Anger
 

My husband is drinking a bottle of gin everyday, and just lays around the house doing nothing 24/7. His Company closed recently and he got a very good severance package that he says should last until Social Security (3 years from now).


I can't seem to get a handle on my anger at him , it flairs up frequently.

I went to my first Al-Anon meeting last week. I know I must let go of the anger, but I don't know how.

I've lost any love or respect I had for him.

Any hints to control rage!

I honeslty don't know what to say but I wanted you to know that I understand the being unable to let go of anger. You sound frustrated. I would be angry and frustrated too if my spouse did nothing but drink all day. I'm 6 days sober now and plan to continue down that path but I suggest you talk to him about how you feel and also talk about different ways of letting anger go in your meetings. It might take a few meetings before things get better in your heart.

I don't know if you can successful "control" your anger. Sounds like a pressure cooker. It's going to blow from time to time. A better angle, I believe, is learning how to release your anger successfully or how to let go of it. For me, that has meant discerning what my boundaries are. There are certain things now that I'm not going to get upset about. I've put them on my list of things I don't like, but have decided I can live with. There are other things I still get upset about, but am trying to learn to do different things instead of letting it eat me alive.

My wife got layed off....good severance pkg....about a years worth of pay. She went from "functional" to drinking at 7:30 am in no time. Her "gift" has ruined her life. That was 4 yrs ago and she still is unemployed.

We had to divorce....I had to save myself and daughter. We lost home, autos, everything.

Without my court ordered Alanon, I don't believe I'd of survived. We're (DD and I) O.K. now, but it hasn't been easy....but infinately better than living w/active addiction.

Keep posting here and going to Alanon and maybe some therapy. I believe these actions saved my life.

Thanks and God bless us all, :ghug2
Coyote

Is your husband abusive toward you when he's being "angry"? Or is it just being a jerk, kinda thing? I would say if you haven't tried this, if he's yelling at you directly, talk to him back in a soft-spoken manner. It's proven that people listen more attentively when they are soft-spoken. Don't get angry at him back, as this may cause him to be physical. But I'm not sure if he is. Hope this helps!!

For me, anger is just a feeling like any other feeling. The important thing is to understand what the feeling is telling me and then to do what -- if anything -- I need to do about that in a healthy way that both takes care of me and that doesn't make me feel ashamed -- or put me in the position of having to make an amend.

I've found that when I'm feeling angry it's because there is something going on that is not OK with me -- maybe behavior that is inappropriate, or unacceptable, or disrespectful, or dangerous, or whatever. The anger is telling me to pay attention to whatever is not OK and to do what I need to do to take care of myself in that situation (i.e. to do what I need to do to make it OK for me.)

I don't find it helpful to be afraid of or feel ashamed of or embarrassed about my feelings -- including anger. I just need to feel it, get the info it's giving me, and take appropriate action for self-care. If I don't feel the feeling and follow the process all the way through to the appropriate self-care part, then several different things -- none of them healthy or good -- can happen:

1) If I act rashly out of the angry place (without thinking it through), then, the chances are that I am going to act in a way that I'm not going to feel good about or proud of later on. There is also a really good chance that whatever I do is not really going to result in good self-care and may even make the situation worse.

2) If I squash the anger and refuse to feel it, it gets buried inside and gets all ugly and distorted and dangerous, until, finally it explodes -- usually totally inappropriately and sometimes even at people or situations that have nothing at all to do with what the original anger was about.

3) If I feel it but don't work through what it's about and what I need to do, but, instead, just ruminate on it and on how I'm so victimized and my misery is someone else's (or everyone else's) fault, then I find myself nursing a huge resentment -- and, like they say, harboring a resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die. And when I'm in that place, I'm basically emotionally disabled through no one's fault but my own.

So, for me the only healthy way through a feeling is to feel it, identify what it's telling me, and take the appropriate self-care action to which the feeling is trying to direct my attention.

Now, I make that sound so easy, right??? But, before I was able to access my program tools as well and as quickly as I am now, I did have a couple of stop-gap measures to help me deal with anger without embarrassing myself or unnecessarily hurting myself or anyone else. The first was to scream as loud as I could into a big pillow or in the car where no one could hear or see me. (This sometimes actually had the added benefit of making me so hoarse that I couldn't possibly scream at another human being!) And, as a last resort, I have to say that I've had excellent results with taking a bunch of old glass bottles and smashing them as hard as I could against the garage wall. Yep, there's something very therapeutic about the sound of all that breaking glass!

freya

I stayed in my "angry place" for months (even years) on end. What I discovered was that when I let my guard down, all the sadness came flooding in and I felt like I could cry at the least little thing. Being the stoic person I am, I would never want to be seen as weak, which I equated sadness with. I did let my guard down one day and cried at work. One of my good friends who I worked with was shocked.....she said in the 16 years we have known each other she has NEVER seen me cry. I'm sure I learned all of this at a very young age, and I'm also sure it is tied to the choices I've made in relationships. I'm digging through it with the help of a therapist, and it is pretty fascinating.......if you are ready to learn a lot about yourself and begin to heal the hurt I would recommend finding a counselor that has experience with addictions/codependence.