Resolving Anger

Thankfully, negative emotions like anger do not last forever, or at least should not last forever.  We can dwell on them, perpetuate them, and allow them to simmer.  Anger can turn inward.  It can also transform into a hatred.

A friend responded to last week's blog by asking how we deal with those negative emotions that often lead us to overeat, smoke, drink and otherwise engage in self destructive behaviors.  In addition such emotions also can lead to harmful actions against our neighbor that destroy relationships and in the worst cases, are harmful to others.

I've stewed about it.  I've smoked, and drank till I could do so no more.  And then I've stewed some more, ruminating into the wee hours of the morning for days on end.  Thankfully, I think that I've learned something through many years of therapy, through Alcoholics Anonymous, and simply through self reflection.

Here are my thoughts:

Name it.  One of the least helpful ways to deal with anger is to not deal with it, to deny it exists, and to internalize it all with the hopes that it will just go away.  I was not given permission to be angry when I was growing up.  In general, emotions were considered weakness.  One of the most difficult things for me to distinguish early in my therapy was the difference between emotions and thoughts, and to name the emotions.  "I think" was often followed with an emotional outburst.  "I feel" often led into a thought or a judgment.  Getting those straight is part of naming.  I think that our immigration policy is unjust and cruel.  I am angry that children are taken from their parents and that we still are unable to reunite them.  My thoughts and my anger are two separate things.

Own it.  One of the most important lessons I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is that my emotions are mine, and mine alone.  They originate within me.  I am never a victim to my emotions.  Others don't "make" me mad.  I experience emotions because I am who I am.  I may resent others or their actions, but the resentment is mine.  I react in this way, for example, because of a disparity between personal convictions about how things should be, and the reality of how they are.  Injustice shouldn't be, but it is, and so I react.  But the reaction is mine.  I am not an emotional victim.

Discern.  There is a difference between righteous anger and unrighteous.  I get angry when innocent people are hurt.  Child abuse, for example, results in my being angry.  I also get angry when I don't get my own way.  The first is an example of righteous anger, the latter of unrighteous.  If I discern that my anger is just because I don't get my own way, perhaps I can let it go and experience a more appropriate emotion, such as disappointment.  Also, righteous anger more appropriately has as its object actions, not people.  When we focus on the people, we risk emotions becoming more intense.  Anger becomes hatred, and hatred endures.  For example, I am angry that a teacher abused me during my adolescence, but if I allow that anger to become a hatred toward him, it will consume ME.

Act appropriately.  Regarding my history of being a victim of abuse:  I remember that it wasn't until my own children approached the age that I was when I was abused that I was able to recognize and name my own abuse for what it was.  I became angry.  I imagined killing anyone who did that to one of my children.  Not appropriate.  To work at freeing victims from abuse, protecting children from abuse, punishing the perpetrators of abuse appropriately through legal means-- these are appropriate actions.  I believe that righteous anger's appropriate role is to motivate action.  But not just any action will do.  "Appropriate" is the key qualifier here.

Let it go.  My memory is one of my curses.  I can name something my wife did within the first twenty four hours of our marriage that I got angry about.  We've been married over forty years.  If I dwell on it, I can resurrect that anger.  Not good or helpful.  When I forgive someone, I become free.  The greatest impact of forgiveness is on the one doing the forgiving.  By the time I recognized that I was a victim of abuse, the abuser was dead.  Eventually, I was able to forgive him, or at the very least, I'm working on it.  But that forgiveness is important for me-- he's dead and quite unaffected by it.

In all of this, a good friend, a spiritual guide, a confessor helps.  In A.A. we have sponsors.  For some people it will be a pastor.  I've used a therapist extensively.  The primary purpose is to have someone who can help who is not blinded by an emotional fog.

Related to this is prayer, at least for people of faith.  Prayer, when offered for the one whose actions have resulted in our being angry, can help.  It can change our attitude and our emotions.

Self destructive behaviors do not help.

This became clearest for me my last night drinking.  No matter how much I drank, the rage I was experiencing did not go away.  It was persistent.  My "solution" nearly killed me.  I hope that I'm in a better place now and more capable of dealing with those emotions.

Anger and Righteousness

Anger is a powerful emotion.
Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,

One of the things we learn in A.A. is to beware of  H.A.L.T..  That is to be cautious whenever you are hungry, angry, lonely, tired.  Such experiences are potentially devastating to one who is seeking to remain sober, or in my case, at this time, to quit smoking.

Paul writes that we will experience anger, perhaps even that we should experience anger at certain things, but that we should neither sin, nor let the sun set on our anger.  There is a righteous purpose for anger, and that is to motivate us to oppose and resist unrighteousness, injustice, cruelty, etc.  Anger's righteous purpose is to motivate us to act now, before the sun sets.

And yet too often we fall prey to emotions such as anger and rather than deal forthrightly with the object of our anger in a positive way we seek other outlets to dissipate the anger, such as drinking or smoking.  Worse, sometimes that anger gets turned inward, or toward others such as our spouses who are in no way deserving of being the object of  our anger.

I got angry this last week.  There's no purpose served in detailing that in this blog out of deference to those involved.  But the simple fact is that anger was felt by me.

Powerful emotion.

Part of the dilema for a chemically addicted person is that our most natural response to anger is to turn to that substance, be it drink or smoke, as a means of dissipating the anger.  We are angry and so we are then tempted to do that which is destructive to ourselves.  My last episode drinking, now nearly 6 years ago was the result of a deep rage that had gotten a grip on me and which boiled over.  Alcohol was not adequate to calm the raging beast, but was very much adequate to killing me.  I'm lucky to have survived.

When I'm angry at the world, or any significant part of it, the temptation is to take a "fuck it all" attitude.  (Sorry to be so blunt, but what's the purpose of disguising a word with ***'s)  All of a sudden a Scotch in hand and a big cigar seems to be a perfect solution.

Sobriety is about learning more positive responses to life.  Being angry at someone else and then engaging is self destructive behavior is not appropriate.

"See, now I'm angry, and so it's alright to smoke." I can't tell you how many attempts to quit smoking were foiled by anger.  Quitting smoking itself, often results in anger, so it's an easy out to quit quitting whenever one experiences anger.  I probably would have quit decades ago if I'd been able to handle anger.  Most often the anger I experienced when trying to quit was focused inappropriately on my wife, as she, more than anyone, wanted me to quit.

And so the effort is to find more positive ways to confront the anger within us and realize that emotions are only emotions.  Yes, in certain situations such emotions call for an immediate response to a bad situation.  But a lot of times emotions such as anger need to be understood, dealt with, and let go of ASAP.

I'm reminded of God's dialogue with Jonah.

"But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" And he said, "Yes, angry enough to die."

First of all, many times anger is not warranted.  Secondly, self destructive behavior, or "being angry enough to die" is no solution.

Life is too precious to allow others, and emotions, to have that kind of control over us and our behavior.