Latest news with #SamParker
The Guardian
18-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Is it true that I ‘don't get angry'? Or am I actually dangerously suppressing it?
My friends and I sometimes rank the seven deadly sins in order of personal relevance. For me, 'wrath' always comes last. (I shan't say what's first – too revealing.) Anger doesn't feature in my day-to-day life. I even struggle to feel wrathful when it's appropriate. World events make me fatalistic and depressed; when my gym instructor says to 'let loose' on the ski machine, my effort remains constant. The time I visited a rage room, my main takeaway was that the Metallica song I selected as the soundtrack sounded fantastic on big speakers. This might seem like a good thing: anger is rarely thought of as positive or productive. But is it true that I don't feel anger – or am I just really good at repressing it? 'When people say: 'I never get angry,' what they really mean is they just contain it really well – and often at their own expense,' says Sam Parker, a senior editor at British GQ and author of Good Anger: How Rethinking Rage can Change our Lives. Parker wrote the book 'for people-pleasers, conflict-avoiders and self-improvers', drawing from scientific research, his own experience, and interviews with therapists and other experts. He used to believe that 'the only people with an anger issue were the people who kept getting into fights and arguments, and losing their temper,' Parker tells me. 'I had this idea that I was somehow beyond anger, or it was just of no use to me.' He did struggle with anxiety. And when he hit a rough patch in his 30s, Parker tried yoga, meditation, gratitude journaling and even cold showers. What worked? Boxing. A couple of months in, while letting loose on the bag, Parker was unexpectedly overcome by emotion, enough to wet his eyes. 'For the first time in months I wasn't sad or anxious,' he writes. 'I was furious.' Over time, it dawned on him: 'The more that I recognised anger in myself, talked about it, processed it and eventually acted on it, the more my anxiety went down.' After that epiphany, Parker learned there was a well-established scientific link between anger and anxiety – it just wasn't widely acknowledged. To him, it represented a critical oversight in the mental-health conversation. Anger is as natural as sadness, fear, happiness or disgust – but it's often left out of the picture. In part, it's a language problem, Parker explains. 'In English, we conflate 'anger' with 'aggression' or even 'violence', as though they are the same thing.' But it is an especially challenging emotion to experience and be around. Even psychotherapists may avoid taking on openly angry patients, Parker learned in researching his book. Whether in pop science or academic research, 'across the spectrum, anger is sort of neglected,' he says. Parker wrote Good Anger hoping to reframe the emotion, and help others understand, experience and express it differently. Anger is persistently seen as negative: 'We tend to avoid talking about it altogether until it has boiled over into aggression,' he says. This can compound the shame and stigma. 'A lot of the time, aggressive behaviour is a choice we make,' says Parker. But the emotion itself is legitimate, exists to protect us – and often has something insightful to say. 'We tend to think that anger's telling us something about other people: how unreasonable they are, how they're out to get us, why they're idiots … Far more often, it's pointing us towards an unmet need or event from the past,' he says. When proportionately experienced, anger is not only part of a balanced emotional mix – it can also be 'a real source of determination, vitality and clarity', Parker says, pointing us towards what we value and spurring us on. When he finally acknowledged and began attuning to his latent anger, 'that was when I started to see the real benefits.' Parker's right: it's not really accurate for me to say 'I never get angry.' I just avoid acknowledging it, or name it something more palatable, such as irritation or disappointment. I associate this aversion with my adolescence, when I frequently gave into anger, lashing out at my family and feeling unpleasantly out of control. But, I learn from Parker's book, having been an angry teenager doesn't necessarily make me an angry person. There are in fact two types of anger. Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion 'Trait anger' is inherent and individual, influenced by genetics and environment. Having high trait anger means you're quicker than others to fly off the handle. 'State anger', on the other hand, is temporary, triggered by frustration or a perceived threat. 'No one gets away without having state anger,' says Parker. The question is, how do you typically express it? Anger researchers distinguish between 'anger-out' and 'anger-in': externalising the emotion through physical or verbal aggression, versus striving to contain it and, in doing so, turning it inwards. The former might be more familiar (and harder to ignore), but the 'anger-in' crowd are suffering in silence, Parker says. Such containment is unsustainable and can carry a high personal cost: 'Anger deferred is anger multiplied.' Refusing to acknowledge anger may even make people sick, Parker says, pointing to the deleterious effects of sustained elevated cortisol, the stress hormone. However, not everyone feels equally free to express it. Women and girls are widely socialised to swallow anger and keep the peace; many told Parker their instinctual response to rage was to cry. For those burdened by the 'angry Black woman' stereotype, navigating the emotion is even more fraught. And though boys generally feel more attuned and entitled to anger, 'they're not taught to be curious about what their anger is really about, and what they should do with it,' Parker says. A healthy relationship with anger entails active, open engagement – neither denying its existence nor letting it run the show. For instance, leftwing commentator and author Ash Sarkar told Parker about learning to understand and harness her anger as a self-protective response to racist and sexist attacks. But achieving such presence of mind takes time and practice. The accepted wisdom that anger needs to be released, such as by punching a pillow or primal screaming, has been proven to be of limited psychological benefit, says Parker. More from Why am I like this: I'm an adult. Why do I regress under my parents' roof? I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone? People say you'll know – but will I regret not having children? A better goal is 'creating a positive, productive association in your body and mind'. That can be achieved through physical movement, as Parker discovered with boxing; other examples are jogging and dancing. Anger can also be channelled creatively through journaling, painting or drawing. Once past the heat of the moment, you can decide with clarity what, if any, action is necessary, Parker says. 'Sometimes you do have to go and have the scary conversation, and say the difficult thing.' Other times, merely acknowledging how you feel is enough to lessen the sting, and help you move on. 'Today, if I feel angry about something, I've trained myself as best I can to think: 'OK, this is information,'' says Parker. Knowing his tendency to bury anger, Parker tries now to stay connected with it. For example, he and his partner have discussed their respective triggers and approaches to arguing. 'What you're really doing is handing each other a map,' he explains, 'so that when conflict does arise, you can find your way out of it a bit quicker.' Curious to learn more about my own terrain, I started by asking myself: if I was angry, what would I be angry about? The question flushes out some long-buried hurts and perceived injustices that I'd pushed from consciousness. None feel like they need to be acted upon, but they feel better for being excavated. I realise that while I've avoided conflict, believing it to be ruinous, the friendships I value most are those where we've already demonstrated that we can disagree, express frustration or argue, and recover. It's a comforting takeaway: wrath might be uncomfortable, but it isn't necessarily a deadly sin. Good Anger: How rethinking rage can change our lives is out in the UK now and published in the US on 19 August Good Anger by Sam Parker (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, £20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Daily Mail
09-06-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Good Anger by Sam Parker: Why a healthy dose of RAGE keeps the spark alive
Good Anger by Sam Parker (Green Tree £20, 256pp) When the journalist Sam Parker told friends and colleagues that he was writing a book about anger, they were surprised. 'You've never struck me as an angry person,' was a common response. One colleague declared him to be 'the most calming human' she'd ever worked with. But Parker had struggled with anger for years. As a child growing up in Newcastle, he would play mediator between his warring parents. In later years, he cultivated a cheerful persona, but his inner life was turbulent. He once woke up in the middle of the night and punched a hole through a window. His legs jittered constantly; he ground his teeth so badly they started falling out in chunks. With time and therapy, however, Parker has come to regard anger as a vital, and vitalising, force, one that we could all do with understanding better. Yes, some anger is bad, and there is a lot of it about. (According to Gallup, the amount of stress, sadness and anger people feel each day is higher now than at any other point since the company started keeping track of our emotions in 2006). Yet there is such a thing as 'good anger', and a life with no anger is no life at all. Anger has long been acknowledged as a key part of who we are. Ancient China had a water god called Gonggong whose tempers were thought to cause floods. In Classical Greek thought, men's anger was deemed hot-blooded and immediate, while women's was cold and delayed. As the major religions developed, anger was increasingly identified as a sin. Around 1,600 years ago, the monk Evagrius Ponticus included it on his list of 'eight evil thoughts', which was eventually whittled down to seven deadly sins. Ponticus thought of anger as 'the most fierce' of passions, and noted that it could stir up 'alarming experiences by night', flashing up pictures of the 'offensive person before one's eyes'. Other thinkers have seen the positive sides of anger, from Aristotle to Aquinas. More recently, the philosopher Peter Strawson has suggested that anger in relationships is a good sign, because it implies you believe the person you are angry with to be capable of better behaviour. Parker also quotes the couples therapist Virginia Goldner, who argues that long-term relationships go through 'never-ending cycles of breakdown and repair, separation and reunion'. Without a bit of healthy strife, a relationship can become sexless, stuck in 'the flaccid safety of permanent cosiness'. Anger can also stop people from being taken advantage of, whether at work or at home. Parker interviews the Left-wing commentator Ash Sarkar, who recalls being called a p**i by a stranger in Cornwall. She felt 'blind with anger' at the slur, and hated the aggression coursing through her body. 'Well, think about what your other option was,' her mother told her afterwards. 'It was humiliation. Anger was the clear bright line telling you not to internalise this racism.' Still, Parker admits, not all anger shields us from bigotry, and he is thoughtful on how it can be managed. Cultivating 'meta-awareness' – where you zoom out and observe the emotions and thoughts you are experiencing as they occur – can be useful. Taking 'time-outs' as a row is brewing is a good idea too (though hard to pull off). Using the 'f*** this', or even 'f*** you', energy generated by anger can be put to use around the house: try reordering the cutlery drawer, say, or ticking off chores. During a fight, it can also help to reveal one's own unhappiness – a technique known as the 'discomfort caveat', where you say something like 'I'm feeling really angry right now, which is making it hard for me to speak calmly'. It's honest, and might knock the legs out from the argument before it's properly got going. Parker pulled off a version of this trick when he was at a concert in his 20s, and the man next to him trod on him (or the other way around; he can't remember). They both swore and tried to square up to one another for a fight, but the crowd was so tightly packed, they couldn't move their arms. Still, they promised snarlingly to 'see each other outside' – until eventually Parker said: 'I'll be honest, mate, I'm not really hard enough to back any of that up.' His adversary frowned and nodded. 'No, me neither,' he said. At points, Parker is rather too credulous a guide to the research that he draws on. He cites the trauma expert Gabor Mate – who once interviewed Prince Harry – saying that his work warns of 'devastating consequences like heart disease and cancer that can arise from repressed anger'. Well, maybe, but factors such as diet and family history are surely more relevant. At other moments, Parker gets a little carried away: smoking, he declares for instance, is 'a symbolic act of sucking emotions inwards'. I also don't recommend reading the book on public transport: the shouty cover and all-caps title attract slightly perturbed looks. Still, it's an enlightening read, and Parker is especially insightful, unexpectedly, on female anger. The stereotype that women are less angry than men no longer holds true, he points out: in fact, there's now an 'anger gap' of six per cent, even if men remain far more prone to violence. When women are angry, research suggests they often suppress it – either by committing quiet acts of sabotage, becoming quiet or avoidant, or redirecting their anger into other relationships. Identifying anger for what it is can be freeing, Parker believes; above all, anger is information. We shouldn't fear it, he says, quoting the Buddhist spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, but should hold anger to us with tenderness, 'like a mother holding a baby'.
Gulf Today
07-06-2025
- Health
- Gulf Today
Are you guilty of wellness bypassing? Probably
Sam Parker, The Independent I once lived a perfect day. It started with sitting cross-legged by an open window for 30 minutes of meditation, with morning light beaming vitamin D directly into my face. After that, it was time to stretch: one, two, three sun salutations, timing the movement of my limbs to long, deep breaths. In the shower, I slowly turned the warm water to cold in order to flood my system with endorphins, before stepping out and repeating a round of positive affirmations into the mirror. In the evening, I chewed my dinner mindfully before switching on the TV. Then, two hours before bed, I put away all my screens and lit some candles. By the flickering flames, I wrote down all my worries in a journal and bullet-pointed how I'd tackle them the next day, before listing the multitudinous reasons I had in my life to be deeply, truly grateful. With eight full hours left before I needed to be up again, I lay down on my pillow, closed my eyes, took a round of deep, calming breaths and finally... panicked. The lure of the wellness industry can be incredibly strong, particularly if you suffer from anxiety. All my life I had experienced periods of vague, oppressive dread that could make entire weeks a misery, and in recent years, it had started to feel like the solution was only ever one more swipe away. My algorithm served up an endless well of gurus advocating journalling or diaphragmatic breathing or running in your underwear through the frozen tundras of Norway. I dabbled in all of it (OK, not the Norway one), figuring if I just landed on the perfectly optimised mental health routine, I'd banish my doom for good. The fact that no combination of these activities seemed to work made me quietly fear I might be broken, that anxiety was simply my lot in life. In 1984, the American psychotherapist John Welwood coined the phrase 'spiritual bypassing'. He used it to describe people in the hippie movement who used then-exotic practices like yoga and meditation as a substitute for working on deeper problems with their mental health. There is a 'widespread tendency', he warned, 'to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues (and) psychological wounds'. Welwood believed psychology and spiritualism could complement each other, but said he saw too many people trying to shortcut their way to inner peace and 'rise above the raw and messy side of [their] humanness before (they) have fully faced and made peace with it'. Fifty years on, we are now living in an age of wellness bypassing. The global wellness industry is worth $5.6 trillion, buoyed by an endless tide of Instagram-friendly self-care tips often presented as quick fixes for low moods, depression or anxiety. In many cases, the science backing them is spurious at best. An investigation published by The Guardian last week found that more than 50 per cent of the top trending videos offering mental health advice on TikTok contain misinformation. These spanned misleading claims about the powers of saffron and magnesium glycinate to dubious methods promising to 'heal trauma within an hour'. One theory posited that you can reduce anxiety by eating an orange in the shower (surely only true if you're anxious about having sticky fingers while you eat fruit). Jevin D West is the co-author of a book called Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Date-Driven World and leads research teams attempting to fight back against misinformation online. Health and wellness, West tells me, is the biggest problem area of all. 'Nothing comes even close to its ability to attract people's attention and convince them to let their guard down,' he says. 'There is the outright disinformation, of course, that has an intentional element. But a huge part of what we've seen is misleading content. Maybe it has some elements of truth. It might even be citing relevant science. But often, it's about an area there isn't much research on.' Take shilajit, for example, the tar-like supplement purported to boost testosterone. West's number one piece of advice for consuming online content is an oldie but a goodie: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Healing your decades-old family trauma by 'cozymaxxing' is probably not going to cut it. But he acknowledges that, even for savvy social media users, this can be incredibly difficult to follow. 'Because we want to be convinced,' he says. 'We want that elixir that can fix this emotional issue we might have. We want to believe.' We also want to belong.
Scoop
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- Scoop
Approaching Halfway Stage Anyone Could Still Win
Press Release – Bikesport NZ This season's ultimate off-road motorcycling competition could be the toughest yet, with so many different riders featuring at the top and each of them in contention for ultimate glory. Three rounds into the seven-round 2025 Yamaha New Zealand Hard Enduro Nationals and there have now been three different outright winners. Taranaki pair Luke Thompson and Sam Parker battled to an incredibly close first and second overall respectively in the premier Gold Grade over the two days at round one of the series in Taranaki back in March, with round two in Central Otago last month featuring several fresh faces at the top. Whitecliffs rider Luke Corson, Whangarei's Owen Broughton, Tokoroa's Jake Wightman, Owaka's Blake Affleck and Auckland's Mitchell Gallagher, among others, were the stand-out Gold Grade individuals at round two in the South Island over that Easter Weekend. Then the competition shifted north to Canterbury at the weekend just gone, and it was another handful of talented stars disputing the top positions, Wainuiomata's Jake Whitaker the Gold Grade stand-out, with Gallagher and Corson again featuring among the leading riders, while Amberley's Archer Pascoe and Omihi's Ethan McBreen also staked their claim. Whitaker was thrilled with his overall win at the weekend. 'It was a cool couple of days racing down south,' he said. 'Took a bit to get comfortable on the enduro cross track Saturday with a third-place finish for the day. Was happy to get out in the South Island high country Sunday morning and get into the main race. 'I Had some good fun battles with the boys earlier in the day, but managed to pull away in the afternoon. The track was set to a really good level and the organisers put on a great event once again.' Motorcycling New Zealand enduro commissioner Justin Stevenson confirmed the racing was close and exciting over both days of the weekend. 'It was again pleasing to see so many riders showing up from as far afield as Invercargill in the south and Whangarei in the north, with riders from everywhere in between,' said Stevenson. 'The host Christchurch Off-Road Motorcycle Club did a great job and both days of racing were as challenging as they were enjoyable.' Round four is set for Northland on the weekend of July 19-20. Only six of the seven rounds will be counted, with riders expected to discard points from their worst result. The weekend was sponsored by Yamaha Motor New Zealand, Motorcycling New Zealand, Kiwi Rider magazine, Silver-Bullet and Mitas tyres. 2025 Yamaha New Zealand Hard Enduro Nationals calendar: Round 1: Taranaki, March 29-30; Round 2: Central Otago, April 19-21; Round 3: Canterbury, May 10-11; Round 4: Northland, July 19-20; Round 5: Wellington, September 27-28; Round 6: Canterbury, November 15-16; Round 7: Wellington, November 30. Content Sourced from Original url
Scoop
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- Scoop
Approaching Halfway Stage Anyone Could Still Win
This season's ultimate off-road motorcycling competition could be the toughest yet, with so many different riders featuring at the top and each of them in contention for ultimate glory. Three rounds into the seven-round 2025 Yamaha New Zealand Hard Enduro Nationals and there have now been three different outright winners. Taranaki pair Luke Thompson and Sam Parker battled to an incredibly close first and second overall respectively in the premier Gold Grade over the two days at round one of the series in Taranaki back in March, with round two in Central Otago last month featuring several fresh faces at the top. Whitecliffs rider Luke Corson, Whangarei's Owen Broughton, Tokoroa's Jake Wightman, Owaka's Blake Affleck and Auckland's Mitchell Gallagher, among others, were the stand-out Gold Grade individuals at round two in the South Island over that Easter Weekend. Then the competition shifted north to Canterbury at the weekend just gone, and it was another handful of talented stars disputing the top positions, Wainuiomata's Jake Whitaker the Gold Grade stand-out, with Gallagher and Corson again featuring among the leading riders, while Amberley's Archer Pascoe and Omihi's Ethan McBreen also staked their claim. Whitaker was thrilled with his overall win at the weekend. 'It was a cool couple of days racing down south,' he said. 'Took a bit to get comfortable on the enduro cross track Saturday with a third-place finish for the day. Was happy to get out in the South Island high country Sunday morning and get into the main race. 'I Had some good fun battles with the boys earlier in the day, but managed to pull away in the afternoon. The track was set to a really good level and the organisers put on a great event once again.' Motorcycling New Zealand enduro commissioner Justin Stevenson confirmed the racing was close and exciting over both days of the weekend. 'It was again pleasing to see so many riders showing up from as far afield as Invercargill in the south and Whangarei in the north, with riders from everywhere in between,' said Stevenson. 'The host Christchurch Off-Road Motorcycle Club did a great job and both days of racing were as challenging as they were enjoyable.' Round four is set for Northland on the weekend of July 19-20. Only six of the seven rounds will be counted, with riders expected to discard points from their worst result. The weekend was sponsored by Yamaha Motor New Zealand, Motorcycling New Zealand, Kiwi Rider magazine, Silver-Bullet and Mitas tyres. 2025 Yamaha New Zealand Hard Enduro Nationals calendar: Round 1: Taranaki, March 29-30; Round 2: Central Otago, April 19-21; Round 3: Canterbury, May 10-11; Round 4: Northland, July 19-20; Round 5: Wellington, September 27-28; Round 6: Canterbury, November 15-16; Round 7: Wellington, November 30.
