Road Rage and Suppressed Anger

An incident of road rage made the news in the DFW area over the weekend. Unfortunately we've become accustomed to these occurences. Usually they happen on urban freeways or at an intersection in the ghetto. This one, however, took place in the drive-thru lane at a Chick-Fil-a Restuarant in affluent Southlake. A couple were attempting to leave the pick-up window when their path was blocked by a $200,000 Bentley. Tempers flared and the two men in the Bentley assaulted the women in the passengers seat. My guess is the police will have no problem tracking down the thugs. Even in Southlake there are not a lot of Bentleys.



Road rage is a symptom of a greater problem. As a society, we do not know how to handle conflict. Suppressed anger eventually will lead to an irrational act.


Let's consider the iceburg. We only see the tip. Eighty to ninety percent of the iceburg lies beneath the surface. In the case of the Titanic, it was the portion of the iceburg below the surface that sank the ship. So it with with our anger. The suppressed anger below the surface results in the irrational behavior we eventually see.

We recently spent a week at Disney World with our three pre-school age grandsons. We expected to have some moment of tension. You can't have nine people together for a full week and not have conflicts. Yes, the little boys did throw some tantrums. We could deal with those. Children are not equipped to deal with their emotions in an appropriate way. Adults on the other hand should be so equipped.

One of the appropriate ways is to deal with small conflicts as they occur. When small conflicts are allowed to build below the surface we risk having them come out in an inappropriate manner. My guess is that the two gentlemen in the Bentley were carrying a lot of emotional baggage in their personal trunks.

So, what does this mean to us as parents? We need to be models of how to appropriately deal with conflict. In the relationship with our teens, we are the ones who are probably better equipped to deal with our emotions. Secondly, we can use news stores such as the current one, to talk about the issue of anger and the appropriate ways to deal with it, with our teenagers.