A Sh!@#y Post about my F’ing Anger Issues!

By John Ortiz, edited by Jonathan Atleson

Before I begin, I need to do a little Ho'oponopono: I'm sorry if anything I'm about to write offends you. Please forgive me. This is not my intention. I'm grateful that you are reading this article, and I'm trying to become a more loving person and make the world a better place in the process.

Let's begin with some definitions:

• Profanity: blasphemous or obscene language, using expletitives, swearing, oaths, and cursing, using taboo words.

• Taboo or Tabooism: a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion or words.

• Anger Management: a set of strategies and techniques aimed at controlling and managing anger in a healthy and constructive manner.

Most of my life I have had anger issues — I was a hothead, you might say. Or as it would be diagnosed in Ayurveda, my “Pitta was out of balance.”

I tended to play sports angry. I would get angry at social injustices. I would feel anger towards various people. And sometimes, I would even be angry at God. I do not believe you have been fully tested until you become angry with God. I think it's part of a rite of passage.

When I reflect upon my anger issues, I notice patterns. Once I was watching the tennis pro, John McEnroe, playing in a major tournament. He was seemingly looking for a reason to become angry: a bad call from the judge, the actions of the other player, or something the crowd did.

After he became angry, he would play his best tennis. I concluded that he was looking for the boost of energy that comes with anger; the boost of adrenaline and norepinephrine. Then he would channel this energy into his tennis game. I realized that I was unconsciously doing the same thing — harnessing my anger tendencies to start my game in an elevated emotional state.

At the same time, I was reading a book called The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey, about how to achieve a Zen state to achieve your ultimate tennis game. This was quite a contrast from the “McEnroe Doctrine” I had just discovered! I guess you could say it’s “different strokes for different folks” (pun intended).

I began to read about the ill effects of anger on the body. I was playing a lot of competitive volleyball at the time, so I developed my own version of the “Inner Game” in which I would try to get to a joyous Zen state before the game. I called this Zen Volleyball.

There were moments when I would find myself in a game and time would slow down and I would experience a mystical transcendent joy while playing. But the mental battle would continue — I would often wonder which state would bring my ultimate game out: the Zen state or the angry state.

When I became angry, I would blow off steam with certain, ahem, “choice” words. I remember laughing at George Carlin's “Seven Words You Can't Say on TV.” Now, by “TV,” he meant broadcast network television, as this was before cable and streaming. The networks made sure that none of these taboo words would be uttered on their shows.

There were two words on his list that were my “angry words.” The problem was that I was taught that these words were taboo: vulgar and forbidden. But who decided that, I wondered? Some guy? A committee? Society as a whole? God? Well, F that!

My two go-to angry 4-letter words were the classics: “shit” and “fuck.” If I was slightly angry, I would say “Shit!” at a volume commensurate with the amount of my anger. It served to blow off steam.

If I were slightly angry, I would say it quietly. If I were very angry, I would blow off a lot of steam and say it loudly. After these outbursts, I must admit I really felt better. This was one of my forms of anger management.

If I was really, really angry though, “shit” simply did not suffice. In those situations I would drop the F-bomb. “Fuck” is often found in acronyms:

• WTF: What The Fuck?

• FU: Fuck you!

• SNAFU: Situation Normal: All Fucked Up

• FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition (personal favorite)

But to truly understand a word, you must understand its origins and how it impacted society. From there, we can be inspired to draw spiritual lessons and conclusions. So read on if you want to edify yourself and you don't want to “fuck yourself” — which is a concept I could never quite conceptualize!

There is a common myth about the origin of the word “shit”; it goes like this: In olden times we used to transport all our shit in ships. The ship’s belly, where things were stored, was called the cargo hold. As we started to explore increasingly distant lands, and needed to start farming right away, we realized we didn’t have to wait for our animals to poop; we could just crate up some manure and bring it with us, ready to spread on some arable land. What a fucking great idea!

There was a problem, though. Things stored in the in the cargo hold of a wooden boat would get wet. And when manure gets wet, it becomes…activated. This releases methane gas. Now, in a closed environment, such as a cargo hold with the hatch closed, the methane would accumulate. Every now and then some poor bloke would go down to the cargo hold carrying a lantern and…Boom!…the ship would blow up.

While the loss of life was regrettable for the shipping company, the loss of the ship and cargo was simply intolerable. The brighter minds of the day quickly assessed the cause and formulated a solution. The lower in the cargo hold the manure was stored, the wetter it got. Thus was born the instruction: Store High In Transit, or SHIT.

Now, whenever a sailor would see a crate of manure, he would see the label and know to store it higher in the hold, keeping it dry and less volatile. With this new technology, everybody’s SHIT did NOT stink!

Now it's time to draw a spiritual lesson from this shitty story. Many of us with anger issues are carrying a cargo hold full of methane; someone lights a match and we blow up. In psychology, we call this a trigger. We condemn the poor bloke for lighting the fuse, when we should be asking, “Why is there so much volatile methane in there?”

There are many solutions to this situation, for example, less shit in the cargo hold means less methane. An analogous therapy would be mental release and detachment. Or, better ventilation would allow the methane to dissipate; this is similar to using coping mechanisms.

Inspired by these thoughts, I developed a new acronym for SHIT: Shift Higher In Thought. When we achieve higher consciousness, we lower the volatility. Thus, through our spiritual practice we hope to decrease our anger issues. Or at least we have some anger management tools to use.

One of my spiritual teachers taught me that the only difference between shit and manure is perception. We flush shit down the toilet to minimize disease and improve sanitation; however, we spread manure on our garden to make it greener and fertilize our crops. How can the same thing make you either sicker or healthier depending on how you handle it? When you develop the ability to take your mental shit and turn it into manure, you are much closer to peace, happiness, and love.

And now for the F-bomb. My favorite F-bomb story came when I was attending Brigham Young University as a freshman. The week before school, I was on campus already, trying to integrate myself into the scene. I was a non-Mormon, or “non-member,” so to speak, so I had a lot of integrating to do.

One day, I was playing basketball at the gym. There were about ten pick-up basketball games going on simultaneously. During one game, one of my competitors connected his elbow with my nose. This hurt a lot. I turned around and looked up, and the basketball hit me in the nose again! The double-whammy was too much for me and I dropped the mother of all F-bombs.

I was rubbing my nose to see if it was bleeding, when I suddenly noticed it was dead silent in the gym. Every single game had stopped and everybody was staring at me. I thought to myself, Johnny, you're not in Kansas anymore; you're in a whole different world.

Mormonism must have made an impression on me; at least in terms of my language. Years later, I was playing in a serious volleyball tournament. I hit a ball right down the line and it went out of bounds by just a couple of inches. I was so angry, I thought I was going to explode. “Fetch!!”, I exclaimed. The referee paused and asked, “Hey, I didn’t realize you were Mormon!”

(By the way, “Fetch” and its cousin “Fudge” is like the oat milk of the F-bomb world. Supposedly better for you, but less effective than the original.)

So, now for some fun stories about the origin of the word “fuck.” One story goes like this: In olden times, there were dips in population due to some calamity like plague or war. The king would issue a proclamation to get freaky with the damsels and start procreating. Thus, the acronym FUCK stood for Fornicate Under Command of the King. As Mel Brooks would say, “It’s good to be the king.”

The other story that I like better says that in English law, you had to describe the actions of the plaintiff and the defendant. With all the sexual perversions that were referenced in the legal record, they didn’t want the legal record to read like a porno. Thus, the acronym FUCK, For Undisclosed Carnal Knowledge, would describe any type of sexual activity without actually describing the sexual activity.

This story was popularized by Van Halen’s album of that name. But the word actually comes from Germanic languages and predates acronyms in English.

Then along comes World War II. With the military’s penchant for acronyms, soldiers found ways to include the word to mean “messed up.” That’s how we got SNAFU and FUBAR. The 60s counterculture followed, where it became the angry rebellious word — the F-bomb.

So when are we going to get to the fucking spiritual lessons, you might be asking? So, the spiritual acronym I developed for FUCK is: Freedom Unbeknownst to Common Knowledge. In Triad Healing, we focus on finding the source of our anger — the methane, so to speak — and releasing it bit by bit, leading to a peace that surpasses understanding.

There are many reasons to have anger issues: a toxic liver, inability to cope with stress, sleep issues. But at a spiritual level, I believe all of these issues stem from a disconnect from Source, from God, from Love. When we have reestablished this connection, you have the potential for SHIT, FUCK, and Anger Management.

There are several techniques for anger management included in Triad Healing, which I will discuss in other articles. These include things like balancing Pitta in Ayurveda, exercising more, or a colon cleanse; either colonics or enemas, time in nature, detachment, mantra and/or prayer, sex and/or sexual activities, and connection with Source.

Of course, you can also just suppress your anger. Although hiding your anger can appear quite successful in the short term, over time you will pay a cost in terms of your physical health, your mental/emotional health, and your spiritual/karmic health.

Perhaps you remember that episode of Seinfeld in which George’s father dealt with his trauma-fueled anger issues by, unconvincingly, shouting the mantra, “Serenity Now!” This was supposed to help him suppress the anger or frustration he was feeling. But the episode ended with him saying, “Serenity now, insanity later!”

So if we are suppressing our anger, we're not reducing the amount of methane in the cargo hold. We are just sealing the hatch tighter, which could lead to an even greater explosion!