"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 a newly-recovering, angry alcoholic, I saw many recovering people who were at peace; who were kind and forgiving. In the midst of these folks I felt ashamed of my anger. When I began Step 4, in order to get completely honest, I had to own and face anger that was there. It was not going to 'go away' until I first acknowledged that it was there.
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.
When I was new to AA everybody there seemed to be so peaceful and serene. I desperately wanted what they had. And, being impatient, I wanted it now! My sponsor explained to me that I could only be free from my excess anger when I started thoroughly working the steps. My step 4, was an amazing revelation to me. I hadn't realised that I was so angry. I was shocked.
But, the words "wedded to it as a way of life" just leapt off the page to me. That was me at the beginning. I crazily thought that I had 'earned' my anger and that it was there for me to keep safe. What totally crazy thinking! Thankfully, I am no longer like that.
Thank you for reminding me how it used to be, and how it could be again if I picked up that fatal first drink.
Take care and have a great day,
Q
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss
Loved this Read, and for me that gut wrenching 4th Step, was a release from a life time marriage of a different emotion, Shame, in Family or Origin stuff that I dug into, in great length, in therapy, what was the original core of that Shame, it was about the Shame of being alive.
And yep, then there was so much ANGER at that learned "Lie" did unlearn it, and then could release the Anger toward it, my take on anger today, is that I can stay away from Anger, with continued assertiveness, when agitated by someone, and instead of being the "learned little People Pleasing A...Hole" had to un-learn that one, a huge growth step in my life. It all came to Pass by Trusting God, and asking God for help with this life changing and life saving new techniques.
I will allow myself the emotion of anger at my own actions, they are kind of the needed propeller to instigate a change in me, and I consider that a Healthy anger. But as far as Anger toward another, with the Help of My Higher Power, I can see that Real Anger at another is simply a matter of it being: Why am I angry at that person, TRUTH, they are not doing what I want them to do, can look at it from that prospective, and just L E T IT GO.
