Misdirected & Wasted Anger
What to do with all of that anger energy
I’m going to write about something I have been angry about, so the article will start off being personal, but I will get to the big picture by the end of this article.
Teeth Issues
I was posting on Notes the other day about starting the book “The Oxygen Advantage.” It focused on the benefits of breathing through the nose and taking less air in over time. I’ve been attempting to breathe through my nose more and the congestion has lightened up a bit in just a few days.
I have also been watching some videos from the author, Patrick McKeown. There was a discussion on how our breathing affects our mouths in a podcast. The nasal breathing should allow your tongue to rest on the top of your mouth, which should keep your teeth around that area.
As a child my parents had my wisdom teeth removed (and I’ve heard of other health problems that can come from that before). In the podcast, they mention that the teeth will start crowding inward if you remove teeth.
In later years, I complained I had a “small mouth.” I can’t use normal-size toothbrushes well. I have to use a small circular-head brush to get to the back teeth and clean them effectively. When I rest my tongue on the top of my mouth to breathe through my nose and bite down, my tongue gets bit by those teeth that are supposed to be surrounding it. This means my teeth have moved in closer than they should be.
In the podcast, they discuss how you can widen the mouth (of kids) over time. But rather than do that, dentists often just pull teeth when there’s overcrowding. So, I’ve been getting upset to realize that some of the dental decisions (when I was young and older) could change my health in the way they have. It’s just really been on my mind all of a sudden because of reading the book and also spending every moment of my awake time trying to breathe through my nose rather than my mouth.
It’s only been a few days and I’ve felt my bite shifting. When I bite down, the teeth are not lining up with each other the same way they used to. So, I thought, will I have to see the dentist if my bite shifts? What then? How far can my teeth shift and will it work out okay?
I can be an anxious over-thinker. The calm and rational me believes everything will work out because God is in control, and if you use your body parts for their intended purposes things should go back to the correct way. The body heals itself.
I don’t believe, with my wisdom teeth being removed, that I could ever fix my mouth to 100% just by nasal breathing. But, maybe I can improve it a little bit.
But when I read this book, watched that podcast, and then saw Josh’s post about about his teeth issue, it’s all just bringing up things I’m angry about in our dental system, and my parents and past dentists.
Mewing
The idea behind “Mewing” is that you can change your facial features by placing your tongue up on the roof of the mouth. That’s where it’s supposed to go if we were all nasal breathing correctly. I’ve heard of it before, and I realized my tongue was doing this because of the nasal breathing.
I tried mewing when I first heard about it, but with the mouth breathing because of congestion, I didn’t keep it up. I think you have to be very motivated to mew all the time if are a mouth breather. But if you decide to shift to nasal breathing, the mewing may just come naturally.
Misdirected Anger
I don’t think it’s right that dentists who know these things don’t explain it to their patients. I saw a comment where a person asked about it and the response was that patients didn’t want to hear it so that’s why it’s not brought up.
This riles me up because they’re not giving informed consent to children and parents when they suggest the person/child should just have their teeth removed without trying to get better habits to expand the mouth to allow the teeth to be there.
And parents should also research things like this rather than just trusting the dentist as some sort of expert. It’s obvious “experts” don’t want you to have informed consent these days, which is another annoyance.
So, yes, I do think all of those people have some responsibility for this. But, what good is my anger doing me?
Feeling like a Victim
When I get this anger, I feel like a victim. But I can’t change the past. Do I want to just sit around complaining about these people and their decisions? Obviously, I don’t want to. Some people really enjoy the wallowing angry phase. But that’s not me. I want to feel powerful in my life, not like a victim just taking it lying down.
Anger is Energy
All of our emotions are energetic. Anger helps give us energy to fight off real attacks. But, what if no one is attacking you at the moment? It’s just energy boiling up inside of you then. I could write a letter (or email) to someone, a former dentist, my parents, etc. complaining about this. But I think of that as misdirected anger energy. Why waste energy on that? What would they do now and would it make me feel better? I can’t see anything they could do that would make me feel better about it all.
Directing Anger Energy
What I can do, if this displeases me so much, is use that energy for a good purpose. I can look at what I am angry about and find ways that would help to fix that or alleviate it in some way.
I’m angry people are not being given informed consent around teeth issues - well I can write this article and explain some things that others may not know and maybe they’ll share it with people they know and that knowledge can grow.
I’m angry about my personal mouth issues - then I will focus on nasal breathing and mewing and trust that things will improve.
If you’re angry about something, take some time to ask yourself what things you’re most angry about and if there is any way, anything that you can do, to help you feel better about it. You can use the anger energy to help the situation rather than waste it on others who won’t or can’t repent.
Others Do This As Well
In this article, I talked about how when I’m angry at a person, I feel like I am wasting my anger energy on that person (even if they actually were responsible), rather than using it to fuel some actions that would actually help me. I’m sure you also do this at times. So do others.
On various social media platforms all around the web, people are misdirecting their anger energy at others. Rather than solving their own mental or emotional issues, people take to social media and have temper tantrums. I wrote about this in an article called, “Threatened People Procrastinate on Twitter.”
Basically, when people get into the fear state (feel threatened in some way), they may go into freeze mode and veg out on social media. Because they’re there in the threatened state, they can easily switch into “fight” mode. They’ve got anger energy and they don’t know what to do with it. So they misdirect it at strangers. Don’t take it personally if you get that directed at yourself.
Choosing To Feel Powerful
You have the choice to feel like a “victim” or to turn things around and direct all the energy into something that will help you feel like a “victor.” As I wrote earlier, one of the things that bugged me was that people were not being told they could affect their mouths with nasal breathing. If sharing this with people on Substack is part of my legacy, then so be it. Even if not many people read it, I have to say that simply writing has made me feel better.
You don’t have to wallow in victimhood, even if someone else was actually responsible for the issue. You can ask yourself where that anger energy would be better spent.
BTC Donation Address: bc1q4s6h8rhyqawqlz46ppc3zc5v43duycp8m57h9p