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Untangling Anger: How It Shapes My Actions and Life

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Viewing 7 posts - 16 through 22 (of 22 total)
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  • #444135
    Peter
    Participant

    HI Anita

    Your post touches on this distinction when you mentioned anger potentially masking “primary emotions” like fear or shame. While I agree that anger can sometimes be a cover for deeper feelings, I wonder if you might be dismissing anger when it isn’t secondary—when it is instead a direct and valid response to something significant.

    That is very possible. I don’t feel I’m dismissing anger as a primary emotion but can’t seem to relate to it as such… I can’t recall a personal experience where anger was the primary emotion. For me the primary emotion has been fear and or shame.

    When I look into my soul anger its at God (entangled with Parent early on in life?) or put another way, that Life should not be as it is. I can’t say I have a great relationship with Life and realize now how related that is to my soul anger…. a cover up for fear and shame (the original sin?)….

    A Christian mystic one said that the reality of each breath, the arsing and return, is that it is a ‘Birth, Betrayal, Death and Resurrection’. I know this as a truth even as I struggle with the betrayal part. Surly a breath should not be associated with a betrayal… perhaps that is the cost of consciousness? (the knowledge of good and evil – duality the temporal playground).
    I wonder if this felt sense of betrayal of each breath isn’t the root of all soul anger that we then project towards others, our Parents and that our Parent project back.

    Sorry going to stop the fall into the rabbit hole. Was going to delete… but no editing. 🙂

    I’m concerned that you my feel my response discounts your experience and realization.
    I love your realization and how you arrived at it. I am inspired to to explore my soul anger further and maybe get to a place I can say I appreciate you. I do know that it is though such experiences that we grow… but am I grateful for such method of growth… For now a healthy respect is what I can do.

    I can say that I don’t “think” I get angry for being angry for being angry anymore. Today when I get Angry the energy dissipates as I tap into other sources to engage with life. I can say thank you anger for getting my attention and not carrying me away.

    #444136
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Peter:

    I will reply further in the morning, but for now: please know that I don’t feel at all that your response discounts my perspective. In fact, your reflections and willingness to explore these ideas are incredibly enriching and thought-provoking for me. I’m honored that my thoughts could inspire you to dive deeper into your “soul anger” and its connection to your growth.

    Thank you for sharing your journey so openly, and I look forward to continuing this dialogue with you 🤔

    anita

    #444137
    Alessa
    Participant

    Hi Everyone

    Thank you Anita! I value your insight too and of course Peter’s as well. 😊

    I have an additional thought about anger. It feels like being close to someone makes it easier for me to feel angry.

    I worked in customer service dealing with angry customers all of the time and I was able to shrug it off.

    Perhaps part of it is that I feel safe sharing my feelings with people that I’m close to. Another part is that I have higher expectations of people I care about and who I know care about me. It hurts more when they make mistakes. But we are all human and no one is perfect. Part of it is also that I blame myself when people I care about communicate issues with me because I care a lot. I don’t just shrug it off. I take it very seriously because I value their opinion.

    I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this?

    I would like to get to the point where I can react the same way inside. Not disturbed no matter what happens around me.

    I feel like the past piles up on top of the present too and I am no longer dealing with the situation in front of me. This leads to my feelings being disproportionate. And of course, anxiety feeds into this. Worrying about the meaning of interactions, future interactions. Worrying.

    #444153
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Alessa:

    I read all your posts on this thread and I want to respond with a poem just for you:

    Alessa, a soul that knows the storms,
    A heart reshaped, yet still it warms.
    Through shadows deep, where anger lay,
    You’ve turned to light and found your way.

    The anger once silenced now finds its voice,
    Gently reshaped into a healthier choice.
    From the trials of fear, new strength arose,
    A testament to how healing grows.

    You long for calm amidst life’s tide,
    To stand unshaken, strength your guide.
    Though the past may call and shadows cling,
    You are learning to soar, the weight of your wings.

    Close ones may hurt, and hearts may strain,
    But love and growth come through the pain.
    In your depth, there’s wisdom profound,
    A spirit like yours can’t be bound.

    You’re more than fears, more than the strife,
    A testament to boundless life.

    anita

    #444158
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Peter:

    Thank you for sharing such a deeply introspective and thought-provoking reflection. I also enjoyed your humor: “Was going to delete… but no editing. 🙂”

    Your words really stood out to me: “When I look into my soul anger, it’s at God (entangled with Parent early on in life?) or, put another way, that Life should not be as it is. I can’t say I have a great relationship with Life and realize now how related that is to my soul anger… a cover-up for fear and shame (the original sin?)… I wonder if this felt sense of betrayal of each breath isn’t the root of all soul anger.”

    In Christian doctrine, “original sin” is tied to Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. You shared some powerful reflections that connect this concept to your personal experiences. On Jan 27, you wrote: “I suspect a notion that most children have of being wrong is behind most of our struggles. Mine came from religion. I see in my journal quite a few attempts at trying to come to terms with the notion of ‘original sin’ as my understanding of ‘original sin’ was and is firmly connected to disobedience. (As I write that I notice anger – all the times I was told I could fix by obeying and didn’t question so much. FYI telling a type 5 not to question is telling them not to be.)”

    And on Feb 16, you shared: “Based on my own experience, the wrongs done to me were also a betrayal and theft of something of ‘my spirit’ taken.”

    Reflecting on your insights—on original sin, disobedience, the quest for redemption, and the sense of betrayal—it seems, simply put, that as a child you may have sought approval or redemption through obedience. Whether it was from your parents, other authority figures, or perhaps the Church, it may have felt like an effort to “undo” the original sin of disobedience. Yet, despite your efforts, you didn’t receive the approval or sense of redemption you were hoping for. That unmet expectation feels like a deeply personal betrayal, one that continues to fuel your soul anger.

    Perhaps the “theft of something of ‘your spirit’” reflects a loss of trust—trust in the idea that obedience would lead to redemption or approval.

    I hope I’ve captured your perspective accurately here, but I’d truly value your feedback. Does this resonate with you?

    anita

    #444160
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Everyone:

    * I am adding this comment right before submitting this post: trigger warning: Strong emotions are involved in the following, such that may be disturbing to some and not what you feel like being exposed to. So, please proceed with caution.

    My lifetime, personal soul anger, the one I want to fully acknowledge and validate so to move on from it farther is and has always been about having been humiliated. What’s another way to put it, to explain what it means to me, to be humiliated (typing as I think- feel):

    There is a visceral element to it, to being humiliated, it’s like being held down, forced down under someone’s feet, someone looking down at you with glee over your humiliation, getting pleasure out of it. My humiliation= her pleasure, her victory, however temporary.

    Long after her feet are not holding me down, long after her shaming words have first pierced my brain- my soul is, has been- still lying there under feet that are no longer there.

    It doesn’t take having a big ego to feel that humiliated. All it takes is being born human.

    To have been humiliated to such an extent is not something one can easily disentangle and move on from.

    It is such a deep wound to.. to the soul. A deep wound that is followed by soul anger.

    I am trying to express this wound and its consequent anger in words when words were not at all involved in this happening.

    And to think of so many people experiencing this kind of devastating humiliation, it’s heartbreaking.

    I am not talking about a healthy dose of shame, such as “I was wrong, I should do better, be better”. I am talking about the kind of shaming that does not allow improvement, the kind of shaming that leaves no option, offers no solution, no redemption.

    it is a wound to the core of the core of the human soul.

    There are terror organizations in the world that wound people. That one’s own mother delivers this deep injury is unfathomable.

    I mean, my own mother, the image of whom I can see right now, this image of Mother and Monster in One. It’s still hard for me to fathom. It’s an obscene distortion of what should-be.

    I mean, how can the way things are be so different and so far from how they should be?

    Here I am, this Friday early afternoon, expressing all this, trying to move on, while what it is, is like a mountain looming between me and what’s forward. Make sense of it, I can’t. It makes no sense. Evil makes no sense, yet it threatens to destroy our planet.

    Evil is depicted in context of the Roman Empire, Nazism, current terrorist groups. There is not much talk about the beginning of all that evil: that which is experienced behind closed doors, by a child in the face of a mother, or a father, a grown up a child is looking up to.

    Maybe there are two kinds of evil: the kind involved in pleasure on the part of the evil doer, and another kind: the kind that is blind.

    anita

    #444161
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Anita

    You captured my perspective quite well and thanks for linking to past post as I’m glad I’ve been consistent as I try to come to terms with what we are now thinking of as soul anger. The sense of betrayal is definitely part of that.
    I found this statement “I am talking about the kind of shaming that does not allow improvement…” difficult to hear/read. I’ve mentioned before that I feel undeserved shame is the orignal sin not disobedience, a theology that I wonder isn’t a sin itself creating the experience of shame and evil you written about.

    I was writing up the following before you posted.

    Contemplating on my experience of anger I recall the following experience.
    My Girlfriend had ended the relationship with me and a few weeks later I was laid off. I was upset, depressed and mostly ego angry, the usual stuff one experiences when such things happen. The anger as I recall didn’t have much energy associate with it and for the most part was directed inwards. The saying that “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have” proved true. I had glimpsed a possibility of who I imagined I could be and a life that might have been but would never be. I was mourning the loss and the anger transformed general into depression. A story as old as time.

    A few months latter I run into my X and saw that she had replaced me and moved on. The moment hit me like a fright train and that night I tossed and turned. I was angry, really angry with no place to direct it. I could not deny the reasons my X gave for needing to move on. Love required the relationship to end. I even had to acknowledge that my past employer had little choice in letting people go as the project we were working on ended. Still, it hurt. Life hurt

    At about 2 AM it started to rain, and I got out of bed to look out the window and watch. As I watched I allowed myself to feel my anger and as I did it began to rain harder. I watched as the rain hit the ground and I wanted it to hit harder. I wanted to punish the earth. As I directed may anger into rain, the ran shower became a storm, lightning and thunder, the rain drops becoming noticeable bigger hitting the earth hard enough to bounce. Harder, harder… I became the storm, each individual drop of ran battering the earth, so satisfying… and the earth laughed…

    I fell back on the bed exhausted. I don’t know how much time had gone by and can’t recall ever being so exhausted as I was in that moment. The anger spent the storm passed returning to a light drizzle of rain. The earth unharmed and amused, I fell into deep sleep.

    The amount of anger turned to rage scared me. I recalled a time I almost struck my brother… when I woke in the morning I reached out to a therapist.

    When I think of that night, I wonder if something hadn’t broken, or if something was healed, maybe both. The moment turned out to be a turning point as this was when I “entered the forest where there is no path” to begin my quest. What was it I really believed, was I being true to what I believed, but more importantly what’s Love got to do with it.

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