear and all kinds of other demons, all of which my anger helped keep at bay; it often feels safest to stick to what’s familiar, even if it’s destructive.
Eventually, and little by little, I gained the ability to hold the deeper stuff that was fueling my anger. I started to feel those things more, and while it was often painful and uncomfortable, I was becoming unstuck— incomplete processes were ending and I was settling into a more peaceful homeostasis.
As a result, anger started taking up less and less of the picture. When it crept up, I found myself asking: are you actually upset about the thing you’re about to flip out over? Is flipping out going to leave you feeling better, or worse?
It’s not like I never get angry or handle it inappropriately— both still happen, for sure. Generally speaking, though, I’m far less likely to get defensive, raise my voice, or go for the jugular when met with a reality I’m not ok with. The underlying energy store feels far less full, too. There are both fewer matches being lit as well as less gasoline sitting around, waiting to blow.
What this has to do with ultimate
I mentioned at the start that I don’t think people would tell you that I was a particularly angry player. That isn’t because I wasn’t angry, though— obviously, I was. It’s just that at every level of this sport that I’ve been at—from coaching on elementary school blacktops to playing at club worlds—men exploding at themselves and each other is a pretty regular thing.
I’ve listened to teammates use hateful language over call disputes, stood there while opponents folded discs in half after getting scored on, and watched guys turn red in the face because no matter how much they scream, the thing upsetting them isn’t changing. Like with my own mistakes, I could continue. If you’ve spent time in the game, though, I don’t think I need to; whether you identify as a man or not, I bet you know what I’m talking about.
Clearly, there’s serious energy behind these angry outbursts. Just as clearly, that energy needs an outlet. And finally, sports can be a really great forum for that. But I recently had someone tell me a story of being so mad after a point that he punched a light pole and broke his hand, and nothing about his story seems all that crazy to me given what I’ve seen in 20 years of playing. Given that, is it possible we might want to make some adjustments?
Why do we have all this anger that needs expressing in the first place? Where would it lead if, instead of either turning the outbursts into jokes among teammates or just never talking about them at all, we considered the possibility that somewhere in there are cries of heartache, brokenness, confusion, and needing change?
I also think blow ups are only one piece of the puzzle. Another thing I’ve realized is that so often in my most dedicated days of playing, there was a pressure inside of me that just sat there, constantly at a low boil.
I have this mental image of me, standing in the kitchen cooking dinner after weeknight practices (aka dumping frozen vegetables and a can of beans into a pot and stirring), seething with rage because someone had beaten me to the cone, or because I might get moved off the O line, or because a teammate wasn’t bought in enough.
In retrospect, what I was really feeling was fear. I was afraid that the game was exposing the truth about me, which was that I wasn’t good enough (a thread I’ll pull on another time). I didn’t know this back then, though, so I kept doing what I thought I was supposed to do: try really hard and hope I somehow earned the right to feel differently. When you’re stuck making that kind of futile effort over and over again, you get really frustrated. And that makes it easy to snap.
I do want to make it clear that I really don’t look back on my playing career as just a giant rage fest. Every year I played brought me joy, connection, and love, and I’m grateful for both the memories and active relationships that are in my life because of frisbee.
It’s just that from where I stand now, I can’t help but think about how much anger there was, both inside of me and in the atmosphere. And from there, it feels like there’s something worth digging into.
Guys, can we talk about this?
I think we could all use space to talk about this stuff. I also think men have a unique need and desire for this kind of space because it’s way more normal to fly off the handle or, see a friend do it, than it is to talk about what we feel below the surface and how it impacts our behavior.
Back in the summer, a friend/former teammate and I started facilitating conversations that we call Men, Let’s Talk About Anger. Basically, we invite guys to join us on Zoom to talk about anger in the game, in our lives, and the intersection between the two.
We’re now shaping this into a 3-part series:
Session 1 deals with the idea that where there’s anger, there’s also something deeper underneath. We’ve hosted this a handful of times (and we’re doing another on Monday, 10/11 at 7pm if you’re free and want to join!).
Session 2 is about how anger can fuel constructive action, and in November, we’re offering it to those who have attended Session 1.
Session 3 will build on 1 and 2, focusing on specific/practical tools for working with anger. We plan to offer this one in December.
Once we’ve finished the ongoing pilot of the three sessions, I hope to facilitate all three for teams, leagues, or other groups of men that want to engage with this. As soon as it all gains traction, I’ll start doing this full time. Stay tuned, but also let me know if you’d like to collaborate.
Two philosophical notes that I want to share:
We don’t ask anyone to get into their dark stuff or cross any boundaries— just to push against their comfort zones.
We also make it clear that we don’t see anger as a problem to eradicate, but rather a phenomenon to work with. We operate from the premise that it’s never a bad thing to feel anger, but unchecked anger can lead to action that causes harm.
Through just an on-field lens, I think building emotional intelligence is a practical way to increase our odds of winning frisbee games. I’d wager that most players would get better if they understood their emotions more deeply, even if it’s only to channel them more deliberately.
My real hope, though, is that working with anger together helps us on the path to becoming happier, healthier people. What’s up with this anger I feel? Where does it come from? How long has it been here? Where do I feel it in my body? Does it serve me? How does it influence my actions? I hope participants leave asking themselves these kinds of questions because I think devoting more of our consciousness to what is really real inside of us brings us closer to our whole selves. It helps us change.
If you’re interested in that, here’s the link again:
The future of this newsletter
Both the facilitations and what I’m writing here draw their energy from the same source: a healing journey. Put simply, I’ve been processing a whole lot for a long time, and anger was just the tip of the iceberg. I feel called to share and make intentional room for others to do the same, so here I am.
As far as frisbee goes, I’m planning to stick with this angle because it’s a common ground from which it’s a little easier to jump into stuff that isn’t always easy to talk about. So much of our lives— joy, hope, suffering; relationships and change and seeing ourselves in relation to the whole— plays out within the context of this game. My hope is to serve greater wholeness, way beyond frisbee. Frisbee just feels like a good place to start.
I plan to put this out weekly, and I hope you’ll keep reading.
Closing out
I want to thank a few people for their help in getting me to the point of being ready to launch this. Some of them have great projects of their own going on, and I’d recommend checking them out. Here we go:
First, my partner Katharine Gray has both endured me at my worst and held my hand on the path to something better. She’s a wonderful editor, too.
Matt Kerrigan has helped me shape and lead the Men, Let’s Talk about Anger sessions, and I don’t think they’d be any good without him.
David Dean and the White Awake org have been huge in my own personal journey. White Awake is still doing late registration for its foundational course, Roots Deeper than Whiteness, and I can’t recommend it enough for any white folks who want to sort through race, class, ancestry, and their own stake in liberation movement.
Isaac Saul, another writer and ultimate player, writes a political newsletter called Tangle that I really enjoy reading. Thanks to Isaac for some newsletter pointers.
Simon Pollock, yet another writer and ultimate player, made himself available for a ton of newsletter-related questions.
Steve Helvin, a dear friend who taught me how to huck in the wind, took the header photo.
In closing, I’ll say this: please forward this along to anyone (if you’re thinking ultimate, team Slack/GroupMe, maybe?) you think would find it useful. Until next week, you can check out some of my other writing on my website. I might also tweet about all this if it feels right.
See you soon,
Jonathan
Love it! Excited to see what's next.
One resource to share here, pulling together a few threads around "anger", in its positive and negative incarnations: https://citizenstout.substack.com/p/the-anger-of-hope-vs-the-anger-of