Deep Anger

[daojones]

I have been dealing with quite a few deep issues lately, and I am having a lot of trouble understanding them. This is complex childhood trauma related, and so far it seems with this stuff that things change very quickly and when I resolve one area that appears to be paramount another seemingly of more importance comes up.

That's the preamble..maybe skip it, it's kind of boring.

I feel like a lot of the issues, symptoms, and feelings I have now are coming from being really angry. I'm not quite sure how to deal with it, except stewing around all day engaging in negative behavioural patterns and generally being unproductive. Was wondering if anyone had any recommendations or insights

[ChiDragon]

My new signature seems to be working for me lately...........

[daojones]

Don't quite follow.

[C T]

Hi DJ,

 

I used to have similar issues.

 

Then i came to a realization that i was poisoning myself.

 

This aroused a strong, deep feeling of wanting to choose a path of peace and expansiveness.

 

From that time on, every step i made, i held the visualization determinedly in my awareness, "Peace is every single movement i make".

 

Hence, that was me sowing the seeds for changing my past patterns.

 

After a few months, the new awareness gradually deflated the old patterns.

 

I did not really do anything in particular. No therapists, no counsellors, no fu, no amulets, not even meditation to still the turmoils... i was looking for deep conversion, DIY style.

 

Just became more mindful of each step, each thought, each thing i said/say. Still try every day to live this way.

 

Now it kind of spontaneously happens. Each time the feeling arises of being pulled down, this immediately gets replaced with the thought, "Peace is all there is." And a blissful vibration in my heart area follows. Its amazing.

 

I think i posted a quote somewhere which says that holding on to resentment is like drinking poison with the hope of killing the object of our resentment (situations or people we are angry at). Its so apt.

 

Patience is also a very good app to install.

 

 

Wishing you happiness now.

[Isimsiz Biri]

I can offer the Ki Breath technique of Koichi Tohei when you get angry. Simple but effective.

 

http://www.shinichitohei.com/english/specialki_breathing/index.html

 

Also his book "Ki in Daily Life"

http://www.shinshintoitsuaikido.org/english/renew/book.html

[joeblast]

Good post, CT. When you get to a point where you can feel the release of stress hormones when such things become roused...then you really do recognize you're being poisoned.

[Jainarayan]

I had a lot of childhood, teenage, and early adult issues. Hell, I've had issues all my life related to things that happened to me. Something I learned, mostly through therapy (though not everyone needs it) is that one has to put things where they belong. That is, leave them in the time they occurred, and consider that the people who did these things were working with what they had to work with.

 

For example, my parents were born in the early 20th century, 1908 and 1913 to be precise. They were very ignorant, bigoted, racist and self-centered people. Being the last of 5 surviving siblings, with a 12 year age gap between me and my next (older) sibling I was essentially an only child. I blamed my parents for a lot of things that did and did not happen in my life. But I can't change it, because they were who they were. I was not physically abused, but I'll go as far as saying I was emotionally abused. I still struggle with some anger and resentment, not with them anymore, but with what my partner and in-laws did to me; rather, I allowed to happen.

 

It's not easy, and it is a fight to put things where they belong, which is not in the present day. And if the same things keep happening, it is we who are to blame. There comes a time to draw a line in the sand, to put one's foot down, regardless of the cost in personal relationships. After all, those you have to draw a line in the sand for aren't giving a rat's ass about you, now are they? That's just my p.o.v. Oh, and deep breaths help also.

[Brian]

As with most things, daojones, recognizing a problem is fundamental. That realization is half the battle.

 

As I see it, there are several possible approaches...

 

One is an intellectual-emotional avenue -- talk to someone. A good therapist or a good minister (priest, rabbi, monk, abbott, whatever) or a bartender w/ a psych degree -- someone who will be more than just a sounding board and who can help you explore the root causes for this imbalance.

 

Another is "self-help" -- books and such to offer psychological or spiritual insights and potential behavioral modifications.

 

A third is a genuine spiritual/energetic practice -- I have no idea what system you might currently be practicing as I didn't read back over your earlier posts so maybe this stuff is surfacing because your current & newly begun practice is bringing it out as you are working through things. I'm guessing that's not the case, though, which suggests that you might consider either starting a practice (one sincere practice and stick with it) or abandoning your old practice (if it is something you've been doing for more than a few months...) I can say from personal experience that stillness-movement (jing dong gong) as taught by Michael Lomax (Ya Mu on TTB) is highly effective.

 

I would recommend at least the third. Talking with someone who knows how to help people resolve issues would be valuable, too, but I suggest doing that in conjunction with an energetic or spiritual practice. Self-help also has real value but it is not likely to be a quick-results thing -- sort of like reading interior design books when your pipes are leaking.

 

I'll mention a fourth approach only as a warning -- if things get really bad (as in you fear you may be a danger to yourself or others), psychiatric treatment can be highly effective. At said, I have prior career experience in the pharmaceutical industry and by proxy (through my wife's career) with the mental health field, and have done my own research, and I find the idea of giving people modern psychotropics in an unsecured/unmonitored environment to be terrifying.

[Jetsun]

By the time anger has been activated often we have already reached some conclusion in our mind about ourselves, it is usually subconscious but more often than not that conclusion isn't strictly true, it is part of a story. So one approach is to trace back what that conclusion is and question it, which is usually some thought about the nature of our identity. Don't actually try to change or drop anything just enquire into what is true and what isn't, what thoughts are you believing that aren't strictly true.

[thelerner]

Are the complex childhood issues still in the past. Do the issues recur these days or is there influence more mental and emotional? What I'm getting at if its an abusive parent, are they still actively in your life, controlling? Or is the problem memories and patterns that were instilled?

 

I suppose if the problem is actively in your life you need to develop strategies- boundaries and teflon hide. If memories of a shitty past, you need to let them go. You'll find no solution sorting through cards of past. Toss the deck and move forward. Let it go, start training your mind not to go there. Move on.

 

my 1 1/2 bits

Edited September 20, 2013 by thelerner

[Tsunami_MAPUA]

OP, I have been feeling the same these past few days. Fortunately, today's relatively better.

 

Hang in there, you're not alone.

[Aetherous]

As a complimentary thing to what others are saying, you could detox the liver with herbs. Holding on to the middle finger is another way of detoxing the liver channels, in jin shin jyutsu.

[silent thunder]

The inertia of anger.

In pride, as a young man, I strove for solitude and isolation as I began to realize the injustice of the world. Seeking anything that would prove I was apart, special, different, unique... let's face it, better than this fucked up world and all its hate and waste.

A rejection of the world. A retreat.

I found it. And as my isolation grew, so did my anger at the insidious injustice of the world. Everything that was so wrong with all of the rest of these poor deluded fools.

These conditions fueled each other. Anger. Isolation. Judgement. Punishment. Fun...

Spent years in the justified pursuit of punishing the deserving. What a sad process! Getting off on identifying the guilty and attacking them with vile anger, leading to feelings of further isolation, more judgement.

 

Hurtful. Vicious. Cycle.

Woke up some years later as I lay with my head hanging off of a cliff, psylocyben mushrooms flowing through my veins. After sprinting up the last mile to the top of the cliff, my friend and I lay down on the edge of the cliff.

 

Just laying there perfectly relaxed watching the hawks soar effortlessly on the thermals, this thought occurred to me.

I realized that I had been angry nearly every day of my life, for the past untold number of years and that if I wanted to... for as long as I had breath... I could continue to be angry. That in this world, there would always be something justifiably worthy of my anger nearby in almost any circumstance.

The magnitude of how much effort it took to maintain that kind of anger sat on me then, pressing on my sense of self as if I were under the cliff, not upon it.


Then I let it go.


I just let it go. The need to always identify what's right and get angry at what's wrong. The psychotic need to defend what I think of as right and punish what I think is wrong. The audacity that I thought I understood the right way for the world, for everyone and that in my head somehow I'd convinced myself I should and could enforce my will. Like if I didn't impose my idea of right, that I was failing to save the world.

Just the shear exhaustion involved in the realization of how much energy it takes to maintain the inertia of that anger hit me and in that moment, I dropped it.

just dropped it. gone...

and I realized that from that moment on, if anger were to gain momentum in my life, I would have to feed it. Like a repeating cycle, exponential growth.


I cannot ignore the negative things in life.

I do not hide. I cannot. I see them.
I acknowledge them, but I don't wallow in them.

I no longer gorge myself on them.

I no longer feed on them with savage glee.
I no longer get off on it.

I take action on what I can, when I can.

When I take action.
I strive to share four things.
Humor, Love, Curiosity, Communion.
I do still have anger. It's natural, even necessary at times.

But the way a gardener prunes though, with love.
Or if called to the path of the warrior, then with remorse.

Never in glee.
Never malice.

So if I pick anger up occasionally, still to this day some decades later, it is tempered with understanding and compassion. My desire to punish is gone. I have no interest in punishment.
I strive to heal. You. Me. All. Any.

My life now is fueled by curiosity, love, communion, humor, silence.


I still seek retreat in solitude, but it is no longer a rejection of the world.
It is no longer isolation.

More like, deep consideration. A settling of the waters.
A recalibration.

And when I return, it is a celebration.

Reunion!

[Flolfolil]

...

Edited March 6, 2015 by Flolfolil

[Aetherous]

how to be holding the finger?

 

 

edit: actually a better way is probably the first two of the jin shin 8 mudras.

Edited September 21, 2013 by turtle shell

[thelerner]

I find it releases anger when I extend a certain finger

 

Many good posts here. We've all faced times of great anger. Like anything else, it arises, it'll fade. Quicker if you don't feed it. Like any pain, sometimes all you can do is ride it out knowing this to shall pass.

[Brian]

The inertia of anger.

 

<snip>

 

The tiger which grows stronger is the one you've been feeding, right?

[thelerner]

While its usually bad to act while angry. Sometimes it helps to do something, like hard exercise. Sometimes that'll burn off some anxiety, quiet mental noise and drain the adrenaline.

Edited September 20, 2013 by thelerner

[silent thunder]

I like to clean when I'm trying to burn off anger.

Just have to be careful not to rub the finish off the furniture...

[doc benway]

Anger is a reaction, a response. It is usually an indication of underlying fear, insecurity, dissatisfaction. Anger often comes from a defensive posture. It is born of our illusion of independence and separation. I was conditioned to express anger and used it, unknowingly, as a primary reactive mechanism for many years. It created a lot of damage to the lives of loved ones, including myself. I was able to let go of the majority of my anger.

 

You've already taken the two most important steps! You've recognized that you are responding to the world with anger. You are unsatisfied with that approach. The good news is that change is virtually guaranteed! First, look at the anger very closely and very deeply. Not in an analytical or intellectual way but rather become that anger. Feel it in your body. Feel it as deeply and completely as you possibly can. Let it be there for as long as necessary. Don't repress it. Don't take action to diffuse it. Just be with it and look into it's face, into it's heart, and see if you can determine exactly what it means to "be angry."

 

Recognize that you ARE NOT angry. Anger is an experience. It comes and it goes. It is not who or what you are. You were there before it came and will remain when it passes. Recognize that the anger is in you, not in reality. In similar circumstances, another person might feel no anger whatsoever.

 

Once anger is looked at very deeply and seen for what it is, it may lose some of it's power over you. It will come and it will go. And the one who experiences it will remain. And that is who should make choices and take action. And it is valuable to make sure that the action taken is consistent with what you value in life and not simply a conditioned response, like the anger.

 

Good luck - it may take a long time but I guarantee it is worth whatever energy you are able to invest to liberate yourself from being a slave to conditioning like anger responses. And at the same time, anger is a valuable and useful experience. It has a legitimate place in our lives. I like this quote by Maya Angelou, referring to her childhood abuse - "Bitterness is like cancer, it eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean." But like fire, it can become a bad thing when out of control.

[SonOfTheGods]

take up running or weight lifting

 

practice horse stance

 

get the yang out

 

balance is key