Anger: like a magnet?

[AlanFromWichita]

I’m very much against anger in almost all of its forms. A little is probably healthy, but 99% of the time I think that when I see anger expressed – or express it myself – I realize after the fact that it was not necessary or even useful.

In this thread, I wanted to explore ideas about why anger is so attractive. It seems that when I want to be a peacemaker, anger gets my attention because I want to help defuse it. When I am upset about something, anger can suck me right into an unneeded argument. I feel like I’m drawn to anger like a moth to a flame – or maybe a fly to trash.

I’d also like to talk about some ideas about strategies such as mental images or tying to scripture, or doing some sort of spiritual exercise or fasting of some sort.

Alan

 

[po18guy]

In my case, I came to realize that anger is a product of the ego. Since ego was responsible for Lucifer’s rebellion against God, and for Adam and Eve’s fall from grace at Eden, it clearly must be controlled through every acceptable means. Keeping a tight rein on the ego will automatically reduce the occasions of anger. Fasting and prayer - especially before our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, will call heavenly graces down. Your spirit will overflow with peace. From the mass: “Peace I leave you. My peace I give you”. There is no better starting point than time spent with our Lord.

Abandoning yourself to divine providence, while difficult to do, will reset many of the trigger points of anger. Realizing that God is in charge of all that has occurred and all that will ever occur provides a blessed sense of relief from slavery to anger. Except in the rare case of actively resisting evil, we only prevent God’s will by allowing anger to appear. Knowing yourself more fully, and sensing the buildup of resentment that leads to anger, no matter how quickly it compounds, is a help.

What really helped me is reading a small book that “is quickly becoming a spiritual classic”: Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Philippe. Once applied, its principals can change your life. Anger is a complex problem and can be effectively controlled when attacked from several angles at once.

May Christ’s peace be with you.

 

[fhansen]

You’re right, anger is an all-too-common part of our world. It seems to have to do with the fact that mankind is in control of right and wrong and the feeling of being right is powerful when we’re angry. A different way of saying what poguy said, maybe.

Having said that, there is a righteous form of anger, such as Jesus displayed in the temple with the money-changers, that’s oriented against evil and is inspired by or directed for us by the Holy Spirit apparently. This, however, is quite rare in our world-most anger being contaminated or inspired by our personal agendas.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

I’m very much against anger in almost all of its forms. A little is probably healthy, but 99% of the time I think that when I see anger expressed – or express it myself – I realize after the fact that it was not necessary or even useful.

That would depend on how you actually handle and utilize your anger. I’m a writer and whilst I find blowing up to be very bad for me since it has hurt people, imbuing my anger to what I write actually gives fuel to my work.

In this thread, I wanted to explore ideas about why anger is so attractive. It seems that when I want to be a peacemaker, anger gets my attention because I want to help defuse it. When I am upset about something, anger can suck me right into an unneeded argument. I feel like I’m drawn to anger like a moth to a flame – or maybe a fly to trash.

From the previous two posters, I suggest you discern where exactly your anger comes from. Is it a righteous anger or something personal? It can be actually both but you need to carefully cool off your head, put that anger somewhere for the moment, and rationalize it. (Yes, like a wild animal, anger can be studied if you know how to cage it right.)

I’d also like to talk about some ideas about strategies such as mental images or tying to scripture, or doing some sort of spiritual exercise or fasting of some sort.

Well whenever I’m in a bad mood, I go get a game and beat something up in it till the frustration dries out.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Thank you for your answers.

The anger I’m talking about is the kind of unnecessary anger that we should purge ourselves of, not the righteous anger.

Relatively speaking, I don’t have any particular anger problem that is any worse than most other people, but I have high hopes of opening myself for purging by the Holy Spirit in this area.

Here’s one thing that I did sort of by accident, but it helped me. Once several years back, when I was very upset at a particular person because of what he’d done to friends of mine, I never approached him because I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Then I started thinking about it, and my mind went over the question, “what if he had to answer to God for this?” Then, in my mind I saw him meekly trying to answer direct questions and facing an angry God. Suddenly I started feeling a strange sense of pity. Instead of feeling pity for his “victims” I felt pity for him, personally, because of what God could do to him. Strangely enough, this disarmed me to the point that I was able to make conversation with the man, and he never knew what I knew. Now I’m over it, and I still see him at church sometimes and we exchange pleasantries.

When I said I was drawn to anger, I was thinking for example about argumentative threads in this forum. I used to work in Bell Labs, doing “special projects” of settling disputes and inefficient interfaces between possibly warring factions. The thing is, there I was getting paid to solve problems. Here I think I can jump in and help everybody make nice, but then I’ll get offended by something and end up contributing to the anger level.

I wish not to be offended by things that aren’t meant to offend me.

Alan

 

[Deedledum]

Hi Everyone,

I am learning as of late, that at least for me, anger has a lot to do with pride. I get really jacked out of shape with the rudeness of people in public. I guess I’m showing my age but I still believe in manners and the fact that soo many people don’t have them angers me. Well, I’m realizing that it has a bit of a pride flavor in the sense that I want people to act like “me”. Mannerly, considerate, thoughtful, etc and when they don’t, the hair on my neck stands up. This is just one example of how my particular anger gets worked up. Another is “road rage”. We have a very diverse ethnic population where I live and their driving skills are much to be desired to say the least! This is always a test (that I usually fail, but I’m working on it!) Because, that’s right, they should be a good driver like “me”.
As I’m writing this to you all, I chuckle because all this pride stuff seems so silly. It makes me thankful for the lessons that the Lord has been giving me lately about pride and how it rears it’s ugly head when you least expect it!

 

[AlanFromWichita]

As I’m writing this to you all, I chuckle because all this pride stuff seems so silly. It makes me thankful for the lessons that the Lord has been giving me lately about pride and how it rears it’s ugly head when you least expect it!

I hear you. It does all seem pretty silly. For some reason we get programmed to be impatient and intolerant. Driving absolutely amazes me. What a steering wheel does for a human soul is amazing; I think if there is any residual anger/pride, it’s going to show itself in traffic. :nunchuk:

And yet, again, it is silly. Which of us gains anything by getting upset at other drivers? When we get angry we let them control us. People get angry when they feel they are not in control, but by getting angry the themselves surrender control.

Once I saw a T-shirt to the effect: “while you were reading this, I controlled your mind for three seconds.”

Alan

 

[Dj87]

Anger is something that I have dealt with for a long time. Normally a very peaceful, quiet, jovial guy anger can suddenly appear out of nowhere and quickly erupt into rage. There is no reason for it and I don’t know why I get so volatile but it is very much like a blind rage, I’m NOT talking the physical kind of anger but the verbal including the blue cloud ascending over my head. When I get like that I swear not necessarily intentionally, but the words coming out of my mouth are certainly sinful. Only after do I realise how stupid I was and how much I over-reacted. Lately I’ve been going to confession often and that’s a sin I keep mentioning over and over again. It frustrates me to no end sometimes because I realise the anger is uncalled for, but it just happens. Like I said, I am most of the time so easy going that people have no problem walking all over me. I don’t complain even when I am abused, but it something strikes my anger button, Watch out they’re going to hear about it.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Dj,

You are so right that anger can cut through what seems like serenity, it a heartbeat.

Another area I used to have trouble with was with my oldest children when they were small. I used to get very angry at small things, if I perceived them to be about attitude and not about accidents. Accidents, like spilling things, were OK in themselves, but if done while goofing around or doing something they shouldn’t have, then watch out for my mouth – and for spankings!

Now with the oldest moved out, my wife and three of the still-at-home kids (6 kids total) and I were visiting him. We were talking about how much more “strict” I was with the older ones than the younger ones. He still couldn’t get me to divulge a couple stories I’ve never repeated, but he says he got over it. Sometimes I wonder.

I’m not saying discipline is a bad thing, but my problem was not in how strict I was, but in that I let anger control me at times.

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Another thing I’ve noticed about anger is that other feelings and emotions can morph into anger.

One family I know, for example, it seems that anytime they are worried and fearful, they turn against each other with angry and blaming remarks. For example, one of them was critically ill and in the hospital. The parents and a sibling were visiting, very worried, and what did they do? Make snide remarks about how the ones who weren’t there yet, weren’t there. They must not care, blah blah blah when in fact there was a legitimate reason. (BTW the girl pulled out of it and was OK.)

In the same family, one of the siblings is now a mother of six, and just last night something happened that scared her pretty badly involving one of her children. She went off angrily on the child who had done nothing wrong – though at first it may have seemed like she might have – and then later was asking why she got that way. I told her that in her family I’ve seen that a lot; pain or fear turns into anger. That was a breakthrough of sorts, because she saw exactly what had happened.

I know this family well, as it’s my dear in-laws. I have no problem with them and we are very close, but my wife and I are determined to “break the spell” in THIS generation. :yup:

As you can see, anger is and has been part of my life, but I am resolved toward ridding myself of every bit of “unnecessary” anger I can find, and facilitating same for my other family members.

Alan

 

[gospel_life]

As many have noted here, anger often comes from wounds to the ego and our “need” to defend it. Overall I think that is the easiest type of anger to work on and forums or other such places are great training grounds because one can go into a place where they know they are likely to get insulted and consciously decide to not react or post before allowing some amount of time to occur to examine and ponder. This can be a great way of creating a habit in “real life” of holding one’s tongue long enough to cool off.

There is another major source of anger though for some of us that is not controllable at all. That is anger that springs spontaneously from psychological triggers; irrational responses to the mind associating some current “trauma” with some past event and going on autopilot in its response before the rational mind even has time to process.

Because of things in my growing up years I can be very prone to this even though by nature I am a peacemaker. It was only over the last couple years that I came to recognize what was going on and why I lashed out as I did under certain circumstances. If I would be in a meeting and got blown off when offering something I would subconsciously hear the message I heard growing up of “if I wanted your opinion I’d ask for it.” If someone caught me off-guard in criticizing something that didn’t come off as I hoped I would hear the old message of “can’t you do anything right? You’ll never amount to a hill of s***.” I was able to identify a group of about five such common messages that I tended to respond to by rationally “checking out.”

While I sometimes get blindsided by one still, one thing I was able to do to help prevent the outbursts was to identify situations where they were likely to happen and either avoid those situations or have a little pep talk with myself before going in that if I heard certain things I had to either leave or hold my tongue. It has been mostly successful but I still have the occasional meltdown. I did tell those close to me though what was going on so they would be aware if they saw it happening and the “damage control” afterwards when I go to apologize was more readily understood.

I tend to think all of us have at least some of those little wounds in our psyche that can be triggered and cutting someone some slack just because of the possibility is a lot easier if we can give that some consideration.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

gospel,

I hear what you’re saying about the automatic responses. One speaker I liked called it a symptom of the “outer self” which is our facade of emotional and other types of responses we’ve allowed ourselves to be slaves too. He talks about the dismantling of the outer self and ultimately the revealing of our inner selves, the true part of us that I liken to a light and the “outer self” a bushel basket.

With my background of a severe mental/emotional disorder, I would go off for hours at a time driven by these sorts of reactions to things that could be incredibly trivial but enough that my messed up “outer self” gave them meaning and gave me direction. I believe that the God, through the Holy Spirit, has the ability to deprogram us from this so that we may have hope of overcoming it.

Alan

 

[gospel_life]

gospel,

I hear what you’re saying about the automatic responses. One speaker I liked called it a symptom of the “outer self” which is our facade of emotional and other types of responses we’ve allowed ourselves to be slaves too. He talks about the dismantling of the outer self and ultimately the revealing of our inner selves, the true part of us that I liken to a light and the “outer self” a bushel basket.

With my background of a severe mental/emotional disorder, I would go off for hours at a time driven by these sorts of reactions to things that could be incredibly trivial but enough that my messed up “outer self” gave them meaning and gave me direction. I believe that the God, through the Holy Spirit, has the ability to deprogram us from this so that we may have hope of overcoming it.

Alan

Exactly Alan! “Slavery” is an apt description.

In the end I think it becomes a matter of reprogramming. Yes, the Holy Spirit can certainly do such things, and I’m sure therapy can have at least some success. For me it’s all about replacing those negative childhood–some well up into adulthood!–dramas with positive ones so that the automatic reflex isn’t as likely to kick in.

The hard part is finding enough affirmation to replace many years of hearing that you won’t amount to anything, even if you have actually been successful in a worldly sense. In a way, I’m not even sure that works since it is probably the code word or expression, or the tone of dismissal that is operative. Reprogramming to a different response, or lack of response, to the trigger doesn’t seem to be as easy.

Ultimately you’re right though that it is the false self that is protecting itself and trying to bring a different conclusion to the old drama that keeps replaying. Letting the Divine Healer do His work on it is by far the preferred solution since He is the only one who knows what is really going on there.

 

[Deedledum]

Dear Alan and gospel,

You both are so right! I too have been a victim of the childhood psyche abuse. AND it wasn’t until I was a grown woman that I learned what and where these little “triggers” came from and how to deal with them. So we persevere, with the help of our heavenly hosts to get beyond these issues and work towards the person God sees us as being.
I do believe in therapy though. It can be very beneficial. I know it has helped me a great deal with understanding the many issues that have surfaced in my life as of late, as well as understanding a certain mental disorder I found out I had last year. So now, I am a true believer that by His love and grace we can overcome these hurdles. I am living proof!

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I am living proof!

Isn’t it great to be not mentally ill? I don’t think most people understand just how great it is, unless they’ve been on the “other side” and back.

When one has tasted the healing touch of the Holy Spirit, it’s hard not to shout it from the rooftops! :extrahappy:

Alan

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

Skimming these posts, I’m getting mixed thoughts. Last time I checked, anger is morally neutral. Trying to connect it with pride is a little out of touch with reason seeing as that “pride” can actually be your moral radar acting up.

When it comes to anger, I’ve had my share of committing both righteous and not so righteous anger. However, seeing I surround myself with very relativistic crowd (family included), they don’t like it at all when I’m angry. Because of that, there is danger that while such an atmosphere forces me to suppress prideful anger it supporesses righteous anger as well and nothing gives injustice more opportunity and power than staying silent in its present.