It’s OK to flare up, don’t feel guilty

By Alex P. Vidal

“Speak when you are angry, and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.” —Laurence J. Peter

LIKE the Filipino teacher in the now deactivated viral TikTok clip, some principals and college deans also lose their tempers and act like Haiti gangsters inside the classrooms and faculty meetings from time to time.

I personally know some of these characters and even watched while they literally ran berserk.

Since no outsider has witnessed the fracases, there’s no earthshaking reaction from any non-teaching staff and personnel, students and even parents. No public outcry whatsoever.

The only difference as we emphasized in our previous article is that these seemingly abnormal behaviors by the educators and other bigwigs in the learning institutions were never posted on the social media or TikToked “live.” Hence, no hostile and knee jerk reaction from the netizens.

In police stations, army barracks, editorial rooms, radio station booths, PTA (Parents and Teachers Association) meetings, corporate board meetings, City Hall and Capitol conferences, vendors association gatherings, and church choir orientations, prayer rallies, among other crowded assemblies, there are uncanny and unappetizing outbursts from the speakers, CEOs, religious and political leaders, managers and other persons in authority who aren’t happy or satisfied with their underlings’ performance and efficiency.

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Every now and then someone powerful or holding higher positions in any organization or institution flares up and calls someone names; managers, politicians, parish priests, club presidents act worse than the teacher in the viral TikTok video that became the talk of the nation for a while until Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio “pardoned” her rant in front of the students saying “she’s only human.”

Their volcanic eruptions have escaped scrutiny from public and netizens because, we repeat, they were never “advertised” or posted on the social media for the world to watch.

Many of us may have grown up thinking that it’s always okay to act out our anger aggressively or violently. So we didn’t learn how to understand and manage our angry feelings.

This could mean we have angry outbursts whenever we don’t like the way someone or the whole class is behaving. Or whenever we are in a situation we don’t like.

We may have been brought up to believe that we shouldn’t complain. We may have been punished for expressing anger as a child.

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This could mean that we tend to suppress our anger. If we don’t feel release our anger in a healthy way, it can become a long-term problem. If we are not comfortable with new situations, our reaction to them might be out of place or ill-fitting. Or we might turn this anger inwards on ourselves.

We may have witnessed our parents’ or other adults’ anger when it was out of control. And learned to think of anger as something that is always destructive and terrifying. This could mean that we now feel afraid of our own anger.

And we don’t feel safe expressing our feelings when something makes us angry. Those feelings might then surface at another unconnected time. This may feel hard to explain.

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I received an email May 21 from the New York City Health+Hospitals warning bout colon cancer which is currently the second leading cause of cancer deaths in New York City.

“It is most often found in people over the age of 45 years. Early in the disease, there may be no symptoms. So, you may not know you have it,” the email informed.

“The good news is that colon cancer screenings can find cancer early, when it is easier to treat. At NYC Health + Hospitals, our doctors are ready to help you find the colon cancer screening that is right for you.”

The rest of the email thus stated: Screening. There are two main types of screening. Talk to your doctor about which screening test is right for you.

Colonoscopies – This is a procedure in which a flexible instrument with a camera at the tip is inserted through the anus in order to examine the lining of the colon. If lesions are found, the doctor can remove them at the same time.

Fecal immunochemical test or FIT test – This is a test that looks for hidden blood in the stool which can be an early sign of cancer. The stool sample is collected at home and is processed in the lab. If blood is found in your stool, you may, then, need to have a colonoscopy.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)