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.

Well, quick disclaimere her. I didn't hit any person. But it felt like it and it was gooood.

I did the pillow. I just slammed that pillow into my bed, saying in this growl from my belly all that I wanted to say to him, what I think of him, what I KNOW him to be, what a nasty rotten man he is to have picked on me and a dozen other women before me. Then I started punching into the air like I was boxing him, and some amateur kickboxing. <grin> I won, by the way- and THAT felt GREAT! I’m so much lighter. I’ve been in so much therapy in my life and no one EVER said, “hit back!” Even just alone, into the air, or a boxing bag (is that what they’re called?), or throw stonnes, or any of that.

This is the really exciting part: As I was boxing at him, I found myself punching the kid that used to beat me up and destroy my toys when I was little (and spit on my birthday cake, and dump out my Christmas stocking and rip it, and step on my easter eggs, etc). He was my parents’ best friends’ kid.

I was never allowed to hit back because he had polio and was on crutches. He used to beat me up with those crutches. Once he knocked me off a bunk bed with them, when I was about 4 or 5. My parents disapproved when I complained or cried when he beat me up because I supposed to be “the better person,” and pity him, excuse him: “poor, ___, you know he doesn’t have the advantages you do….” “Just sit down here and be quiet.” And I did.

As I was punching that kid today- just pummeling him- I was feeling so good and I realized that what those adults had told me was a lie. I should have punched that little creep and asserted my right to self-defense when I was a kid. THEY weren’t going to protect me. THEY left it up to me. Then they doled out parental platitudes. But I’ve needed to punch out that kid for 48 years.

It’s so obvious why I resented XABF for using his “alcoholism” card after bullying me and exploiting me and threatening me and trapping me against walls, and all that petty bully crap. He used his disease as his excuse for that, and more, and I BOUGHT IT! Of course I did. I waas trained up that way. I was being that same good little girl, “the better person,” compassionate and forgiving first- with resentment and disdain inside.

No way. Take care of me first. Then show compassion- after I’m safe and sound.

Amazing. Fifty one years old and never realized that I needed to feel the power to “hit back.” Today, I feel like a person just like everyone else, who deserves to defend herself just like everyone else. I feel very Tawanda! I deserve to reject mistreatment and slam the door on it instantly, not forgive and take more. THAT feels amazing to say, and know.

And SR and you guys are golden, you know that?

GettingBy,
I so agree. It is NOT good. It is BAD. And girls are taught it far more than boys are.
I’ll go back to the Beattie book and read that chapter. But if it says to be mild, I might not be on that page at the moment. Haha.

StarCat,
Thank you for directing me to PassionFruit’s post. And thank you PassionFruit for posting it. I will do that.

CatLover, Mike and Freedom,
I like the ritual idea too. I think I’ll do these. I don't have a yard, so maybe a jar.

LuvInDaisy,
I understand the pain and admire your moving through it.

Dugld,
I figure I’m fungible to him. It seems women have been fungible his whole life. Pfft. Not the best pick for a mate, but I sure appreciate what that relationship has taught me.

Programmatic,
Yes, I can see that. That’s why I put it in quotes, that seemed wrong, or confusing. It is far more like moving it through. Thing is, it was stuck in me, like two black pool balls, hard and heavy in my gut and my throat. I don’t tend to address it immediately, directly and honesty, with awareness of the source and meaning. And I guess I’ll have to learn how.

LifeRecovery,
Exactly! I couldn’t even work. That's very frustrating, isn't it?
I'll try some EFT. Good idea.

TheUncertainty,
Good song! That’s how I felt, too. Til I faux punched him out today. (He was a faux bloody mess!) My daughter's a fan of Miranda Lambert. Her BF calls her "the fire chick." (Miranda, that is)

Mike,
Not wobbling.

:tyou
You guys give good advice.

Love this thread - Blue you sound like you're doing awesome :)

I remember when I went through months of being angry - I think primal rage was more like it. I thought I was angry at XABF - I was angry at so much...I had recently acknowledged I had a problem - yeah the x was an Alcoholic, but I stayed, I picked him to save him, I was brought up to be a perfect codie and was pissed at my parents for teaching me to be hurtful to myself. I put all my eggs in a basket with the biggest hole and was angry at how it turned out.

In one of my anger threads, someone posted suggesting I do or redo Step 4. I was pissed about that - how could listing things wrong with me get rid of my anger?

So - I went through my list of crimes against myself and realized it was Me I was angry at most. I also realized it was Me who had the power to never let this happen to me again - never ever ever did i have to let another unworthy person inside my boundaries where they could hurt me...ever.

That really helped me - oh and lots of hiking :) It's also a great way to get a lot of home improvement projects done! Never have I shoveled 2 and a half feet of snow out of my driveway more quickly than I did back then - wow!

TAWANDA!!!!

I really like that.

I once described a feeling of serenity in such physical terms to a fellow Al-Anon and that person told me that if I can find fitting physical descriptions for specific emotional stances or states of being then I have formed a mental image that I can recall to re-enter that state of mind. Reentry to serenity is a desirable thing.

I can see how applying the same method to undesirable states could be equally useful if for no other reason than quick and accurate identification and relation under stress. I would think that If I can identify anger as those two pool balls again then I can make a quicker transition into dealing with it in whatever way I have learned how.

I like to read meditations on Thich Nhat Hanh's "Taming the Tiger Within." That helps calm me down.

http://www.amazon.com/Taming-Tiger-W.../dp/1573222887

Blue, I was just about to past this when the poo-poo hit the fan with my AW.

So, what I was going to finish with is that it is ok to feel anger. Go with it and then let go when its done. No guilt or any of that bs. When you try to analyze your anger while you are angry or feel guilty over being angry then you are wobbling. Its normal just like being happy or sad or :c004:.

Your friend,

Anger is such a huge part of my life - and I'm not even sure where the rage comes from. But one thing is for sure, I know I would drink to try and get rid of it. Pretty much destroying/throwing/hitting something was the only way I felt a little better. I have found that running now helps and yoga is huge. But when that rage takes over, destroying a piece of wood and smashing it on the ground still feels good. Its good to know you're not alone with rage and others have it as well, but its hard when you do feel alone with it.

It does pass and another day starts and hopefully again 1 more day sober. :-) Good luck you will make it!

lately when the anger overtakes me, I meditate that "it's almost done, we're almost out, just a little bit longer, etc" and that helps dissipate it.

I like to throw on some death metal and then club a few Seals.
Seriously though.

I let the emotion do it's thing but I no longer try and take action in that state.

Guitar lessons help. Hobbies help. SR helps. A therapist helps.

If I'm on the brink, I'll try and close my eyes. Count to 4 over and over again for 30 minutes. aka meditate

Yelling at the plumber like I did today, felt better.

Of course, we still have no water. grrrrr.:c004:

I just close my eyes and picture the day that I burn the damn couch - in the room that our family is always in - that he always occupied. I am going to douse that thing in Kerosene and light it up and watch it burn! It's a great visual for me. :angryfire

I am just counting the days until our temp hearing hoping I get the couch.... :dance3: