The Current - Dr. Alika Lafontaine on The Outrage Cure

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

In an increasingly polarized world, Dr. Lafontaine says the best time to work through our outrage was yesterday. A close second, however, is right now. His new book, "The Outrage Cure," is about what happens when we let unresolved anger metastasize — and how we can best confront it. If you've had a falling out with someone you love that you're struggling to make sense of, this conversation is for you.

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Personally, discount Dave and the Fix. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Perhaps you've been there. Someone says something that doesn't quite sit right with you, and then you snap. Consumed by anger, you might hang up the phone mid-sentence

or slam the door behind you abruptly ending the conversation. And left unresolved, that anger, sometimes hardens into outrage. Dr. Alika LaFontaine had one of those arguments, one phone call that caused a lifelong relationship to fall apart. And that encouraged him to think about the role of outrage in an increasingly polarized world. Dr. LaFontaine is a physician and the former president of the Canadian Medical Association.

His latest book is called The Outrage Cure, How Overcoming Anger and Betrayal Can Transform the Way We Live, connect and heal. I spoke with Dr. LaFontaine in May. Here's our conversation. Tell me about this phone call I just referenced, how it was the catalyst for you to start thinking about the problem of outrage. I had been going through a lot of things at the same time. It was the beginning of the pandemic. I was coming in to be president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association, increasingly having my scope of vision widen as far as the problems that people are going through and just the pain that everyone was feeling.

And this conversation came out of left field for me. It was not something I was expecting. And I remember immediately after being hung up on, thinking to myself, how did that happen and why did it happen for this reason? And this was a call with someone very, very close to you. The pseudonym is Tom. You don't reveal throughout the book until the end, who that is. But how did things come to a head in that phone call?

And I asked that because, you know, somebody's just having a conversation. and then all of a sudden it's like, how did that happen? So how did it happen? You know, it happened exactly like that. And I think increasingly there's experiences where people are talking about average day-to-day things. And then it suddenly goes from zero to 100. You know, just having a regular conversation to suddenly it's existential. What were you guys arguing about?

We talked about the freedom convoy during that conversation for the first time. And it also was the last time. We had never had a conversation about this before. And one of the things I've realized, is that the way that he was saying things, the tone, the emotional state he was in was asking for something different than what I was giving him. Meaning what? I was really in the mindset of the CMA president-elect, listening to him thinking about, well, how are we going to fix the system? What are the problems within the health care system?

What are patients going through? And I didn't hear this close friend who was sharing with me deep fears that they had about how the world was changing and what was going to happen tomorrow. And looking back at the conversation, it's really, really clear to me that they had a lot of the things that they took for granted suddenly snatched away. And because of the way I responded to them, I was one of the people that betrayed them. So you came to that conclusion after a lot of time had passed and a lot of thought put into it and a lot of reflection. But when you hung up that phone, do you remember how you were feeling? I was mad. I was really, really mad.

I was ready to say to him as hurtful things, as he had said to me. It wasn't until the finality of that hung up call started to sink in, me realizing neither of us were picking up the phone to talk to each other again, that the way that we'd always gone about fighting was not what was happening this time around, that I started to sit back and say to myself, well, I guess this is it. And it wasn't something I ever would have considered could have happened with that relationship. The context is important because, as you say, this was during the past, pandemic. So everyone, no matter what your views on the pandemic, were, all those things, we're in this

heightened state. Every single person, right? This has never happened before. It just, as you say, felt different. When I reflect on what happened, I realized just how powerful those forces going on around me actually were. So people were going through changes in their biology. We all were a heightened state of awareness, anxiety, frustration, hyperarousal. Our limbic systems were firing, telling us that there were threats around us that we maybe never had anticipated before then. Whoever thought that we'd be in lockdowns, whoever thought that there would be a spreading disease where we didn't have a clear line of sight on how it was spreading or how severe.

We just knew that really bad things were happening. And then there was the sociological things that were going on. Public health had always had the powers to do what it did, but it had never done that within people's lifetimes. You know, you had to go all the way back to the Spanish flu to really see countrywide, society-wide impact like this. And then there were also psychological things going on, advent of social media, misinformation, you know, lots of folks who both made and broke

their names dealing with these strong emotions that were going through us at this time. And so bringing those all together helped me to see the problem in a very different light and also understand myself and what I was going through. And honestly, how I wished I had done things differently. with Tom in that moment. That happens, right? We fly off the handle, whatever. React in a way we wish we didn't.

And sometimes we just go, oh, it'll pass. And sometimes we just know this isn't something that's going to pass. This is now something we have to confront. And I bring that up because something that you take care of differentiating when talking about this in your book is the difference between anger and outrage. So parse that for me. What is the difference? That was one of the big insights that helped me to understand my own reaction.

when you're angry about something, you're really calling for help from folks to help you solve a problem that's just too big for yourself. One of the common things I see day to day is patients who come in who are very angry when they see me. I haven't seen them during their whole visit. Maybe they've been waiting hours or days to get their problem solved. And I walk in as somebody who they'd never seen before and suddenly I'm the subject of their anger. What they're trying to communicate to me is what I'm going through is important. Pay attention to me. These are my issues.

When you switch from anger into outrage, you start to feel like no one's responding to your anger. And you start to ask the question, why? Why am I calling for all this help and people aren't showing up? And I think inevitably, most people's minds go to two things. The first is you start to question whether or not the people who are supposed to answer your call, whether they know what to do. So do they actually have the skills? And the second is whether or not they're making decisions in a good sort of way. Are they ethical?

Are they moral? once you start to spiral down those two ways, you stop worrying about solving problems and you actually won't reform. You talk about the importance of rumination. What effect does that have? Rumination makes us play out memories over and over again with our Olympic systems

because they're tied in so tightly with our emotions when we go through those emotions and relive those experiences over and over again. It's almost like we're living them again. And so that one betrayal where that person did not show up for you can turn into 100 betrayals if you live it over and over again. Yeah, you wind yourself up, don't you?

100%. And that is part of, I think, what happened during the pandemic. And it's something that's happening nowadays, too, when we're in our echo chambers. We constantly relive those moments where people let us down. And as a result, we get more and more filled with rage as a result. You use this great analogy of a sportsplex with multiple levels of circular running tracks to describe how we descend, how we go from that anger to outrage to. and this is the next step, indifference.

Like, I don't give a, boo, or, you know, and that just sort of shuts it all down. Walk me through the process. You walk me through anger to outrage. How do I get from outrage to indifference? So biologically, our limbic systems are firing appropriately when we're angry. When we move into outrage, they start to get dysfunctional, where they're firing too much and they get oversensitized

or undersensitized to certain stimuli. We don't assess threats properly anymore. At some point, our limbic systems just get completely overwhelmed. and they shut down. And that's the point where psychologically we fall into indifference. Indifference is the result of what we do when we're outraged. So when we're outraged, we lash out at people. We're looking for reform. We want somebody to suffer as a result for the things that we just went through. And when we lash out with folks, they lash back. And especially when we're lashing out to organizations or institutions that we heavily depend on examples being things like the health care system,

they defend themselves. And sometimes we get labeled with things. Sometimes, we have worse experiences as a result. And there comes a point where we start to ask ourselves, is outrage really giving me anything? Is this even worth fighting for anymore? And at that point, you shut down and you just become indifferent. You just want to get through the day and not be harmed anymore. And it changes you.

It does. It really gets you stuck in the emotions that have kind of spiraled down. Indifference tend to have lost faith that things are going to get better. And they've lost faith that relationships actually matter. Indifference is the loneliest, most isolated, part of the Nowward's Barrow. I'm glad you brought up the isolation because this, as you've been talking about, can play out at an individual level.

But boy, oh, boy, are we in harsh, polarized, divided times? We're seeing this in the collective level, the societal level, groups of people, just becoming outrage. So take it from the micro to the macro, from the individual level to the societal level. How's that working? I think you see this playing out with politics right now. It wasn't too long ago that Canadian society was outraged over things. We wanted to see reform.

We wanted to switch out of government. We wanted to see people moved out to their positions. We were questioning whether or not our shared institutions were even worth it anymore. And then things down south happened. And I think that existential crisis snapped us out of outrage. Where we realized if we lose these shared systems, if we don't have stable leadership, what are we going to do? Maybe we won't have anything. And what you see, I think, in Canadian society is a spiral back up into Anchor.

People are now searching for solutions and other things. There's obviously lots of folks who are still outraged when you go online and you see groups of folks that no matter what problems get solved, they are still calling for a switchover of leadership or reform. Those are folks still caught in outrage. But I think you can see the pattern, especially in politics, playing out nowadays. What makes this collective outrage so powerful and so difficult to disrupt? Because, you know, as I'm listening to you, I'm like, this all makes sense, right?

Again, you've had time to reflect. And maybe it's the, you know, we're all busy, blah, blah, blah, we don't use that time to reflect. But why is it so difficult to disrupt that collective outrage? Because so many people are like, oh, my God, we're also outraged about everything. We want to stop. And yet, and yet. I think it's because of the way our limbic system interacts with our psychology. So it's actually biological.

So once your inner part of your mind that deals with threats starts to be dysfunctional, you start to see threats everywhere. And you start to search out other people who see threats. elsewhere as well. And I think this is where my mind goes when it comes to identity around outrage. People tend to search out other people that are just as angry as themselves because they want to feed the outrage because it's a biological need. Now, as that gets entrenched and as it gets more and more powerful, you lash out more and more. And you start to lash out of people who didn't really do anything to you, who have nothing to do with the problems that you needed solved or who didn't

answer you. And I think coming full circle, I think that's what happened with Tom. People are also searching for a community. So when you're outraged about something, like-minded people, people who can support you in a sense, I tell you that you're right and your outrage is justified. That feels good. It does. It does. Lashing out feels really good when you're outraged. And one of the things I've realized as I've unpacked this journey myself is that outrage has a place just like anger, but I think in today's society, we lash out in rages that aren't really productive anymore. We hurt the people who are closest to us. We push away the people who are there to actually help us solve our problems, and we start losing faith in a

world that we really need to get fixed. You also write the people who are trying to exploit the fear. Don't need a pandemic to do it. I think we all kind of look at the pandemic, and as you say, about simultaneously the real soaring of social media is sort of like this starting point. But you argue that we don't need it. It's just a continuum that any emotionally charged issue will do. What does that say to you about where we are societally? I think we've lost sight of each other. We live in a society where folks are less interested in solving problems and more in what they can get out of the problem itself.

people like outrage because it leads to greater attention. You know, sometimes when you have consolidated identity around an issue, people are easily moved one way or the other when it comes to acting out. And a lot of times as we fall further into that spiral, we make the decision to act out against our own interests. And we have ways of communicating like social platforms that are built around this, misinformation, and a lot of the use of AI right now in negative voice is actually focused on this problem. everyone is trying to get something out of you that your emotions feed,

but not really thinking about what's the end result. We'll be right back with more of the current podcast. If you sold somebody a loaded gun who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves. I think it is murder. Just because you're using the internet doesn't mean you get away with murder. I'm Damon Fairless, host of Hunting Warhead. This season, I take you inside the business, of suicide and the places desperate people go when they can't find what they need in the real world.

Hunting the Suicide Salesman. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Let me flip this on its head just for a moment. As I said earlier, sometimes when you're outraged like, gosh, I feel sheepish about admitting it, but I think it's true to everyone. It feels good. Dr. LaFontaine. It just feels good. There's some letting of something in that.

Is outrage always bad? I don't think it is. Outrage is good when you actually need reform. When you have entrenched systems that just don't want to answer the call when people need help. If you look at the late 1940s, the early 1950s, like the creation of the public health care system, that is a time where people were outraged about things, the creation of a shared educational approach that everyone could get access to, employment insurance, you know, all these different changes. They're all the effect of people getting upset about the, things and then moving into outrage as people did not want to answer their call. But outrage takes a turn when you just feed outrage for outrage sick. If outrage is not really reforming anything anymore, in almost all situations it's negative, even though it still feels so good. We all come to this with our own individuality, our own lived experiences, our own cultural understandings of the world in which we live. And I'm wondering how your own indigenous background has taught you, how you've been thinking about that piece of it, about how to pull

yourself out of anger, outrage, and difference that cycle? You know, my indigenous ancestry and the philosophies and teachings that my parents taught me really grounded family and kinship as a really important part of figuring your way out of these things. You know, there's relationships at the core of all that we do, and that's really where we gain meaning from life, in my opinion. And understanding these emotions through the context of how you can create closer relationships, I think was a North Star that really helped me as I was unpacking these things. Like I mentioned earlier, I was really mad at Tom after this happened. And it wasn't until I realized that we were not going back to the way that things were,

that I started to think about the value of what that relationship meant to me. And there was a lot of grief that went along with losing that relationship. It was hard to lose someone that would always give me honest advice and come over and support me in my highest and lowest times. And I think realizing how important relationships are is a big part of having people come to grips with where we're at as far as these powerful emotions we have churning in us today. The thing about the conflict between you and Tom is that it wasn't about the thing. It wasn't about your different views on the freedom convoy and the pandemic and how things were going. It was about something, as you say, bigger and more existential. How did you just start like shifting?

What is this really about? Like, what am I really? What's he outraged about? What am I out? How'd you start teasing that apart? You know, I was going down a downward spiral of outrage after my blow up with Tom. And it wasn't until I had a family member almost die that I sat back and thought to myself, what am I doing? I remember walking through the door after flying back from seeing him. And I thought it was the last time I was going to see him. And sitting down with my wife and her putting her hand on my shoulder and just saying, we're going to have to figure this out. Like, you can't be. like this anymore. And sometimes you need those moments where you gain perspective again. And you kind of step outside and you think to yourself, like, what is the point of being so angry all the time? And that was a turning point for me that I was lucky enough to have people around me who

remembered how I was versus how I actually was. You had changed. And the people who love you and surround you noticed that change. And they said, like, this is not good. And I think that's one of the important points that's not. sometimes it's lost when we're working through these emotions. If you read a lot of the popular literature about this, it's cut off those relationships that are toxic to you,

focus on developing yourself. Those things have their place in healthy responses to emotions, but it's that relational kinship, you know, having those deep, meaningful relationships, finding some way to come to grips with loss and betrayal that I think really build us back up into people that are part of a thriving society again, we can't keep on going on in this isolated, do it alone type approach to life anymore. It's just not congruent with having a strong society.

So what's the cure? Because that's the title of your book, The Outrage Cure. So you're the doctor. Give us the prescription. The outrage cure is meeting someone with a vulnerability and level of emotion that matches theirs. I didn't realize that it wasn't just about me sharing my pain, but also matching the pain that I was feeling from the people around me, that really helped me connect. We're in a world where people feel like they can go online and just share everything about themselves, but then not want to hear anyone else's problems.

And there's other times where people don't want to have anyone hear their problems, but they want to hear everyone else's. Both of those extremes are not healthy, but it's really matching that emotional energy between people and finding that level of vulnerability. And I would say that one of the most meaningful parts of my life, And when I talk with folks, both professionally and personally, same for them. It's having that relationship or relationships where you can actually do that.

You've heard this for many of your friends, perhaps others in your family. I have as well. It's some occasion. And we're all getting together with the family. But these are the do not go list, right? And we're not going to talk about these things because it can turn into this fractured relationship. What is your sense of that? Should we be putting like, okay, here are the things we can talk about that.

I don't know, polite and easy, because we might be losing the more meaningful conversations if we don't talk about the things that actually might outrage us. Outrage throws up walls between people and it pushes them into not being honest with each other. And I think that's one of the major reasons why relationships fall apart nowadays. Superficiality is okay for, you know, general relationships, but everyone needs that person that they can be their real selves with. And And I think we've lost how to do that because of the pandemic, because we've been isolated, because of polarization that's happened, because of how we digitally communicate. And the book's really about how to find your pathway back to that again.

And it's tough. I talk lots about a lot of painful realizations I had about what happened. And then also how I've dealt with loss and betrayal over the years. And I think going through that process is healthy for folks, if that brings you back to having that honest open relationship with people again, it's a very meaningful end point for a lot of relationships. Might I ask you? Because I can appreciate that there's people listening to this say, okay, the self-reflection, you did that. Then you got to put that self-reflection to some kind of action. You got to reach out. And so many people are stubborn. They're like, I'm not like,

why isn't he reaching out? And you get this spiral kind of happen. Can I ask like how you got from, okay, self-reflection, this is who I am, this is how I came to this. This is my learning. to actually building that bridge back to Tom. You know, in the book, it feels like I'm talking with readers as I walk through things because that is quite literally what was happening. I was discovering a lot of these things in real time. And in the final chapter of the book, I talk about a very significant loss that I had. And it was actually the death of my dad.

And I think when you look at these really entrenched levels of outrage and indifference that people go through, sometimes you have to have that really significant shared grief. You know, both me and Tom were affected. And I think that grief is a necessary part of helping to fix our biology, helping to restore our limbic systems back to functionality again. It's also a thing that resets our social, you know, environments. When you know someone has gone through something significant, you treat them with more care, even if you're angry, outraged, or indifferent towards them.

And I think from a psychological point of view, too, that feeling of loss, you know, it pushes you to reach out and connect with people in ways that you just maybe didn't consider anymore. And so I think in the most severe parts, that shared grief is probably what's necessary. And it doesn't have to be the death of a father. It could be a lot of different things. Yeah, it can be grieving the loss of the relationship with the person you're in this tussle with. I'm sorry for the loss of your dad. How are we going to get ourselves out of this? I guess I shouldn't ask you that.

There are powerful forces at play trying to keep us all in this cycle of outrage. It pays dividends in some very real ways to some people and some infrastructure that we have. How hopeful are you that society could actually move past the outrage to something more constructive? I know you hear it all the time because I hear it all the time. Everyone hears it all the time. Oh, we're also just angry and polarized. and outrage. I just wish we could get back to something or find something new. Are you hopeful that we can? You know, I was often asked at the end of interviews when I was seeing me president, whether or not I was still hopeful that things would get better.

And I realized over time that hope is an action word. You know, it's not an aspiration. So if people are still showing up and people are still interacting and people are still trying to make things better, you have to be filled with hope because otherwise you wouldn't show up anymore. I think that the alternative to all of these things, that we just have a continued downward spiral where no one cares about anything anymore, I think just like the existential threat down south, that is something that I don't think most people would be willing to accept. And so I think we're going to bounce back. I think after this age of polarization, we're moving into a trajectory where people will connect with each other again. But I think people need a way to work out, you know, why and how that can happen. I don't want to tie a nice little pretty bow around this or I'd just say it's a happy ending, but are you and Tom good? You know, we circled back and reconnected. I actually was unsure if I'd be able to find him again.

And I did. And I regret what happened and all the time that we had away from each other. But I am grateful for the gift that he gave me in his absence, which was to realize how important his relationship was to me and how much I had to work on to make sure that I was the kind of friend that he needed me to be. So you're working on it. We are. And it's in a better place. And I think it's in a good place. It's been a real pleasure to listen to you and to talk about this important topic that's affecting us all.

Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Dr. Alika LaFontaine is the author of The Outrage Cure, how overcoming anger and betrayal can transform the way we live, connect, and heal. He is Métis, Oji, Cree, and Pacific Islander, and he was the first indigenous person to be the president of the Canadian Medical Association. Dr. Lafontein and I spoke in May.

You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.