You know I hate to hurt you, I hate to see your pain...
but I don't know how to stop! Chilling words from No Self Control by Peter Gabriel – there is implied violence here, but it is not necessarily violence either – but whatever form of hurt is going on – the assailant seems to feel guilty about his inability to keep his apparent loved one from the pain of the assailant’s actions. This post is about anger. It is in part inspired by the previously mentioned book Anger – by Thich Nhat Hanh – which I am almost finished with. I have read a couple chapters to Victoria at night – and though I didn’t realize it when I picked it out from the library, it is a great marriage counseling device. Although I would implore you, beg you – to read this beautifully written book, chances are – you won’t. And that is fine. So here I am – Reader’s Digest version here – my chance to not only explain the book but my relationship with this very powerful force in my life.
In recalling my past, I am not presently expressing anger at those that displayed anger in my household. It is a sickness, disease, self-destroying addiction, and those that expressed it in my household inherited it in one form or another from their own past characters, situations, and circumstances. You can’t blame a person with cancer for being sick, and the same applies to those infested with anger. However, unlike some medical illnesses, there is something you can do to break free of this sickness. All the same – anger was expressed constantly where I grew up – in a frightening way for a young child. Because when you are a young child – and anger is displayed – you inevitably are terrified. It was true of me as a child, and unfortunately I have witnessed my own child react the same way when anger has gotten the best of me and I have either yelled, slammed a door, or done something destructive. When I was growing up, it was not in the form of physical violence (for the most part) but words at ear piercing volumes can be swords of destruction in themselves. Because make no mistake about it – if you are aiming for your own child to have confidence of any degree, you will do everything in your power to minimize your own displays around your child – do whatever it takes to stop this poisonous emotion from being transferred from one to another. Whether it was directed at me and I was in the line of fire, or I saw it directed at another – it did frighten me, give me bad dreams, erode my own confidence, and inevitably force my own emotions underground as I did not feel safe, comfortable enough to express them in my household.
These emotions stayed underground for the formative years in my life, and then as I approached the end of my teens – something happened – they started leaking out. Psychiatrists who see this purely as a chemical imbalance are not seeing the whole picture. Yes – when one reaches an emotional extreme, chemical imbalances do take place – the mind, spirit, and body are closely linked. But the way I see it – just like in physics, energy has to go somewhere and you can only keep it down for so long before it comes up – sometimes in a violent fashion like a volcano. When I went through my manic depressive extremes, my anger became so strong that people in my household were convinced that I was a threat to them and actually changed the locks to the doors in the house. True enough – I was enraged, and it was out of control – even if it was liberating. I don’t believe I was a physical threat to anyone, but I am sure I was threatening enough nevertheless. One of my first shrinks, a little Napoleon named Dr. Shmuckler – who said a lot of pretty ridiculous things to me in the course of my counseling, did observe that I was very angry – and that my depression was an expression of that. I was so out of touch with my own feelings, that I found that hard to comprehend – but years later, I see it as one of the few things he told me that I agree with. (His suggestion of looking for a job with a smile on my face when I was so depressed I could barely get out of bed – was still something I find absurd over 20 years later to this day). My overall summation is this – I was so overwhelmed, intimidated, frightened by the anger that was expressed around me – that I suppressed my own emotions, tried to get by without getting attention – live in a closet so to speak – and that was my childhood – working hard, getting good grades, trying not to get any attention, and believing I was not entitled to or worthy of any type of love either inside or outside of my home. I lived like a robot, knowing there was a void in my life, but not knowing how to break out of it. I was going to try not to rock the boat, follow in Dad’s footsteps, be a computer programmer, try not to draw attention. Never mind if I liked what I did or had any talent for it, it would just take care of itself. If I was a robot, maybe it would have worked. But like any machine – I could not function in this state, and eventually I broke down and fell into the hell of depression and mania. And in my mind, it was directly linked to my own reaction with this demonic force.
Even when I settled down somewhat, and came back to school and the work world, among the living – I was consumed, obsessed, possessed by my anger. The thing about it is – even though it can consume you, keep you up late at night, to a certain degree – when you feel powerless, helpless, out of control and at the mercy of your surroundings – ANGER CAN FEEL EMPOWERING. That is why it is addictive, but also deadly at the same time. Why are so many people dead, behind bars, have ruined lives – all because their anger got the better of them and in a moment of possessed passion they did something to hurt themselves or another and change a life forever. At the same time, no physical pain need be inflicted for this force to have its harmful effects. Anger is the ultimate self-destruction – according to the book, it can lead to disease and even death when one cannot come to grips with it “you keep carrying all that anger it will eat you up inside”. But – it was time for me to start living out my rage – toward my parents, toward the world, to everything I blamed for keeping me in the state of misery I was in. If someone did something I thought was wrong, they would experience my wrath. Mr. Liver really worked me up when he had the nerve, the gall, the unmitigated cockiness to ask me to drive to another airport to pick him up for a concert. I was enraged, furious at him for months. Now what might have been a better approach in hindsight – telling him – sorry – no thanks, sorry I can’t accommodate you – or talking it over. I know – classic passive aggressive behavior – and then he topped it off by getting my ass up at 6 in the morning after a concert in Sacramento to take him to the airport. Geez Mr. Liver – what kind of asshole are you anyways? Again – I didn’t have to play along with it – I chose to – and it was a perfect set up. Finally when I learned my lesson, I realized I just didn’t have to play the game and when he asked me to go out of the way to get him for another one, I just said no. That only took me 10 years to figure out. And never mind how much I was enraged with Joe for not going along with it when I wanted him to fly up with me to see shows in Oakland – I was in a demonic state for months. But looking back to all of these situations, I played as much of a part as the other person – if not more. I thought the other one was the bad guy, but overall – I was setting it up to feed my anger addiction. And it was all completely wasted energy. I can see it now, but I couldn’t see it then. Like the Dan Millman book where the guy at work bitches about having peanut butter sandwiches every day at lunch, and then when asked who made his lunch, he said he had done it. We make are own damn sandwiches! But we always want to blame someone else for own misery. If there is any lesson to be learned from anger, it is that when we take account for our lives, there is no one to blame at all – not even ourselves.
Some times it would work to my advantage – it got me out of a horrific relationship. But again – if I had asserted myself from the beginning of that one, I would have never been in that situation to begin with – that one was on me as well.
The problem enters when others live in your household. Then your hell becomes their hell when you get angry. When you yell at them, use the “f” word in a hostile way, scream when you don’t get your way, throw things – you are not only creating an atmosphere of destruction for yourself, but for your loved ones as well. If you have a child, you are planting the seeds of anger, self hatred, and poison in them, instead of the seeds that you want to be planting – the seeds of love. When I had my first relationship – first serious one – I was out of control. I would throw things, slam doors, scream, carry on, - and have fits of rage when it was heading south out of my control. I felt like it was giving me space, but again – it was a horrible state to be in. If a loved one of yours is out of control, you may think that letting it pass is the best way to deal with it – but all you are really doing is enabling the destruction. Sure – it passes – but like an earthquake it leaves a permanent scar behind it. And when I had a meltdown here, after we had a dispute about rocks that I had hauled from another yard into my truck, a dispute which put me in a tantrum, caused me to break my wall after I slammed the door – my wife did the right thing – she told me I needed to get help, or she could not stay with me. So I did it – and I went into anger management counseling. I have improved. My anger has dissipated. I am lying if I would say it is gone altogether, but I have made a conscious effort to be better – and I may fall down at times, but I think I have made some peace now. I don’t want my child to be afraid of me, I don’t want her to fall into the same trap of anger that I did. I know – some damage has already been done, and I can’t change the past, but I can work toward the future. When the guy I work with tries to pull me in, I realize what is happening – and I just don’t react the way I once did. I don’t get worked up – I just realize he is who he is, and his anger does not have to be mine. And when stuff comes up – as it inevitably does – it does not linger any more, it just passes like the wind and we move on. Maybe as one of my teachers in life, this has been my lesson to learn.
This is a very beautifully written book. The author talks about anger like a baby within, a baby that must be attended to, embraced, taken care of – in a healthy way – through positive affirmations, meditations, mindful walking and breathing. He encourages healthy communication between two people in a relationship – for one to express appreciation for the other, love, gratitude for the other and one’s self as well. It is never too late for a strained relationship to heal – whether it is a marriage, parent child relationship, or friendship. Dialogue is always better than no communication, and love is always better than hatred. When we are angry, we become ugly. Our faces look horrible – he encourages us to carry a mirror to remind us of that. It produces emotions that have horrible side effects. Nothing good comes from expressing anger – even scream therapy or hitting a pillow – for that is just practicing and rehearsing for another angry reaction. We are all one and we are all interconnected and the villain in our lives we express our anger towards is suffering – we are not the only one suffering. Through empathy we see our similarities, not our differences and realize the other person is not an evil one out to get us. Couples should write love letters to each other and heart sutras so that they never forget how much they really mean to each other or take the other one for granted. Where there is apparent darkness in our lives, there is always hope. On top of the dark clouds that form above us, there is always sunshine - even if we cannot see it when the clouds are there. We don’t have to become enraged every time someone cuts us off in traffic or does something we do not like. We don't have to punish another for our own perception, often faulty, that we have been wronged. All of the peoples, forces of the world can unite instead of bombing the crap out of each other. We are here to help each other and love each other, not to fight, scream, hit and kill others. I know it is progressive thinking – but if enough of us tune in, to the beautiful Buddha within us, maybe, just maybe – there can be peace here on earth and hope for us all.
I see my light come shining, from the west unto the east
Any day now
Any day now
I shall be released
In recalling my past, I am not presently expressing anger at those that displayed anger in my household. It is a sickness, disease, self-destroying addiction, and those that expressed it in my household inherited it in one form or another from their own past characters, situations, and circumstances. You can’t blame a person with cancer for being sick, and the same applies to those infested with anger. However, unlike some medical illnesses, there is something you can do to break free of this sickness. All the same – anger was expressed constantly where I grew up – in a frightening way for a young child. Because when you are a young child – and anger is displayed – you inevitably are terrified. It was true of me as a child, and unfortunately I have witnessed my own child react the same way when anger has gotten the best of me and I have either yelled, slammed a door, or done something destructive. When I was growing up, it was not in the form of physical violence (for the most part) but words at ear piercing volumes can be swords of destruction in themselves. Because make no mistake about it – if you are aiming for your own child to have confidence of any degree, you will do everything in your power to minimize your own displays around your child – do whatever it takes to stop this poisonous emotion from being transferred from one to another. Whether it was directed at me and I was in the line of fire, or I saw it directed at another – it did frighten me, give me bad dreams, erode my own confidence, and inevitably force my own emotions underground as I did not feel safe, comfortable enough to express them in my household.
These emotions stayed underground for the formative years in my life, and then as I approached the end of my teens – something happened – they started leaking out. Psychiatrists who see this purely as a chemical imbalance are not seeing the whole picture. Yes – when one reaches an emotional extreme, chemical imbalances do take place – the mind, spirit, and body are closely linked. But the way I see it – just like in physics, energy has to go somewhere and you can only keep it down for so long before it comes up – sometimes in a violent fashion like a volcano. When I went through my manic depressive extremes, my anger became so strong that people in my household were convinced that I was a threat to them and actually changed the locks to the doors in the house. True enough – I was enraged, and it was out of control – even if it was liberating. I don’t believe I was a physical threat to anyone, but I am sure I was threatening enough nevertheless. One of my first shrinks, a little Napoleon named Dr. Shmuckler – who said a lot of pretty ridiculous things to me in the course of my counseling, did observe that I was very angry – and that my depression was an expression of that. I was so out of touch with my own feelings, that I found that hard to comprehend – but years later, I see it as one of the few things he told me that I agree with. (His suggestion of looking for a job with a smile on my face when I was so depressed I could barely get out of bed – was still something I find absurd over 20 years later to this day). My overall summation is this – I was so overwhelmed, intimidated, frightened by the anger that was expressed around me – that I suppressed my own emotions, tried to get by without getting attention – live in a closet so to speak – and that was my childhood – working hard, getting good grades, trying not to get any attention, and believing I was not entitled to or worthy of any type of love either inside or outside of my home. I lived like a robot, knowing there was a void in my life, but not knowing how to break out of it. I was going to try not to rock the boat, follow in Dad’s footsteps, be a computer programmer, try not to draw attention. Never mind if I liked what I did or had any talent for it, it would just take care of itself. If I was a robot, maybe it would have worked. But like any machine – I could not function in this state, and eventually I broke down and fell into the hell of depression and mania. And in my mind, it was directly linked to my own reaction with this demonic force.
Even when I settled down somewhat, and came back to school and the work world, among the living – I was consumed, obsessed, possessed by my anger. The thing about it is – even though it can consume you, keep you up late at night, to a certain degree – when you feel powerless, helpless, out of control and at the mercy of your surroundings – ANGER CAN FEEL EMPOWERING. That is why it is addictive, but also deadly at the same time. Why are so many people dead, behind bars, have ruined lives – all because their anger got the better of them and in a moment of possessed passion they did something to hurt themselves or another and change a life forever. At the same time, no physical pain need be inflicted for this force to have its harmful effects. Anger is the ultimate self-destruction – according to the book, it can lead to disease and even death when one cannot come to grips with it “you keep carrying all that anger it will eat you up inside”. But – it was time for me to start living out my rage – toward my parents, toward the world, to everything I blamed for keeping me in the state of misery I was in. If someone did something I thought was wrong, they would experience my wrath. Mr. Liver really worked me up when he had the nerve, the gall, the unmitigated cockiness to ask me to drive to another airport to pick him up for a concert. I was enraged, furious at him for months. Now what might have been a better approach in hindsight – telling him – sorry – no thanks, sorry I can’t accommodate you – or talking it over. I know – classic passive aggressive behavior – and then he topped it off by getting my ass up at 6 in the morning after a concert in Sacramento to take him to the airport. Geez Mr. Liver – what kind of asshole are you anyways? Again – I didn’t have to play along with it – I chose to – and it was a perfect set up. Finally when I learned my lesson, I realized I just didn’t have to play the game and when he asked me to go out of the way to get him for another one, I just said no. That only took me 10 years to figure out. And never mind how much I was enraged with Joe for not going along with it when I wanted him to fly up with me to see shows in Oakland – I was in a demonic state for months. But looking back to all of these situations, I played as much of a part as the other person – if not more. I thought the other one was the bad guy, but overall – I was setting it up to feed my anger addiction. And it was all completely wasted energy. I can see it now, but I couldn’t see it then. Like the Dan Millman book where the guy at work bitches about having peanut butter sandwiches every day at lunch, and then when asked who made his lunch, he said he had done it. We make are own damn sandwiches! But we always want to blame someone else for own misery. If there is any lesson to be learned from anger, it is that when we take account for our lives, there is no one to blame at all – not even ourselves.
Some times it would work to my advantage – it got me out of a horrific relationship. But again – if I had asserted myself from the beginning of that one, I would have never been in that situation to begin with – that one was on me as well.
The problem enters when others live in your household. Then your hell becomes their hell when you get angry. When you yell at them, use the “f” word in a hostile way, scream when you don’t get your way, throw things – you are not only creating an atmosphere of destruction for yourself, but for your loved ones as well. If you have a child, you are planting the seeds of anger, self hatred, and poison in them, instead of the seeds that you want to be planting – the seeds of love. When I had my first relationship – first serious one – I was out of control. I would throw things, slam doors, scream, carry on, - and have fits of rage when it was heading south out of my control. I felt like it was giving me space, but again – it was a horrible state to be in. If a loved one of yours is out of control, you may think that letting it pass is the best way to deal with it – but all you are really doing is enabling the destruction. Sure – it passes – but like an earthquake it leaves a permanent scar behind it. And when I had a meltdown here, after we had a dispute about rocks that I had hauled from another yard into my truck, a dispute which put me in a tantrum, caused me to break my wall after I slammed the door – my wife did the right thing – she told me I needed to get help, or she could not stay with me. So I did it – and I went into anger management counseling. I have improved. My anger has dissipated. I am lying if I would say it is gone altogether, but I have made a conscious effort to be better – and I may fall down at times, but I think I have made some peace now. I don’t want my child to be afraid of me, I don’t want her to fall into the same trap of anger that I did. I know – some damage has already been done, and I can’t change the past, but I can work toward the future. When the guy I work with tries to pull me in, I realize what is happening – and I just don’t react the way I once did. I don’t get worked up – I just realize he is who he is, and his anger does not have to be mine. And when stuff comes up – as it inevitably does – it does not linger any more, it just passes like the wind and we move on. Maybe as one of my teachers in life, this has been my lesson to learn.
This is a very beautifully written book. The author talks about anger like a baby within, a baby that must be attended to, embraced, taken care of – in a healthy way – through positive affirmations, meditations, mindful walking and breathing. He encourages healthy communication between two people in a relationship – for one to express appreciation for the other, love, gratitude for the other and one’s self as well. It is never too late for a strained relationship to heal – whether it is a marriage, parent child relationship, or friendship. Dialogue is always better than no communication, and love is always better than hatred. When we are angry, we become ugly. Our faces look horrible – he encourages us to carry a mirror to remind us of that. It produces emotions that have horrible side effects. Nothing good comes from expressing anger – even scream therapy or hitting a pillow – for that is just practicing and rehearsing for another angry reaction. We are all one and we are all interconnected and the villain in our lives we express our anger towards is suffering – we are not the only one suffering. Through empathy we see our similarities, not our differences and realize the other person is not an evil one out to get us. Couples should write love letters to each other and heart sutras so that they never forget how much they really mean to each other or take the other one for granted. Where there is apparent darkness in our lives, there is always hope. On top of the dark clouds that form above us, there is always sunshine - even if we cannot see it when the clouds are there. We don’t have to become enraged every time someone cuts us off in traffic or does something we do not like. We don't have to punish another for our own perception, often faulty, that we have been wronged. All of the peoples, forces of the world can unite instead of bombing the crap out of each other. We are here to help each other and love each other, not to fight, scream, hit and kill others. I know it is progressive thinking – but if enough of us tune in, to the beautiful Buddha within us, maybe, just maybe – there can be peace here on earth and hope for us all.
I see my light come shining, from the west unto the east
Any day now
Any day now
I shall be released
posted by Zook at 7:21 PM
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