How do you "be" angry?
 

I am so angry. I'm in my 19th day No Contact with XABF. In the months of his raging at me and intimidating me and finally blackmailing me in a way I couldn't believe, all I ever did was cry. I NEVER screamed back at him or even told him how sick I was of his crap. When I was a little girl and I was angry I just cried.

Now I want to go to his house or work and tell him what a #*%& he is and how he systematically harmed me and how immoral and foul he is. Like vomit, I want it out of me and on to him.

I KNOW that it is pointless to do that. But I need to do something, for me. This anger is blotting out my concentration and overriding my living and feeling.

So what do I do with this anger? Does someone have an exercise or process for how to rid oneself of anger, or process it? Scream? Beat pillows? Print pics of him and burn them? I've tried writing it all out to him in a letter but that didn't do any good. Still angry.

Help? Advice?

I've taken up triathlon training. And kickboxing.
And then I went from feeling homicidal rage all the time to despising him. Probably not healthy either, but a step up in my book. Now I only feel homicidal rage when he hurts our children. The rest of the time, I can shake my head and go "I am SO grateful I don't have to deal with him more than this."

I wrote many letters that I never sent. I threw stuff...not at him...but when I was out on the trails alone and no one could get hurt. I vented to other people. And then I read a book about anger and forgiveness, and it allowed me to change my perspectives on the situation. Doing that has allowed me to let go of the anger. Working the 4th step also helped a lot - looking at my resentments on paper.

And lastly, not to minimize your anger right now because anger is an important part of the process...this too shall pass. Hang in there!

I used to think that feeling angry somehow made me a bad person. But Anger is an emotion just like any other emotion. It has no right or wrong....what you DO with the anger.....that's another story.:a213:

What helps me is writing it all down in a notebook....like 20 minutes at a time of just getting it all out in big, bold, angry letters. It helps me release it all!!! (And beating a few pillows doesn't hurt, either). :c031:

I hope you are feeling much better soon! Hugs, HG

I know exactly what you mean. Before I moved out I was furious but didn't say anything. After I moved out I would have 10 or more fights everyday with her, in my head. Exercise was a big help, so was jiu jitsu. Posting here helped a lot and like TG said it just kind of faded away. As I focused more on me and what I needed to do I let go of the past and the anger that was attached to it. I have been putting a lot of work into living in the now. I've done a good job of letting go of the past. Still need more work on not fussing about the future.

Progress not perfection.

Lillamy,
Okay. kickboxing. (I am not going to be doing triathlons. but I'm imporessed that you do them! wow!) I do bikram yoga, which gets the toxins out in sweat, but it's too %*&^ peaceful.

I'm enjoying using the symbols to swear. That's nice. Maybe an angry smiley
:c004:
There.

But then I laugh and :gaah I sidestep the anger again and it roils up again later. :gaah
That's what I do- which I am ALSO angry about- so I am not going to self-soothe, dammit!
That has only packaged it tidily inside and now the packages are bursting open.


Tuffgirl,
I like the throwing things idea. Yes. I am going to do this. Then I'll go to a meeting tonight.

God help him if he is near the center tonight (which is one reason I've been avoiding it the past couple of months- he goes on and off for AA, or did at one point).

Ok, these are good!
More is good too if anyone else has more.

Thnak you, HG and Mike.

I will do pillows now. I have one I don't like, so it's toast.

Yeah, Mike, the non-response was good at the time, wasn't it?

For right now - I'm using exercise to help me deal with all that energy. It doesn't make me any less angry, but it does give me an outlet.

I'm learning that it's okay to be angry. I was taught as a child that being angry was bad - so for years, I stuffed. I never got "angry" with my AH. When I was hurt, or upset by something he said, I tried to be "nice" and talk about it with him... and never get upset, or raise my voice. I didn't allow myself to feel. It was NO GOOD.

I am unearthing so many feelings as I travel through my recovery... geez. It feels good just to say, "I'm ANGRY." That in and off itself is a pressure reliever.

There's a great chapter in Codependent No More that's devoted just to anger! It describes (in better detail than I could provide here!) a great process to feeling, processing, and moving on from your anger!

Passionfruit posted a thread with a lovely story in it, about throwing stones.
It's a lovely story, and I think it also applies here.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ng-stones.html

I like the idea of writing down everything I'm hurt and angry about (using the foulest language, and maybe some splashy flecked red and black painting, LOL), onto paper. Then tear that paper up into the smallest pieces. Then feed them... one... by... one into a little fire pit decorated ritualistically as the death of your troubles, and watch them burn, one-by-one, until they are ashes. Take the ashes somewhere significant, crumple them into a powder, and let them fly to the wind, disperse out into the world, to be recycled into dust.

Ahhhhhhhh. I feel better just thinking about flushing my toxins, in this manner.

CLMI

I read somewhere that someone dug a small hole in their backyard, put their face up to the hole and said all the vile things they were thinking. When they were done they filled in the hole and all the angry feelings had been buried. (symbolically of course)

I imagine everyone's face on the wall that I am angry at, and throw balled up socks as hard as I can at the wall. :)

When people hurt you or make you angry, it really has nothing to do with you...its because they have some flaw within themselves. For me, the only thing that made my anger go away was time. Also researching alot about alcoholism so I could understand the disease and why I was so angry in the first place. Oh yeah, and seeing his new gf that looked like a giant trashbag....that made me feel better! LOL jk.....or am I? :a213:

A person once changed my perspective on "being angry".
"Being" angry is identifying your person with the anger.
An alternative perspective is to remove yourself by a degree and think or say the "anger is flowing through me".

In this way I can bear in mind that "this too shall pass" and examine my anger as a third party, which I find more beneficial than directly identifying myself as angry.

I find the technique especially beneficial when expressing anger live, on the set, with the person I am angry with. It works well to say to the other person, "Anger is flowing through me".

It took some time for me to develop this method and I still have to work on it but I have found it very helpful in dealing with my angers.

My anger hit me out of no where about 8 mths after everything blew up. It was right around the holidays and I was at work. I was so angry I could not work. I started listing items that I was angry about....NO EDITING. I sent this as an email to myself back and forth for about three weeks. After writing it for hours I got some relief and got some work done (no chance prior to that).

I printed out the letter and brought it with me to counseling appts, to Al-anon meetings. I asked for anger to be a topic at meetings. It helped a lot. It was the first time since I was a little kid that I got "shaking mad." So mad that I could not see straight.

I also read a book about anger and another about forgiveness that helped. I reviewed (online) the cycle of grief and it helped me to feel safe that it was not going to be there "forever." I learned something called the Emotional Freedom Technique which seemed to help.

Lastly I was told this quote and it seemed to help too. "Anger is Depression turned outward, and Depression is Anger turned inward." It helped me to decide that anger in that moment was much safer for me then what I had always done before and turn it in inward. At least this was not trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Music has been so important to me these past few years. This part:
brought "Outta Me, Onto You" by Ani DiFranco to mind. Small excerpt:

it's gonna be sudden
it's gonna be strange
i'm gonna turn on a dime
give you five cents change
it's gonna be long
overdue
it's all gonna come out
outta me, on to you

outta me, onto you...

one of these days
you're gonna push too hard
we'll go on like we've always done
'til you go too far
yeah one of these days
it's gonna reach the top
then it's gonna start to spill
and it's not gonna
stop

outta me, onto you...

Pretty much anything by Ani DiFranco helps me vent. or Alice in Chains' Angry Chair....

The other thing I do when I'm feeling angry, but not really able to verbalize what's going on, is to break out the plain paper and big black charcoal or oil crayons. (Just big smeary, messy...) If it turns out that I have to write I HATE XAAH in charcoal so often that the page turns black, I do that - when DS is with his father or otherwise occupied elsewhere. I recently bought DS a giant 'floor pad' of paper and am considering swiping part of it or going to buy my own.

A left over from my life with XAAH: I clean. The room I focus on becomes SPOTLESS. I've realized that this is actually a bit of a rebellion, a bit of standing up for myself. XAAH would not let me clean while he was home (I was interrupting his game on purpose, I was trying to make him feel guilty, blah, blah, blame....). When we'd get into an argument and he'd storm out of the house "so [he] wouldn't hit" me, I'd start cleaning.

And now for something completely OT:
M1k3 - :) I really want to share:
1. I always read your handle as knitting shorthand: make 1, knit 3 - instead of Mike.
2. While reading the post about digging a hole, I had sad, sad visualizations of the poor plants whose roots touch the hole just withering and dying or turning into a scary horror-movie-tree. *shudder*

When walking, just walk
When sitting, just sit
When angry, just be angry
Above all, don't wobble.