[Nerissa]

This man is good on anger:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Facing-Fire-Experiencing-Expressing-Appropriately/dp/0553372408

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anger-Solution-Developing-Long-Lasting-Relationships/dp/0738212601

You can see if you think he has anything useful for you by looking at the anger section in his website:

https://johnleebooks.com/2017/06/06/over-anxious/


I’m not religious but I did find the books by Eknath Eshwaren very helpful as his own life and words are full of genuine love and forgiveness:

https://www.amazon.com/Eknath-Easwaran/e/B000APGY1O%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

If you decide you might buy any of his books I would start with ‘Passage Meditation’ and ‘Strength in the Storm’ or ‘Timeless Wisdom. ‘.  They are calming and nourishing.

I’ve mentioned before that I take bioidentical hrt.

For me, anger powered me to keep going but it exhausted me.  When I first experienced a physical sense of letting it go without using books etc to change my thinking, I felt a sense of ‘lowering’. It was a sense of deep sadness which I had been guarding against with fury.  It was painful but also a relief and felt kind of peaceful.  I think this is surrender.

Apart from anger over infidelity and mlc, I am quite ‘fighty’ about things and I’ve learned I use impatient or irritable ways when I am frustrated in any way, I have a touch of what I call ‘small
Dog syndrome’.  But I do not generally have a problem with anger - it was more, in a day to day sense, learning about more gentle communication. 

Good luck with feeling better. X

[Treasur]

Anger happens not to be my thing, my language I suppose.
But I know a lot about fear and PTSD lol.

I think we can learn skills and tools to cope, just as you have done.
And then I think - and it is a sign of progress in healing - we reach a point where we want to do more than that, to go deeper and really try to 'let it go'. So even asking the question, Barbie, is a good thing.

I don't know what it is like to physically experience that kind of anger in the way you describe. But I absolutely know what it is like to physically feel a kind of overwhelming wordless kind of Fear...and my physical description of that would be quite similar. It does feel like me and not me, something not always in my control, something other. And that is rather frightening too.

Do you want to 'let it go' or do you want to 'remove it' from your life? I ask bc I think they are a different kind of shift. The first is maybe more like opening your metaphorical hand. The second more like pushing something out with your metaphorical hand perhaps. Do you know which it feels like? Or something else indeed?

It sounds as if you feel that a kind of rage, either suppressed or unleashed, has been a companion for a long time including before the events of the last few years? Do you feel it is a PTSD type of thing? If so, research suggests that addressing it physically may help. Acupuncture seems to have a good track record...and building on your Reiki experience that might be worth a try. Trauma really does live in our bodies imho, much more than in our cognitive brain. It is imho almost impossible to 'think' your way out of trauma.

Imho 'letting go' of anything...or indeed deciding to remove it...usually means looking at the benefits of keeping it. Bc a pattern even in trauma serves a purpose even if it is an unconscious one. It is our systems survival response so part of our brain is doing it for a good reason at the time. But perhaps the times change and it stops being useful in the same way? What does anger give you as a gift, Barbie? How does/did it help you survive?

My Fear...and I had never felt anything like it before...the gift of my Fear and the Avoidance that came with it for me was to hide me until I could get strong enough to feel safe enough. I did not trust myself to keep myself safe for the first time in my life. It has taken me about three years probably with the odd hiccup. I honestly believe that I would have been dead without PTSD to hide me for a bit, much as I hate PTSD and resent it's effects on my life. 

Letting go, for me, was part of the process but it only got me so far even with EMDR. Pushing it away...which is where I am now...is about feeling that I can trust myself enough now that I no longer need the Fear to keep me safe. And actually feeling that the Fear is more of an enemy than a friend. So anything I can do now that pushes it away...that shows me I don't need it now even if I did need it...actions big and small, mantras in my head about being strong and capable, every time I do something and keep the Fear away I start to make new evidence for my amygdala that I don't need the Fear to keep me safe as I did. I say to myself 'see, you don't need it now'....But it is a work in progress and I do fall over sometimes. Which is frustrating but ok as long as I keep my soul's eye on the goal and image - for me - of cutting it out and pushing it away. It used to feel like a cloak but now it feels like a much smaller kind of lump that sits in my midriff if that makes sense?

[Nerissa]

This man seems good.  Dr Christian Conte.  He is a psychologist who has studied Zen Buddhism in some depth.  He also writes about parenting.  His techniques are practical and generalist  and as Treasur has said, you perhaps had ptsd type experiences before all this started.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qxEYjvNU__w


Edited to add this - it’s good.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QZI7VjwvZx8

[Songanddance]

I am asking about this experience of "letting go". How?  Is it some kind of spiritual movement ? An emotional experience ... I do not understand when a person says " I finally just let all my anger and rage go".  How?

Letting go is not a one size fits all and for some people it can happen like a hurricane and for others it can be a very peaceful realisation that you have let go. 
Not only that I don't believe you can just let go of one thing and then all is well. It is a process and sometimes there is a lot to let go and so time is the only way that letting go can happen. 

Is it a conscious decision - for some yes and for some no.  For some people it can be a reflective realisation.

Is it an action or emotional experience - for some yes and for some no.  The actions or experience could be huge and overwhelming or not.

There is no one way to let go of any emotional/ psychological trauma or event and sometimes I think being told to "let go" has the opposite effect. 

Barbie - take your time and stop beating yourself up because you believe you haven't "let go"

You have much to be angry about - a mother who seems to show you little support or validation, an MLCer H who came back too soon and who, whilst he is receiving counselling,  has been or is reluctant to share with you money issues. A few family issues with your own children or children in law and finally the loss of your closest friend.

So perhaps looking at what specifically about each situation had made you angry may help you begin the process of understanding how you could begin to reduce your anger. 

For example - your mother's treatment of you has been IMHO  shocking but you know that her withholding affection or support hasn't changed since your childhood.
So what is it exactly about her withholding affection and support that makes you angry?
Is it out of frustration because you have tried so many times to get her to understand why you need her support? 
In essence is she likely to change? 
Do you know deep down inside of you that this is banging head on brick wall time with her?
Can you recognise that you are feeling frustrated at feeling frustrated with her?

At what point can you say " Ok - she's not going to change and so is my effort to encourage/persuade her otherwise really worth my emotional energy?  "

When you recognise that you will begin the process of letting your frustration go. How you do that is upto you. Can she the kickbag you can kick or punch when doing kickboxing or boxing? Can she be the sole focus when you receive EMDR which can reframe your thinking and allow you to distance your emotions?  Is she the recipient of a letter or several (which you won't send) but you will write and rewrite and condense into one or two sentences?  These are just examples of beginning the process of letting go.

Perhaps identifying all the causes of your anger - from the specific to the general and writing them all down and then trying to order them in terms of highly stressful to just irritating is a good way to start.

Most importantly Barbie - don't punish yourself any further.  You recognise that you have deep rooted anger and you recognise that it is harming you - the rest is time and accepting that you will learn to be ok - when - who knows but you will.

[MyBrainIsBroken]

There's a lot of good stuff in what Treasur has written.

Your anger sounds like a trauma related stress response. When feeling stressed, threatened or unsafe, Treasur feels fear, I dissociate (freeze), it sounds like you feel anger. Three different types of stress responses but they all serve the same purpose.

Treasur asked you how you benefit from your anger but I think she answered that question for you. The anger makes you feel safe. It protects you. What can you do to reduce the stress you're experiencing so you don't need the anger? What can you do to feel safe without the anger?

I think stress reduction is important. I think it's like we have a stress bucket and life is manageable as long as our stress level is below the top of the bucket but once the bucket starts to overflow our stress responses kick in and our lives become unmanageable. Little things we can do to remove sources of stress from our lives can reduce the level of stress in our bucket and make it easier to manage the stress that occurs that we can't do anything about. Exercise and meditation are often used for stress reduction but we can also look for small sources of stress that are easily resolved. For example, if you've been feeling stressed because the kitchen floor needs cleaned but have been too overwhelmed to take care of it, take an hour and eliminate that source of stress or recruit somebody else to do it for you.

Often, people with our backgrounds find it difficult to ask for help. If some of your stressors could be easily removed with a little help, try asking for help. You might find that your loved ones want to help you, they just don't know what to do or how to do it. Start with little things first and, as you learn who you can trust to help you, work up to the bigger things with them.

Reduce the stress in your life and it could reduce the anger that you feel. Trust others to help you and it could increase your feeling of safety and reduce the anger that you feel.

Your mother was supposed to protect you and she didn't. Your husband was supposed to protect you and he didn't. Of course you're angry. What can you do to you find that feeling of being safe and protected?

[MyBrainIsBroken]

A little while after I wrote this I realized I had written a prescription for myself to help me to stop dissociating. I also realized that I'm not too enthusiastic about following my own advice. I like dissociating and I'm not sure I want to stop doing it. Then I wondered whether Barbie might feel the same way about giving up her anger.

[Treasur]

OMG, Brain, same thing happened to me today...how we write our own prescriptions of ephinany right? Hmm, this journaling stuff might work...just with extra free HS brains  ...plus Brain of course.

Oh, and if it helps, I am an equal opportunity parasympathetic nervous system kind of gal...I do fear AND disassociation  ....shame we can't all swap like when you have duplicate baseball or soccer cards (do they even have those nowadays?)

[terra]

Somewhere it’s been said that anger is just the tip of the iceberg — the most readily visible emotion where so much else is beneath the surface. I recently felt and said this in sharing with a group of LBS offline. It’s the recognizable and “acceptable” way of grieving socially, because for some lame reason, except in key communities like this one, people at large are not very willing to or competent at handling or witnessing another person’s vulnerability and deep sorrow.

So generally anyone will mouth off or be surly or aggressive rather than just do what the body or heart actually wants to do, which is often enough (for me at least) just to cry it all out in someone else’s safe arms, embrace, or strength or willing comfort.

How the human race is still even managing through all the many stressors of life today, I don’t even know.

barbie, I’d be p!ssed if a Reiki or other healing practitioner told me they’d “never” felt such rage in another person’s body. Or that my body had forgotten how to breathe, that I was blocked, etc. But that’s my thing to let go of — I take everything literally and very personally. So just know that her words may be a hint but not altogether your or your body’s full truth. Your body knows what to do. My big unasked opinion, for what it’s worth, is that therapeutic massage can help the body relax into basic natural “pre-trauma” state, at least long enough for you to remember what that state feels like and how it feels to surrender down into trusting another person and being fully vulnerable and fully safe again in someone else’s human hands and physical healing expertise. That can go a long way for us in releasing at least some of the fear and pain at least for a little while — and with that temporary peace and relief, maybe we can have some moments of real insight about how everything has affected us and how we can at least begin to move forward more confidently.

The main thing is that the body does want to live and thrive and be cared for and listened to. That can be done in touch and in silence. In my own state of stress or trauma, what I usually most need is the safety to let down my guard and just watch the thoughts as they spring forward and away. Your mileage may vary but I’ve found the massage table or mat to be an almost holy place for that quiet review and, I want to say, quantifiable release.

Also worth looking at whether being tagged as angry or full of rage is a perception that really works for you. What I mean is, is there anything about that outer perception that *you* like. Because we do move through life sort of accidentally or haplessly wearing the labels that other people put on us, and you might find that when you are all to yourself, just you and free of other people’s perceptions, maybe in your deepest heart you are not a rageful person at all, and never actually were. It’s Right and reasonable for you to be angry and upset and hurt and scared about everything you’ve been through and are still going through and coping with. But maybe underneath all of that, you are truly a beautiful, loving, gentle, and lovely woman, who is simply in a terrible season and surrounded by loved and important people who are just not listening or being good to you.

I’m saying that because it’s true of me. Not that we are victims (except that we also are) but that we are legitimately hurt and needful and weirdly being mislabeled by others around us who either do not have capacity/intelligence to help or comfort, or who inexplicably don’t want to.

My solution has been lately to just kick those people all the way out. I know that option isn’t realistic for many of us and maybe I’m blessed to be in a position to do it. What I can tell you is that my life — and my anger level — feels much more manageable without those relationships in play. We need time for healing, as much as we would if these injuries were fully physical in form. So if you think a kind of quarantine is called for, just know that you do have a right to employ it. Period.

My best way out of anger: prayer, journaling, nature, *positive* relations, and finally — taking excellent care of *my own* needs and wants. If any part of your anger or rage is about not getting or having your own basic or just whimsical needs met, it can be helpful to selfishly spend time looking at what those needs are and why you have them. And then just as selfishly, and JOYOUSLY, setting about meeting them yourself, for yourself, and in the ways that you like.

The worst thing for me sometimes in all this is not that he cheated or lied or left or stays away, but rather that he said so many things to me that made me feel broken and wrong — which I wasn’t and still am not. So a large part of my healing and path forward has been about identifying those deliberate untruths — not just his, but also the bad perceptions assigned to me by many others, including exes, former in-laws, former best friends, and my own mother. And then seeing how those wrong perceptions folded into my self-perception for so long, because, “the common factor is you”. Then realizing how untrue THAT is.

If you believe at core that you are rageful and problematic, or if it works for you on some secretly (not shameful!) appealing level, then that’s ok and you work with it slowly and as you like.

But if that’s a message that you are getting or have got for a long time from important others in your life? It might be a good time to examine whether it is really, at core, true of you. And if it’s not your core truth, it might be a good time to draw new boundaries for those relationships you would like to continue. And that can be done slowly and incrementally and gently, or if you’re like me at all, it can also be done with swift and certain resolve.

This of course is me responding from my place of taking it all literally and personally. But I do think we take on an awful lot of garbage from other people's poor perceptions, projections, or lack of empathy or experience or insight. And if that’s what’s going on for you in any way, well. I don’t want that to happen to you anymore.

I want for you to be listened to, and really fully heard. Every time.

[Thunder]

Song, that is exactly what my kids had to learn to heal.

Won't get into how abusive their dad (my 1st H) was but they were constantly getting hurt by him, making promises and never going through with them. Constantly letting them down.  This went on for years until one night my daughter called crying....."Mom I hate him!  I just hate him!"

I said to her...D aren't you getting tired of expecting him to act like a loving father?  It's not going to happy.  You guys spend all this time hating him and being upset...and it doesn't effect him.  It effects you. He doesn't care if you hate him, he's not dwelling on your feelings.  He's living his life.

I told her make up your mind he is an A-hole, he will always be an A-hole, so you have 2 choices, you can either stop having a relationship with him, or you can knowing he is an A-hole and accept he isn't going to change.  The choice is yours.

All 3 of them cut him out of their lives and started healing, until he was on his deathbed.  Then they all traveled to be with him...and lo and behold he apologized to each one of them for everything he had done..
That was very healing for them too.

Sorry Barbie for taking up so much space on your thread, but maybe some of this might help.  Sometimes, no matter who it is, you just have to cut toxic people out of you life.

Hugs

[Treasur]

The big message I got from Terra's post that just felt instinctively right was about hearing and seeing yourself somehow. Every time. Letting your body and soul speak without interference or restraint. That kind of just rang true to me, even more true than removing other people's voices from your head.