Time To Get Angry
 

Thursday, July 18, 2013

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.

This was me, afraid that if I ever "let loose" I would lose it entirely. What I didn't understand was that repressing anger only let it eat me alive and build like a volcano waiting to erupt at any time.

It was my sponsor who helped me let go of my anger...like deflating a balloon slowly so that it didn't swirl all about the room in craziness..until I finally got it all out.

Once I learned to deal with anger, I could deal with the resentments it left and then turn the anger into compassion and the resentments into forgiveness. Funny how this program does that, it takes the toxicity out of our hearts and replaces it all with healing.

Hugs, LMN, for reminding me each day of things I need to remember.

Thank you LMN, I am dealing with anger issues with my husband (not related to JJ!) and this gives me a lot to think about!