I’ve been a basketball fan since I was a young girl shooting free throws for hours from a line in front of the neighborhood basketball hoop. I went to University of Cincinnati during their NCAA glory days when the great Oscar Robertson was a member of their talented team. Since then I’ve followed NBA and now WBA basketball with enthusiasm. So, as my hometown Portland Trailblazers approached their playoff games with the Utah Jazz, then the LA Lakers, I succumbed to Blazer fever. I attended playoff games in and out of town where my vocal cords were strained to their limits.

That’s the subject of this week’s newsletter: screaming. Like many people, I didn’t have a very good model as I was growing up, for appropriately expressing anger. I’m a southern girl and in the South boys don’t cry and girls must act like ladies (which means no screaming). If angry, I was encouraged to cultivate a garden of guilt. So, the challenges of my adult life has included learning how to manage this powerful emotion that, at one time, paralyzed me, and, in doing so to learn to discern the difference between disappointment, frustration, anger and rage.

One of the strategies for expressing pent up anger includes going someplace where your loud voice can’t be heard by others then screaming your heart out. Lashing out verbally can be very effective at venting powerful emotions--whether they’re appropriate or not--when it’s done in private. Since yelling isn’t one of my strong suits I was surprised to discover an amazing sense of freedom when I could yell anything I wanted, at the top of my lungs, during the high decibel cheering in these professional sport arenas. As the playoff games went down to the wire the crowd was so loud for so long, I covered my ears and continued yelling for a long time. I was stunned at the vindictive words that appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, that expressed rage over experiences where I’ve experienced loss. I dare not repeat on paper what I yelled but I must admit I was no lady. I also confess it was stunningly liberating to carry on like that and know it was lost in the crowd. Stuffed feelings and energy related to situations and people I thought I’d, with reason, left behind or learned to forgive, sprang quickly to the surface and, as I vented in concert with a lengthy roar of the crowd, I felt weights I never knew were there lifted from my shoulders.

I suspect there’s a lot of that going on in professional sports arenas. I often hear fans yelling vindictively at players regarding their performance and know their anger can’t possibly have anything to do with the game.

In the mid-eighties, when I had a series of personal and professional losses, I crossed paths with Helen Lerner, M. D., author of Dance with Anger. She introduced me to a series of strategies for managing behavior when you’re angry. They’re posted for your perusal at my website: http://www.rondagates.com under the Smart Behavior button. They’ve worked well for me since then. And, screaming at the top of my lungs may, in the fuure, still be the ticket for any residual pent up anger. So, if the TV camera flashes on me in any sports venue in a passionate moment, don’t read my lips! And, for stress relief....try it yourself!!!