Who Are You Really Angry At?
Anger can be one of the strongest motivating emotions for self-improvement and changing one’s behavior.
Editor’s Note: The tone of this article may be triggering to some.
Next time you have the urge to break your sobriety because someone pissed you off, let me be the first to tell you that you’re full of shit.
Using anger against another as the reason why you couldn’t help yourself from jumping in bed with a stranger, reconnecting with your qualifier, watching porn into the wee morning hours, or getting that massage with benefits is about the weakest excuse for slippin’ there is.
How do I know?
I’m the queen of self-abusive anger. What’s that? It’s using the anger we feel against another person to abuse ourselves. I’ve used my anger as an excuse to bed hop, to overeat, to over-love, to over-drink, to over-spend and to over-smoke for more than 30 years.
But what was I to do? I was the victim of abusers, assholes, narcissists, boundary crossers, and downright cruel individuals. I mean it really is everyone else’s fault, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?
The answer lies within our anger. What does our anger really want to tell us? That we are victims? That it’s all their fault? Or maybe, maybe our anger is trying to tell us to pull our heads out of our asses, grow the f*ck up and take a look at ourselves.
Anger can be one of the strongest motivating emotions for self-improvement and changing one’s behavior. It’s an emotion that can finally get us to say, “ENOUGH!” And it can be the motivating force to push us out of a frustrating job or a painful relationship or to finally stop us from repeating a destructive behavior.
The key is to focus the anger away from the external circumstances or the people that incited it and focus it more on what we strongly desire to change within ourselves.
It’s not our thoughtless friend, or our inconsiderate boss, or the discourteous cashier at the local grocery store that makes someone feel a burning desire to connect with their qualifier, peruse the bathhouses or surf the net for porn. Sure, it feels like we’re pissed off solely at them. But, if we dig deeper we’ll find that who we are really angry with is ourselves.
We’re angry that it’s taken this long to realize that we have the power to change our circumstances.
We’re angry at ourselves for doing the same idiotic behavior and expecting a different result. We’re angry at ourselves for our own weakness, our own gullibility and our own selfishness in wanting someone else to change themselves in order to make us feel OK.
Come on, let’s get real. Our sobriety depends on us getting real — not shoving our anger under the rug or using it to control others but in admitting to ourselves that the anger we feel is not so much against them, but against ourselves.
It’s OK for us to get pissed off, jacked up, flippin’ angry at someone or some situation IF we don’t get stuck in it and if that anger leads us to look at ourselves, our behaviors and the ways we can change for the better.
Of course, who wants to get angry at oneself? We get much more control and power when we feel pissed off at someone else, yes?
The problem is that when we do that, we dig our own graves… big ol’ pits of resentments. And it’s that resentment that leads us to hurt ourselves, whether it be by returning to the bed of our equally sex-addicted qualifier, or into our favorite strip club or to the computer for internet porn.
Do you get it?? If the anger we feel is truly about THEM then why do we end up abusing ourselves? Because it’s not about them. It’s about us.
I wish I could say that this knowledge (albeit, of my own opinion) was a result of me figuring out this shit years ago. But it’s not. It’s fresh knowledge. It’s a gift of my four months in S.L.A.A. and the shares of my fellows. I’ve got a long haul ahead of me – this job of letting go of resentments and changing 30 years of self-abusive behaviors. It brings tears to my eyes realizing what I’ve done to myself and others. But I guess that’s another gift of the program – humility and the tools to clean up our shit, to make amends and to let it go. I’m tired of the anger that lies behind my smile. I’m cleaning house with the help of my Higher Power. One day at a time.
I’m also coming to believe that the anger that is sparked by the actions of another can be one of the greatest gifts we can receive IF we use it to focus on where we can change, where we can improve and how we can stop destructive behaviors.
The positive power of anger lies not in getting someone else to change, but in using it to propel YOU to change.
— KIM K., LONG BEACH, CA
seen what I could have become 20 years down the road — or 10 years, 5 years, 3 years, a couple of weeks? It terrified me.
My road to recovery is not based on a set of religious, legalistic rules. This is based on the opposite — the grace of God. I’ve been reproached about this issue in my life in the past, but by a spirit of religion. I ignored it because it put a bad taste in my mouth. Behavior modification based on a sin management program — there is no love in this kind of reproach. Fix yourself and draw close to God? No way. Fix yourself because God is already in you. My mind is changed. I now realize this area of my life doesn’t need to be conformed to be a ‘better Christian’, but because I already have Christ in me. It doesn’t fit with who I really am on the inside — my identity in Christ.
Jacob cheated. Peter had a temper. Noah got drunk. Jonah ran from God. Paul committed murder. Moses stuttered. Miriam gossiped. Thomas doubted. Sara was impatient. Zacchaeus was short. Abraham was old. Lazarus was dead......I’m an addict of women and sex.
God doesn’t choose the qualified, He qualifies the chosen.
— JOHN DOE
the Journal, Issue #146
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