Anger

[caressa]

Had a lot of anger over the years, and have found it is a feeling like every thing else, it is what I do with it that matters. When I saw your post, I thought of the following, a long time favorite of mine:

Quote:
Next time you feel angry, go and run around the house seven times, and afterwards sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown iit on somebody else...

Anger is just a mental vomit. There is just no need to throw it on somebody. Do a little jogging, or take a pillow and beat the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed.

In transformation you never control, you simple become more aware. Anger is happening-it is a beautiful phenomenon, it is just like electricity in the clouds....

- Osho

Even while anger is happening, if you suddenly become conscious, it drops.

Awareness is needed, not condemnation-and through awareness transformation happens spontaneously. If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watch with no judgment, not saying good or bad, just go within and you will find your answers.

Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don't fight, just look at what is happening. Whenever a mystery is understood, it becomes grace, a gift, because now you have the keys-and with the keys you are the master.

- Osho Transformation

It says in the big book that anger is not good for us, and even when it is justified, it is still harmful if I hang onto it. I used in the paste, and anger always seemed to sober me up. Whenever I got angry, you would swear I had 2 drinks instead of 20. It seemed to be my friend, but as it says in the quote, I was projecting it onto others.

I find it is best if I talk it out with my sponsor or a good friend. Once I am aware as it says, and I verbalize it, it loses it's power. I have written and journaled in the past, but because of my arthritis, writing hurts my hands. I have done the pillow thing, I didn't always use my hands, at one time it was a plastic baseball bat, and pounded the daylights out of my pillow. Repressed anger only festers and grows when kept inside.

I have done the walk, not run, thing and that is good. Can't stay angry long when I am outdoors and in God's creation.

I think I have shared it before, I saw my best friend's ex-husband who had abused her and her son. I saw the van, before I saw him and I stood on the curb and was totally paralyzed. I could not move, I was seething and just furious. I don't think I have ever been that angry before or since. I had company at home, I had gone to buy some pop at the corner store. When I got home, I asked them all to leave. I had to work it out and I wasn't able to do that with them there, and didn't want my anger to spill over and onto them.

One of the best ways for me to release it is to pray, sit with the palms of my hands up, and ask for it to be taken from me, ask for the understanding and knowingness I needed in order to let go. I asked for what I needed to heal and change the anger into acceptance, for patience and tolerance, and peace and love returned to replace the anger.

Hope this helps, looking forward to hearing how others deal with their anger.

Attachments:

[caressa]

t is so important that we don't feed into the anger. I had forgotten about the yelling and screaming. It is certainly best vented and gotten out, it doesn't have to make sense, and I don't even have to remember the source, for me it was a lot of built up feelings all the way back to my childhood, most of what I had forgotten.

Taking on other people's stuff, when in truth it isn't any of my business, only hurts me. So much of my life I had false pride, a false sense of security, responsibility, and self, so much of it was old tapes and illusions and stuff I brought from my past in to today. One of the most helpful things I heard was, I can't judge today or the future on the past issues, because I am on a different journey, I have my Higher Power with me in today, as long as I make the decision to bring Him/Her with me.

I remember a woman in early recovery who had 9 years of sobriety. She was very active in AA and her she glowed and serenity and peace shone from her. Yet the first time I met her, because when others said, "Our Father, who are in heaven..." She said, "My parents, ..." I thought it was sacrilegious and how dare she and yet, I came to believe, she can believe what she wants, it was working for her. She was of a mind that meetings shouldn't be closed with the Lord's Prayer because it was a religous prayer and left people out, like I have said, "I have seen people step outside of the circle, because it was being said, or they stood in the cycle and didn't repeat the prayer.

I had a lot of anger, and I had to let go, and emphasis in my own mind, this is a spiritual program, not a religious one. As I have said before, spirituality enhanced my religious beliefs. My religious beliefs where made stronger by my new sense of spirituality.

Before recovery, it was my way or the highway. My mother taught me that if it wasn't her way, it wasn't the right way. In recovery, I learned to have an open mind and a willingness to not only be honest, but to find self-honesty, without that, I can not recover.

So many times I didn't know I was angry, because it was a normal state of being. Many times I thought I had let it go, when it fact I had stuffed it, ignored it, or unwilling to look at what I need to let go and let God.

[caressa]

On my way home today, I realized that I was allowing myself to be angry over, people and their actions. In the past, prior to recovery, I drank to suppress the emotions. I didn't want to feel.

Had a little bit of a chuckle, at myself, because I could see the insanity and was getting caught up in it, and I realized I had to detach.

They have a choice to use if they want and in today, I have a choice to not use thanks to the AA program. I am as powerless over their disease and I am my own. When I surrender, I am empowered to do what I need to do, to stay clean and sober in today.

I don't have to live in that insanity today, I can work Step Two.