The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
"Often anger is a sign of engagement with life. People who are angered are touched deeply by the events of their lives and feel strongly about them. As an emotion, it has limitations and it certainly has very bad press, but my experience with ill people suggests that there is something healthy about it. Certainly the cancers studies by Levy, Temoskak, and Greer suggest that many people who recover become angry first. Anger is just a demand for change, a passionate wish for things to be different. It can be a way to reestablish important boundaries and assert personal integrity in the face of a body - and life-altering disease. And, as it was for me, it may be the first expression of the will to live. Anger becomes a problem for people only when they become wedded to it as a way of life."
- exerpt from 'Kitchen Table Wisdom'
As this passage so eloquently put it, I was indeed wedded to my anger. Through working the 12 Steps, and through counselling for some of my deeper-seated issues with anger, I am free of holding on to angers that sabotage; I have tools to get through those types of anger. The one type of anger I have held onto is my anger at this disease. This is my healthy anger; the anger that motivates me with a will to recover and live on a daily basis.
I believe there is anger, and then there is ANGER. I can say a thing makes me angry; the word "anger" there is probably a bad choice of a word. I am, rather, irked, dismayed, enraged, irate, incensed, hot-under-the-collar, provoked, furious, or annoyed. Angry applies, rightly, to an on-going state of mind. That's the destructive anger. Being a bit ticked off happens to us all once in a while and should not be avoided. Dealing with an annoyance once in a while is good for the soul, and is not to be shoved under a carpet. Sometimes a thing will make me "angry," but am I an "angry" person? Heavens no. I believe the trick is in understanding the difference.
Thanks for your post. You've made me think!!
Best wishes, Diva
-- Edited by Diva at 10:11, 2006-08-03
__________________
"Speak your truth quietly and clearly..." Desiderata
Very nice quote. I have had a lot of issues with Anger lately and that is another way to look at it. Another thing someone said lately was that anger is the result of expecting things to be a certain way and they are not.
I really like your quote. A few months ago I joined a gym and hired a personal trainer (I actually have lerned to love to work out because of her). While I was working with her I would comment on a co-worker that I was trying to encourage to join me as a work out buddy, but this co-worker didn't want to, but wanted to lose some weight.
My trainer said that I would get her to come as soon as she got angry enough to do something about her desire to lose weight. I stopped nagging her, and she was able to see my progress and then decided to join a gym herself. She went to a different one than I did, because she lives in a different town. But she did it.
For me, I have learned that anger can be an effective tool, as long as I don't hold on to it.
Yours in recovery,
Dolphin123
__________________
"Today's problems can not be solved if we still think the way we did when we created them" -Albert Einstein
wow...this is great! I've been having a real problem with anger lately, and was trying to find answers. Your post and replies have given me great insight.
