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I just did a terrible thing.... help

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sKePTiKal:
Sea, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you somewhat about the belief that anger is JUST a destructive, negative emotion. My belief is why I said you have embrace those emotions - warts & all.

Many times, anger is simply an ego-reaction... and that type of anger, can spiral into the destructiveness you seem to reject. But there is another type of anger... that acts like an early-warning system for the purpose of PROTECTING yourself. And another type, that is a normal human reaction to having sustained a soul-wound. (This type only goes away if you embrace it... and give yourself permission to MATTER enough to you... that you are "righteously" angry. It PASSES, in it's own time and becomes something better and different... and leads down a path to a healthy result.)

There are alot of different dimensions to that emotion that we call anger. And I've found many of them are extremely useful in processing our experiences - the grist for the mill - that lets us out the other side as more whole and free people.

Pushing anger away; trying to avoid the emotion; believing it's always a bad thing... is conditioning from our society. For me, doing that always results in the kind of subconscious acting out you experienced. I can only find my way to completely "not caring" about the person who caused my anger-reaction... or forgiving them, and myself... if I permit myself to go completely into that anger and just hash it out. Most of that happened in journals, and less so in real life. Mind you, I wrote for YEARS.

It worked for me. Maybe it help some for you?

Hopalong:
This isn't an opinion about others but a fact about me...

Every time I get angry enough to express it externally, I usually feel sick afterward. Shaken loose from my sense of self, doubtful of my lodestars, and, oddly, hurt.

I can express some anger in writing, now and then with something deft that might summarize the heart of an issue. Often it's pointing out sexism's nuances. But even there, the thing I feel most strongly is the root cause of human society's damage...I write from a state that's not really anger as much as focus.

Back to anger. I've just never made peace with it. I would be a terrible candidate to go through it even therapeutically, I think. The aftermath is frightening and feels harmful, toxic. Then again, I don't know if I as an individual just don't have that much capacity for anger-wrestling and have learned my own limits, or whether I'm missing out.

I don't think it matters...I don't think believing one thing or another about anger is as important as respecting its potential for toxicity, as in my case, and for clarifying/cleansing, as in Amber's. It's probably as unique to each of us as are our hardwired personalities.

But I'm thinking on it. I do know that when I'd feel a firm, unqualified "I don't or didn't deserve that" -- there was immense relief. And I know anger preceded that lightbulb. Which eventually turned to self-compassion.

love,
Hops

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