Can't get over anger issues - Al-Anon Family Group

zebrafish · Member

Can't get over anger issues

hotrod · ~*Service Worker*~

Dear zebrafish,

Al-Anon is a fellowship of people who live with or have lived with the disease of alcoholism. It appears that your family of origin was affected so that the Al-Anon tools might be very helpful.

The 12 steps address the past and gives us hope and tools for the future.. I suggest you check out Al-Anon face toface meetings in your community and attend .The slogans meetings and sponsorship will help to guide you through.

I deleted your second post as it felt like an advertisement for a product.

I am sure the alanon program will be helpful on your spiritual journey.

hotrod · ~*Service Worker*~

Dear zebrafish

I apologize for misunderstanding the intention of your posting. Al-Anon is a spiritual program and not a religious program. It has helped many find solutions that lead to serenity. I urge you to seek out the face-to-face meetings and see for yourself.

I again apologize for any distress I may have caused you.

,

hotrod · ~*Service Worker*~

MIP and alanon support anyone who has lived with or are living with the disease of alcoholism and we have no opinions on outside issues.

We also have a ACOA Board here that responds to members who are Adult Children of Alcoholics and feel this program better suits their needs

Here is the link http://acoa.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=42759

-- Edited by hotrod on Tuesday 14th of January 2014 09:37:45 PM

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

Hi and welcome! Yes adding the 12 steps is a great idea. I know I learned so much about myself using them as a guide. And each time I do thru them again I still do learn!

You are very introspective, so I am sure you will find what holds you back from letting go of anger.

I find anger is about feelings one has not delt with. I believe in talking things out, asking questions of the person who is holding on to it. Sometimes people will say things back they never realized they felt.

To just walk away from those that hurt you, leaves so many wounds to carry around.

I knew something about my uncle my Mother always told me to keep to myself. But I am telling you after she passed I told him how I felt. It felt so good to let it out, to this day 14 years later I am at peace with it.

It's hard to make me angry zebrafish, now when it comes to abuse of others including animals, then I can get very angry and act.

Facing conflict used to be running away. Now I face it asap! I listen to them then say ok I listened to you, would you do me the same and listen to me? I like facing conflict. I am telling you it cleans you up inside so fast.

We use,"To Thine Own Self Be True," in our shares a lot.

I am glad you have someone to be your spiritual teacher, however I am even more happy that you will stand up to them and say, wait a minute I don't agree with that. And also how you added the 12 steps over his or her not liking it.

We have to question our own selves and follow our hearts to be real. If we don't ask questions and research for ourselves, we won't learn what we ourselves believe.

I am glad you stuck in there with Hotrod, this type of communication medium needs us to say back to each other what we meant sometimes. Please keep coming!!

love,Debilyn

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

you know I just reread what you shared.

you have trouble hanging onto anger with people who have hurt you.

then you said you left your A family and that is how you were able to put it behind you.

May I suggest those issues are still eating you up? Maybe your teacher has somehow touched you in those places you hold in the anger about your family? When we go deep into our spirituality, how we feel inside, it can really cause lots of pain as things have a way of coming up!

As far as what we eat, if our bodies do not feel good, our minds and hearts do not either. I always invite people to eat right,drink right, get exercise even if you walk a block or less. It is much easier to work through our issues if we are as healthy as we can be.

For me, I will feel more lonely, sad etc when I am tired. I finally figured that one out...I never make decisions when I am tired, I also keep my mouth shut, lol. So now if I feel edgy or weird, I think, hmmm am I tired? yep usually I am.

Betty was in no way suggesting you leave! Just going by your share acoa may just be another avenue of help for you. Sometimes communicating this way can be misunderstood, we just need to ask for clarification or go pm if you like.

Please keep coming. This place is such a wonderful home, don't want you to miss it! hugz, debilyn

PP · ~*Service Worker*~

I am struck by your courage to move in a direction that feels right for you. I understand how influential the type of relationship that you refer to can be. You are a fighter inside. Al Anon has taught me "to thine own self be true" and, I do so to the best of my ability, in each moment. Best of my ability is key here, which means I am indeed a work in progress biggrin Welcome to the board and I hope you keep coming back.

PP · ~*Service Worker*~

You are most welcome.

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

I keep forgetting to bring up the cult part!!!!! With the dealing with a family of addicts, I am sure living and following a cult did not help you at all! walking away from that must have taken great courage.

Now see, you left your a family to be away from the pain and the cult too? So for me that tells me you are very strong and care about YOU as you protect yourself from things that don't feel right to you.

Also coming here sorta started on the wrong foot. Hey lady how about you hang in there this time! We really are a nice group, each one of us has our own style, but we don't come here to hurt or make someone unwelcome, well except this one guy who lives on an island,and this one gal who is going back to school...hahahaha very much kidding.

I am duct taping you to your chair as I type. Well someone is....We already care about you and want to support you, and listen. We also need your support for others here. When someone who thinks outside the lines, comes to a group it is sooooo nice as you will understand and relate to someone many others will not.

We need YOU. I am sincere about that. I have been blessed to see so many people grow here, find serenity, make themselves a new home, or get more comfy with their A.

I hope you will give me the blessing of staying give all of us this!!! We have ALL been where you are!

I mean it, you do not want to miss my "pigtures!!!"debilyn

black pig Peggy went to a new great home.

pig in my bed is Prudance, prudie my girl

big piggy is my Augie.

Goose, PopPop on cat tree, big black piggy is dickens, he is 14 that is Cudy white pup and Fezzik pom my service dog. If you stay you will see the rest of the rescues!!!! its so worth it!

KennyFenderjazz · ~*Service Worker*~

My AW is also an ACOA. With more education that I have gotten, sometimes I wonder if she would benefit more from ACOA than AA, because much of the root of her problems drinking stem from being an ACOA in my opinion. But that is for her recovery to discover.

And perhaps in your recovery you will discover the same. The key is to recover. With the self-discovery you glean from that, I am sure you will be led towards the best path for you.

Kenny

Breakingfree · ~*Service Worker*~

I have done some ACOA and al-anon at the same time, it doesn't matter how you work your program as long as it is helping you to get healthier. My al-anon sponsor whom I found in my face to face meetings has helped me immensely to move through my dysfunctional past, by helping me through my step workbook. Meetings help me a lot and so does my loving MIP family here. I am glad you found us and it works if you work it! Keep coming back. Take what you like and leave the rest.

neshema2 · ~*Service Worker*~

zebrafish wrote:
I have a lot of trouble with holding on to hatred and anger towards people who have hurt me - especially my spiritual teacher. I still had trouble because I'm a cult survivor. I get the impression he's sort of a "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" kind of person, So he has to (and does) work with me, and I have to remind myself many times that things such as this, are artifacts of this religion that I don't like much. I was able to "just put my alcoholic family behind me" about 10 years ago, just by having nothing more to do with them. So my reaction to this is "you know what, I'm going to include some 12 step work in my practice too," even though he was against it, because he doesn't have a better answer.

dear Zebrafish..........i read your post and could relate to a BUNCH of it ...I had anger issues BIG time until i worked it through in recovery....yes, my mother was an abusive, raging drunk, and the sire, whas a serial child offender and ANY child would do, even me....so you can imagine how pee'd off I was and I could not let it go....i raged if i was in a situation where I was powerless b/c it felt like life was "putting it to me" my offender also used God to validate his abusing me, so spiritual abuse happened....I became a God hating agnostic, (if there is such a thing) but these 2 and my older siblings hurt me really really bad, with the siblings abusing , brutalizing me all my childhood....I absolutely hated all 4 of them...parents and 2 siblings.....i actually wanted to kill them at one point...Anyway, the anger stayed, like a sludge covering my spirit...I wanted to get rid of that anger....the first thing i did was totally separate from the parents....then they passed on, first her, then him and then it was the two siblings....

I lived very near one of them in CA for a long while and I just made the decision to distance myself from this woman who first didn't believe me about the abuse, then condemned me for changing my name, earasing his name off me, she condemned me for it...so did the older brother.......Like you, I just cut them out of my life.....dissociated from them......they didn't exist, but i still had the anger

I got into recovery 12 years ago, coming up and i worked the steps, meetings, slogans, worked with a good sponsor who also suffered familial abuse and little by little i just went through EACH awful memory, felt the pain, outrage and finally the grieving and came to acceptance, that this is what happend, I cannot give me back those lost years, so i decided the best thing I can do for me is to make my peace w/me, my past and move on.....no, i will never "get over" that kind of pain, but I can get through it and give up the anger, hate which was only hurting me, not my abusers...

it doesn't matter who screwed me over, hurt and abuse or being betrayed equaled hurt, pain, anger and it will stop at anger unless i work through it, work the program on it, vent, scream, cry, get it out and then look at what i can do NEXT time to take care of me so as to not repeat....

My older female sibling began to battle cancer and wanted back in my life, so dumb me, i thought maybe she was "seeing her mortality" and wanted to be a sister to me for the first time.....I very hesitantly took her back, but sorta kept a distance....mess me up once and i never trust again, yea, i was willing to let her make amends, but it was gonna be slow and easy and i was not putting my hand near the mouth that bit it all my life..........sure enough, on facebook, she condemns me AGAIN for dumping my offenders name.....demands that I should have forfeited my part of his pitiful inheritance that bought me a used car, but oh yea, i was supposed to "forfeit" my share b/c i no longer had his name....the stupid woman did not realize that rights and obligations do NOT change w/a name change...My accounts payable don't go away and neither was this account "receivable" but she had to get that "jab" in to me.........i posted on the same thread on facebook to all the people saying she was right, in that i dumped my sires name, what else do you do w/a serial child offender??? well all the facebook folks jumped on her and defended me.....I let them stomp her for a while, then i deleted the entire post...deleted her...blocked her......then she began sending me texts to jab at me again, like this woman HAS to hurt me, so i blocked her in everything, even her daughters whom she can use to email me.........yea, the anger began to rear its head again, but this time i faced the "source" of some of my darkness and cut it off....i worked the steps w/my sponsor about this last time she "zapped me" and i saw my part in it was merely showing mercy to one with cancer, but NOT thinking of my needs for safety first.....i did NOT take care of me....I KNEW she was a poisonous snake, and its not MY problem she has cancer, I have ptsd...i don't see anyone jumping through hoops for me, so yea, my part in this exchange was to let a known abusive, negative, toxic woman near me...........now she is gone from me and for good

i can take care of me now so when i get "zapped" by someone, I first look at the lesson i needed to learn in it and i cut them loose from me.......i assess what my part or lesson was and sometimes i confront them with what they did and why i am dumping them OR i just leave...walk away...."poof" i am gone....

I don't owe a soul any explainations why I am leaving them....I can walk away

so yea, anger is a b****......it only hurts the giver, now anger in the righteous sense can mean to me its time to set a boundary....when i feel angry now at someone or something, I work step 10 and assertain "ok, what boundary (internal always) do i need to set??? what do i need to do to take care of me???? being angry is OK...hanging onto it is NOT OK.....its OK to get mad and do something positive and proactive to take care of myself, oh yea, ...but to hold onto it and just stew in it is not healthy for me..........cutting the sister loose was my "taking care of me" thingy so she could not keep ticking me off....i mean what sense was there in that??? keeping this butt rash??? NONE....so i took care of me by totally cutting her off....the others died before i could confront them and i am not so sure it would have done any good b/c toxic folks like that, its always the victims fault, even tho that victim was a small , helpless child....

i had a real problem w/control and i could NOT be helpless or powerless...I had to be in control b/c my life was so OUT of control...i had no trust in me and the inheritant goodness of my Higher Power and the universe, so i had to be in control...when not in control, i raged....the anger..........now it has disspitated to a manageable level...yea, i might get a bit pee -od but it does not last b/c I am not helpless anymore...even if there is NADA i can do about something, there IS that option of walking away..turning it over and saying "i can't do anything about this, creator, do what you gotta do" life is gonna have its way anyway, so i may as well stop fighting the karma, quit giving it power over me and toss it off me

I do hope you give program a chance......if it can soften me, it can soften anyone.......

-- Edited by hotrod on Wednesday 15th of January 2014 07:06:21 PM

cwya · Senior Member

Thank you Neshema and zebrafish for your shares. They have enabled me to see that I am repeating a pattern of behavior created by my original perpetrators both as sexual abuse and cult survivor. Working through this level of spiritual and emotional sludge (love the term) took a very long time. My sponsor told me "when you're up to your neck in alligators remember why you came to drain the swamp!!" Now that I have put the "emergency stage" of my recovery far behind me I find that even so there are some wounds so deep they leave scars. For me that means I may have lost a leg (metaphorically speaking) but I can still be one hell of a one-legged skier.

So I attract abusers still sometimes. And I recreate the abuse response in current relationships sometimes. Like with my new employer. I love my job, cant get along with boss so I found myself accepting abuse because I need the benefit it provides...sort of like another old profession that I accused myself of being. Awful self-talk. Its the old messages. Its what I have to accept to get what I want. So I know I should leave but cant bring myself to do it. We do the best we can, one day at a time, to change the old messages and learn to love ourselves into peace.

I repeat these patterns when I don't stay on top of working my program on a daily basis. We will know serenity if we work for it. Its what we're all trying to do here. This is not a blog per se. We help one another here by sharing our own experience, strength and help in working the steps, finding f2f help, and MIP is a 24/7 source of this. We aren't perfect. Keep coming back. We strive to never let there be gossip or criticism amoung us and reason things out between us. In Alanon you will find that we may not like all of us but we come to love others the same way we already love. This is the gift of recovery in Alanon.

neshema2 · ~*Service Worker*~

zebrafish wrote:

@neshema2: I think I have problems with the higher power concept - it's complicated but I'll try to explain it. I do believe there is something
that is a supreme consciousness, because I've felt it. I'm not sure that I believe it is a human-like personage who looks after everything,
but rather something that is there if we can learn to access it, and its purpose is not to take care of all the little details of our lives but to raise
our consciousness. And we have to work at learning how to access it, and it took many generations of people trying, failing, and continuing to try,
to figure out how to do that. So we humans had to figure this out ourselves. We were not given any operating manual on this plane of existence.
So I will have trouble with this idea of turning over control of all the little details of my life to a higher power who
supposedly takes care of these things. That is my perspective on it.

I know very well that I am only hurting myself by holding onto anger - but that isn't enough to stop doing it.

I have ptsd too - a mild form it imo, and now I have to also be careful to protect myself from abuse, more careful
than non-ptsd people have to be.

Thanks for opening up about that.

hey Z I still have probs. with the higher power thing...yes, i call it Creator and I do buy into Jesus, but that my take, but , even so, I still have major trust issues, in that when i was being molested, I BEGGED "G-d" to come save me, come rescue and "ok now that you let him devour me, how about making this crap up to me????" NOT....I LOST those years...they are gone....and there is NO recompense that I can see except what I can gain in this wonderful program....I do believe that the higher power is not involved in the stuff WE as humans with the TOOLS to care for our own stuff ...I think HP is more involved in the spiritual realm and leaves the "worldly" or "physical" realm kinda as "hands off" as we are here under choice and freewill...so HP/aka God/Creator is "hands off" on the stuff we are supposed to work out, however when we truly are powerless and we do let it go then I think the universal creator does do something , usually using other people, or something to "toss us" an answer.......

Z, I hope you stick around....this program is great....I really do believe it saved my life b/c my anger was directed at me too....I hated me..wanted to hurt me and often times with my verbal abuse I did hurt me...I used to take my fist and "bop" me upside of the head if I did soemthing stupid or out of not paying attention...It made me soo angry to "prove my offender right" when he said I was a born screw up and a useless p.o.s......oh yea, he was a real piece of work.....now he is dead....in the cold dark place where the punishment fits the crime....coming to believe that there really is karma for our bad deeds ADN our good ones as well, gave me a sense of release, like NObody gets away with doing evil to any other living being....

PEACE

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