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.
Adults who grew up with alcoholic parents probably have plenty to be mad about. As children, they were virtually powerless to stop the forms of abuse and neglect they often suffered. They couldn't express their anger or outrage in a healthy manner. Instead, many either acted out their anger by getting into trouble or reacted inwardly by converting anger into shame, depression or low self-esteem.
It can take years of hard work to discover how deep the wounds really go. If anger isn't eventually dealt with responsibly, it can be a major block to personal growth.
Unresolved anger is often a factor in addictive and compulsive behaviors and relapse. Holding on to old anger can cause people to avoid conflict, procrastinate, and give up their needs. It can poison relationships and prevent true intimacy. It breeds bitterness, resentment, mistrust and fear.
"People who carry around a lot of resentment tend to be more reactive to day-to-day situations," said Rosemary Hartman, supervisor of the Hazelden Family Program in Center City, Minn. "If a driver makes a slight error in judgment on the highway, some people may react by screaming or shaking a fist at the driver--not because of the actual occurrence, but because they have a huge bank of anger inside that is tapped with the slightest provocation. Family members or significant others also become the recipients of repressed, misplaced anger. If people blow up at their boss, they probably won't last long on the job. Spouses and children tend to tolerate that kind of behavior for a longer period of time."
Many people have a lot of anger inside them, but they don't realize it. Accepting that we are angry and identifying the reasons why helps us begin to let go.
"If your heart was broken because you always wanted to be hugged by your mother and father and they were never there, or you experienced actual abuse, you've got a valid gripe," said Earnie Larsen, a workshop leader and author of From Anger to Forgiveness. "But once you understand and acknowledge that, you need to work through the anger and move beyond it to forgiveness and reconciliation. Otherwise, you're just stuck in a cycle of resentment and bitterness."
The people most likely to hang on to anger are those who come from dysfunctional families--people who didn't get their feelings validated as children or who were forced to deny their feelings. "Anger is the emotional response to perceived injustice," Larsen said. "It is always a justice issue. It's thinking or feeling that 'I don't count,' or 'My thoughts aren't important.'"
An important part of recovery for alcoholics and adult children of alcoholics involves doing the "anger work" and moving towards forgiveness. The first stage in this process is to understand the incidents that still trigger anger.
Larsen and Hartman offer other practical suggestions:
Understand that addiction is a disease. This awareness is helpful for people who grew up in alcoholic families. Knowing that hurtful things were done out of addiction, rather than out of malice, helps people begin to forgive.
Become willing to forgive. Without the willingness to forgive or work out a relationship, nothing will happen.
Learn communications and assertiveness skills. These skills give people an outlet to express anger and other feelings in a nondisruptive way.
Ask for help from a Higher Power. Tapping into a power greater than ourselves can help overcome long-term resentments and rage. Prayer can help people let go of self-pity and thoughts of revenge.
Detach with love. We're less apt to be angry when we let go of responsibility for other people's thoughts, feelings and behaviors and concentrate on our own issues.
The benefits of successfully dealing with anger include serenity, self-confidence, healthier relationships and recovery. It's not a one-shot deal, but a process that continues throughout our lives.
"Sometimes, I hear people say, 'I want to be able to forgive once and for all,'" Hartman said. "But it usually doesn't work that way. If people are working on themselves, if they have a good spiritual base and remain willing to forgive, they won't be interested in staying angry. They will be able to let go of anger a lot sooner."
--February 15, 1999 Alive And Free Hazelden
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Giving to others, from the heart..is what its all about..
I can't express enough how much you do for this board. If not for you, the "double winners" amongst us I doubt I would have learned to see my husband as a sick human being and have compassion.
I used to be SO angry that all I saw was the bad, and I could not even accept my husband's amends.
It is ironic that my husband is so intelligent that he can see that he overreacts to me when drunk due to unresolved issues in his childhood. He keeps saying he is sorry and I really believe he is.
Even though his parents have no addictions themselves, they don't drink or smoke or take drugs, there is something "wrong" with them regardless. They are the phoniest, coldest, most insensitive people I have ever met in my entire life. They "look" normal on the outside though, so it took me many years to see through their facade.
When my husband, whose is a deeply sensitive and thinking and feeling person, talks about how his feelings were overlooked and ignored and how they totally were oblivious to the fact that he is a thinking and feeling human being, it is heartbreaking.
I know it has affected him deeply. In fact, he admits to starting his alcohol consumption as a young teen to consciously rebel. A grown up neighbor who hated his Dad supplied him with alcohol from the age of 13 onward, and my husband said they used to drink together and make fun of his Dad. Then my husband said he drank to numb the pain.
I don't know what the solution is to this. My husband is so deeply wounded that unless I worship the ground he walks on and see every utterance he makes as being carved in stone, he also accuses me of treating him the same. It is like things have swung so far in one direction, dismissing him, that he needs now to have things swung in the other direction, WORSHIP, for him to heal. Sorry, but I can't supply that.
I try though, I constantly have to POINT OUT where I listen to him rather than do things my own way. I actually have to keep a list for when he brings up that I supposedly don't care about him and don't listen to him...sigh. Then, once I read my list, which I constantly update, he says "sorry, I was overreacting, I am used to being dismissed, but I can see that you DO listen SOMETIMES, so I am sorry".
But still...the reminders that there is a hurt human being underneath all of that anger are needed.
My husband is SO patient when I am mad at him! I don't feel like speaking to him for days and he stays out of my way unless he thinks I need something then he jumps to do it. He always waits for me to make the first move, he says he "has it coming" so is willing to wait to see if he deserves my forgiveness. That is SO sad! I always feel like he is indifferent...we are always misunderstanding each other...tragic.
Well...your posts remind me to take a second look and see his efforts to make amends...and maybe make the first move a little sooner, LOL.
Thanks Phil, you are a blessing on this board and I am very grateful you take the time to share your insights. You will never know how much they mean.
For years I wondered why I kept attracti ng angry, negative people and having one negative relationship after another. Of course, it had nothing to do with me and they were all at fault. I've spent a lot of time in counseling and now Al-anon and I realize that I was attracting them because I was angry too at some level. If I focused on them, I didn't have to see, deal or recognize my own anger which I'd have to do something about, and I wasn't ready to deal with those painful emotions.
With the neglect and abuse of alcohol, my childhood was chaotic - on a spectrum of overnurturing and undernuturing. I was the caregiver and listened to my mother's problems while she had her cocktail on a nightly basis while my Dad traveled on business. I became her analyst and I was much too young! I was so angry at my Dad for leaving me in this situation and at the same time wanted so much for him to be grateful for what I was doing on his behalf. She tried to be my friend, not so much my Mom. It has taken me close to 42 years to get in touch with Getting in touch with that emotion anthis emotion and admittng I was angry was so difficult - I felt like a child throwing tantrums when it first started coming out of me. - I had spent so many years keeping it repressed and stuffed down. But the irony was that the more I stuffed that anger down, I had been harming myself for years and years - getting into terribly abusive relationships, having many sexual and broken relationships and deep down building that wall of shame and guilt.
I now look at my parents with detached love and realize that none of this was in any way my fault and that they were unable, for whatever reasons I can not understand, to be there for me in the ways I needed them to be. The madness is this is the same drama I played out in ALL my relationships - choosing others who couldn't be there for me in some way and then trying to teach, analyze and move them to be what I needed. Only to become sick, more angry and abusive myself. What maddness
I learned that others are our mirrors - what I see in another is a reflection of me! Oh my.... While tehre is no perfect mirror, I am getting healthier and inviting healthier ways of dealing with life, people and situations in.
Forgiveness is a blessing and forgiving ourselves in this process is so important too!
