7/18 Language of Letting Go
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7/18 Language of Letting Go
You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go
Time to Get Angry
It's about time you got angry - yes, that angry.
Anger can be such a potent, frightening emotion. It can also be a feeling that guides us to important decisions, sometimes decisions difficult to make. It can signal other people's problems, our problems, or simply problems we need to address.
We deny our anger for a variety of reasons. We don't give ourselves permission to allow it to come into our awareness - at first. Understand that it does not go away; it sits in layers under the surface, waiting for us to become ready, safe, and strong enough to deal with it.
What we may do instead of facing our anger and what it is telling us about self-care, is feel hurt, victimized, trapped, guilty, and uncertain about how to take care of ourselves. We may withdraw, deny, make excuses, and hide our heads in the sand - for a while.
We may punish, get even, whine, and wonder.
We may repeatedly forgive the other person for behaviors that hurt us. We may be afraid that someone will go away if we deal with our anger toward him or her. We may be afraid we will need to go away, if we deal with our anger.
We may simply be afraid of our anger and the potency of it. We may not know we have a right, even a responsibility - to ourselves - to allow ourselves to feel and learn from our anger.
God, help my hidden or repressed angry feelings to surface. Help me have the courage to face them. Help me understand how I need to take care of myself with the people I feel anger toward. Help me stop telling myself something is wrong with me when people victimize me and I feel angry about the victimization. I can trust my feelings to signal problems that need my attention.
From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.
Time to Get Angry
It's about time you got angry - yes, that angry.
Anger can be such a potent, frightening emotion. It can also be a feeling that guides us to important decisions, sometimes decisions difficult to make. It can signal other people's problems, our problems, or simply problems we need to address.
We deny our anger for a variety of reasons. We don't give ourselves permission to allow it to come into our awareness - at first. Understand that it does not go away; it sits in layers under the surface, waiting for us to become ready, safe, and strong enough to deal with it.
What we may do instead of facing our anger and what it is telling us about self-care, is feel hurt, victimized, trapped, guilty, and uncertain about how to take care of ourselves. We may withdraw, deny, make excuses, and hide our heads in the sand - for a while.
We may punish, get even, whine, and wonder.
We may repeatedly forgive the other person for behaviors that hurt us. We may be afraid that someone will go away if we deal with our anger toward him or her. We may be afraid we will need to go away, if we deal with our anger.
We may simply be afraid of our anger and the potency of it. We may not know we have a right, even a responsibility - to ourselves - to allow ourselves to feel and learn from our anger.
God, help my hidden or repressed angry feelings to surface. Help me have the courage to face them. Help me understand how I need to take care of myself with the people I feel anger toward. Help me stop telling myself something is wrong with me when people victimize me and I feel angry about the victimization. I can trust my feelings to signal problems that need my attention.
From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.
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Last night i arrived at angry over the sadness i've been feeling ... i've been waiting for that to happen, comes and goes though. I find it's hard to stay angry when i SHOULD be! There should be NO reason i'm sad from what occured over the past month. Hopefully i can stay angry for a bit to get me through. Thanks for the post!
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I had to get really angry so I wouldn't just cry 24/7 over xah, of course you know I was pregnant too, so the hormones were outta control. But. . .nevertheless. . .I made it through with flying colors 
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When I was growing up, I was punished for feeling angry, showing disappointment or "talking back". My mother ruled with an iron fist and I was afraid of her. So, I learned to keep anger under wraps so well that I thought I never even felt it. For a while there, I actually prided myself on being so...um...calm. Enter my AH. After a couple of years of active alcoholism, I couldn't keep it bottled up inside any longer. I was like a volcano, spewing ash and acid. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs all the time--a frightening experience for me and him, considering my typically peaceful and quiet nature.
Through my experiences, I've come to realize that anger is there for a reason. It is a powerful emotion and we must listen to it, because it will guide us to the source of our unhappiness. On the other hand, there must be a costructive way of dealing with it and moving on with life, because if left alone, it has a way of refueling itself. For me, discussing what happened with AH over and over was not at all therapeutic, because I would feel resentment and anger anew every time the topic came up. Whether through forgiveness or shifting the focus elsewhere, it must be let go or it will bias and taint the new life expriences.
Through my experiences, I've come to realize that anger is there for a reason. It is a powerful emotion and we must listen to it, because it will guide us to the source of our unhappiness. On the other hand, there must be a costructive way of dealing with it and moving on with life, because if left alone, it has a way of refueling itself. For me, discussing what happened with AH over and over was not at all therapeutic, because I would feel resentment and anger anew every time the topic came up. Whether through forgiveness or shifting the focus elsewhere, it must be let go or it will bias and taint the new life expriences.
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