anger

[diony]

G-d, I hate being angry.

I mean, I just hate it. I hate the way it feels in my body, I hate the adrenaline, I hate the way my brain circles around & around the thing I'm angry about, unable to let go of it and think of something else. When I get angry when I'm fighting (in the professional teaching/learning self-defense sense) I can do something

Comments

[febrile]

I have a terrible relationship with anger.

I think it came from growing up with my mom, and all of her predispositions for fits of anger that she only realized and dealt with long after I went to college. But I learned quickly as a child that, if I got angry back, I would lose. The only way to "win" was to be dispassionate in the face of rage. It would only make her angrier, and that allowed me to win the game.

The thing is, anger unexpressed, for me, often translated itself into self-loathing. I've done an awful lot of thinking about the relationship between the two, especially over the course of the last three years, and it's interesting to think how, once I started allowing my anger to exist, I started recovering an awful lot of my sanity.

Anger can work for you, and does have its place. That concept still terrifies me a bit, but I know that accepting it helped me out.

[liralen]

Yeah... I have that same distinction and I really really hate it when I'm angry and can't do anything about it... *sighs*

[drastic]

One of my favorite pithy Zen stories involves a beefy grizzled samurai (hereafter Sam) type going up to a Zen Master (hereafter Zemmy) and demanding, "Hey, tell me the nature of heaven and hell

[kelly_cheese]

Oh yes. Nothing useful to add, but yes. I think I still get anger and hate confused, though. I'm getting better at letting anger go, but it's taking a long, long time and it's horrible!

An another note, hope you and your husband are feeling a bit better today.